A four-day "people's primary" election ended on Sunday, with former justice minister Christiane Taubira emerging as the favourite to lead the French left's presidential election campaign. Other contenders refused to participate in the selection process, and doubts remain as to Taubira's ability to win wider support as a unifying figure.
A total of 467,000 people signed up to take part in the online vote, which started on Thursday. They ranked five professional politicians and two civil society candidates on a scale from "very good" to "inadequate".
Taubira, who entered the contest as the favourite, emerged as the only candidate with a "better than good" ranking.
Next came the Green party's Yannick Jadot, hard-left firebrand Jean-Luc Melenchon, Euro MP Pierre Larrouturou, followed by Socialist Anne Hidalgo, currently the mayor of Paris.
The exercise, initiated by political activists including environmentalists, feminists and anti-racism groups, was intended to ensure the emergence of a candidate capable of rallying left-wing voters, giving the left a change to unseat President Emmanuel Macron in the April election.
However, the primary has been dogged by serious drawbacks.
Losers decide to reject the outcome
The biggest was the upfront refusal by leading candidates Melenchon, Jadot and Hidalgo to pay any attention to its result.
"As far as I'm concerned, the popular primary is a non-starter and has been for a while," Jadot said on Saturday, while Melenchon described the initiative as "obscure" and "a farce".
"We want a united left, we want a strong left and we have a great road in front of us," Taubira told activists after the result on Sunday, adding she would now call on the other candidates to "create unity".
Polls currently predict that all left-wing candidates will be eliminated in the first round of presidential voting in April.
Macron, who has yet to declare his candidacy for re-election, is the favourite to win according to surveys, with the far-right's Marine Le Pen the likely runner-up.
But pollsters warn that the political landscape remains volatile, with the outcome very difficult to predict.
