Sarkozy hits new ratings low

2008-04-28 20:12

Paris - French President Nicolas Sarkozy has plunged to a new ratings low according to a poll released on Monday, with a record number of voters unhappy with his performance a year after he took office.

Sarkozy's approval rating dropped eight points in a month to 32%, according to the BVA-l'Express poll, carried out before the president gave a prime-time interview defending his programme of reforms last week.

Sixty-four percent of respondents said they disapproved of the president, the highest figure recorded since the polling institute started its monthly survey in 1981.

Elected last May on a promise to kickstart the French economy, Sarkozy has seen his popularity plummet among voters worried about rising living costs and irked by his high-profile divorce and remarriage to ex-model Carla Bruni.

For the first time Prime Minister Francois Fillon, who had remained popular as Sarkozy's ratings tumbled, also sank into negative figures, with 46% unhappy with his record against 43 who approved of it.

Both Sarkozy's predecessors had hit similar lows in the BVA survey: Jacques Chirac in late 1995 after a paralysing strike over reform plans, and Francois Mitterrand who sank to 31% in 1992, in the closing years of his mandate.

The poll of 994 people was carried out last week ahead of a hotly-awaited television appearance in which Sarkozy admitted to personal errors and said he had heeded the lessons of his first difficult year in power.

The French president faulted high oil and food prices, the strong euro and the world financial crisis for some of the shortcomings of his reform drive, and reaffirmed his commitment to modernising the French economy.

- AFP