Reply #13: Sarkozy wants the National Front to knock the Socialists into third place and out of the runoff.

[pampango]

He figures that if he faces the far-right in the second round he will win, while if he faces the Socialists he will be in more trouble. His campaigns to stoke fear of immigrants and promote the message that multiculturalism is dead are designed to bolster the National Front and knock the Socialists out in the first round.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2011/03/20113713536262847.html

"Sarkozy last month declared that "multiculturalism is dead" and said he wanted to see a "French Islam and not an Islam in France", while his party has called for a national debate on religious practice in a secular state. The left, and many Muslim groups, sense a cynical plot. They accuse Sarkozy of stirring up disputes that can only increase tensions in French cities, all in the service of 2012 presidential electoral mathematics.

"It's doubtless a plan by Nicolas Sarkozy to boost the National Front in order to find himself in a head-to-head with them in the second round, and disqualify the left," Socialist parliamentary leader Jean-Marc Ayrault, told AFP news agency.

(T)he left is training its fire not on Le Pen, but on Sarkozy - accusing him of stirring dangerous anti-Muslim opinion.

The National Front has always been an anti-immigration party, but under Marie Le Pen, it has attempted to shed its racist image and concentrate the debate on the place of Islam in French society, picking up votes as it has done so."