Sarkozy Concedes Defeat by Socialist Hollande in French Presidential Race

Exit polls showed that moderate socialist Francois Hollande defeated Conservative Nikolas Sarkozy in the French presidential race. Sarkozy is the first president to lose an election in 30 years.

The number one foreign policy issue that separated the two candidates was support for the US war in Afghanistan. Sarkozy supported a withdrawal that would have all but support and training troops out by the end of 2013. Hollande promised he'd pull out most of the 3600 French troops by the end of this year. 

Hollande took advantage of the candidate void when  Dominique Strauss-Kahn had to drop out of the race when he faced charges of rape from a housekeeper at a New York City hotel. 

While a member of the socialist party, Hollande is considered a moderate. 

Hollande promised to heavily tax some of those who OWS would call the one percent. The Washington Post reports,  

The Socialist candidate, although making clear that hard times lie ahead, promised to apportion out austerity with a more even hand, including stimulus for economic growth alongside debt reduction. In one telling argument, he charged Sarkozy with protecting the rich by limiting upper-tier tax rates and said, if elected, he would impose a 75 percent rate on all earnings above $1.3 million a year to finance more help for the poor.

The LA Times reported,

In what was an often ill-tempered campaign, Sarkozy was forced to veer even further to the right after the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen, president of the Front National, picked up nearly 18% of votes -- about 6.4 million ballots -- in the first-round vote. Sarkozy needed to pick up most of this support to win.

Just days before the runoff, however, Le Pen told supporters she would be casting a "blank vote" as the two candidates were "Siamese twins," neither of whom she could support, and advised her followers to "vote with your conscience."

The killer blow to Sarkozy's hopes came last week, when centrist candidate Franà §ois Bayrou told his voters that he would support Hollande, a decision that Sarkozy's ruling right-of-center party described as a "betrayal." Bayrou said he was dismayed by Sarkozy's wooing of the far-right.