The French Jewish electorate seems split in supporting the two candidates, President Valery Giscard d’Estaing and Socialist leader Francois Mitterrand, who will face each other May 10 in the run-off elections for the French Presidency. The two men emerged from yesterday’s preliminary first round as the top vote-getters and are expected to run neck-in-neck in the finals.
The Jewish community as such decided not to participate in the election campaign, but a Jewish splinter group, Jewish Revival, led by a young attorney, Henri Hajdenberg, is calling for a “sanction vote” against Giscard which amounts to a vote in favor of the Socialist leader. Hajdenberg has called on France’s Jews to “punish the (incumbent) President for his pro-Arab policy.”
There are some 400,000 Jewish voters out of a total of 36.5 million and the Jewish vote might determine the outcome should the election be as close as most political analysts expect. In 1974 Giscard won by only 450,000 votes against Mitterrand. Both candidates have influential Jewish supporters. Giscard can count on European Parliament President Simone Veil, and Mitterrand on former Premier Pierre Mendes-France.
Yesterday’s results indicated that the Jews, as far as could be ascertained from a study of voting areas with strong Jewish concentrations, split their vote along the same lines as the general public. Both candidates are preparing to actively woo the Jewish electorate during the next two weeks. The two candidates are expected to discuss the Middle East when they meet face to face in a television debate before the elections.
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