Both main candidates were born after World War II,[1] along with the first to have seen adulthood under the Fifth Republic, and the first not to have been in politics under Charles de Gaulle.

The election campaign raised a number of issues: Approximately 200 French intellectuals expressed support for Ségolène Royal.

[50] According to the journalist Jacques Julliard, the support of some French intellectuals for the 2003 invasion of Iraq is the root of their rallying to Sarkozy, following the creation of the review titled Le Meilleur des mondes (Brave New World).

Pascal Bruckner, historian Stéphane Courtois, Thérèse Delpech, André Glucksmann, Romain Goupil, Pierre-André Taguieff, Olivier Rollin, and Pierre Rigoulot are frequent contributors to this review.

Tennis player Yannick Noah called to vote for Royal, while Sarkozy obtained the support of singers Johnny Hallyday, Mireille Mathieu and Faudel, of rapper Doc Gyneco, and former politician and current actor Bernard Tapie.

The song Elle est facho (She's a fascist) on the Rouge Sang album by singer Renaud released in 2006 gained particular media attention for lyrics in the last verse that translate as "she's a fascist and votes Sarko"[52] Prominent political commentator Alain Duhamel was suspended in 2006 after a video was published on DailyMotion, where he stated his personal intentions of voting for François Bayrou.

Abroad, Silvio Berlusconi, the former prime minister of Italy, gave his support to Sarkozy immediately following the first round, while Romano Prodi, the then Italian premier and leader of the centre-left Union coalition, called for an alliance between Bayrou and Royal.

[54] European commissioner and Vice-President Margot Wallström was criticised after she informally suggested support for Royal on her blog, celebrating the fact that a woman got into the second round.

José Manuel Barroso, the head of the European Commission, has privately discussed the idea of forming a "strategic partnership" with Mr.

In 2011, according to the son of the Libyan leader Saif Al-Islam Gaddafi, Sarkozy was provided with financial support from Libya during the presidential election.

[68] Immediately after the first round's results were made official, four defeated left-wing candidates – José Bové, Marie-George Buffet, Arlette Laguiller and Dominique Voynet – urged their supporters to vote for Royal.

[73] On 25 April, Bayrou declared he would not support either candidate in the runoff,[74] and announced he would form a new political party called the Democratic Movement.

Other candidates received a much lower share of the vote than they had in 2002, with Olivier Besancenot (Revolutionary Communist League, LCR) failing to achieve the 5% necessary to have his political campaign reimbursed by the state.

The "Anyone But Sarkozy" push benefited both Bayrou and Royal,[82] while the tactical voting, on the right or on the left, explains the low score of the other candidates, in contrast with the last presidential election's first round.

But it also saw a reconfiguration of the political chessboard, with various left-wing figures and voters deciding to support Sarkozy against Royal, who saw opposition inside her own party.

Bernard Tapie, a former Socialist, Max Gallo, who had supported left-wing Republican Jean-Pierre Chevènement in 2002, Eric Besson,[83] etc., passed on Sarkozy's side.

Centrist figures of the Socialist party, such as Michel Rocard and Bernard Kouchner, called for an alliance between Bayrou and Royal, which might have had consequences in the June 2007 legislative elections – these determined the parliamentary majority, and decided that France would not see another cohabitation between the President, head of state, and the Prime minister, leader of the government.

François Hollande, the national secretary of the Socialist Party and Ségolène Royal's partner, excluded any alliance with the centre-right, along with others left-wing leaders, such as Laurent Fabius or Dominique Voynet.

This was more or less expected, in particular with the high level of voter registration by suburban youths, who had been strongly opposed to Sarkozy since the 2005 riots during which he had made controversial remarks.

Meanwhile, a large number of university students had participated in the protests against the CPE, proposed by Sarkozy's UMP party, in the spring of 2006; they also strongly backed Royal.

Marseille, the second-largest city of France, went Sarkozy's way overall as he won 34.25% of the vote to 27.1% for Royal and only 14.1% for Bayrou (putting a close third ahead of Le Pen, who obtained 13.4%).

Sarkozy also narrowly beat Royal in the industrial port of Le Havre (29% against 26.8%), as well as in Avignon, Nîmes, Metz, Nancy, and Strasbourg (these last three cities belonging to the Alsace-Lorraine region).

The Haute-Garonne, traditional Radical-Socialist territory, voted (including its capital, Toulouse), for Ségolène Royal, giving her 33%, against less than 27% for Sarkozy and slightly more than 19% for Bayrou.

The Corrèze, where Jacques Chirac began his political career as the deputy of Ussel, also voted slightly in favour of Royal, as did the Creuse, one of the least-populated departments of France.

The Alpes-Maritimes, part of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region where the National Front won several cities in the 1990s (Toulon of the Var, Marignane of the Bouches-du-Rhône and Orange of the Vaucluse) voted for Sarkozy at 43.6%, while Royal received only 17.9%, Bayrou 15.0%, and Jean-Marie Le Pen 13.5%.

Other departments to give him more than 15% were the Vaucluse (16.8%), Haute-Saône (16.5%), Meuse (16.3%), Ardennes (16.2% – where left-wing candidate Besancenot received 5.35%), Pas-de-Calais (16%), Oise (15.9%), Corse-du-Sud (15.9%), Vosges (15.7%), and Gard (15.4%), Departments where Besancenot obtained more than 5% of the vote include Ardennes, Aisne (where Le Pen also achieved a strong results), Ariège, Allier (where Sarkozy obtained 28% against nearly 26% for Royal), Calvados (where Sarkozy finished first with 29% to 25% for Royal), Finistère, Cher, Côtes d'Armor, Creuse, Indre, Meurthe-et-Moselle, Nord, Meuse, Moselle, Pas-de-Calais (6.2%), Sarthe, Nièvre, Puy-de-Dôme, Somme, Territoire-de-Belfort, Seine-Maritime, Haute-Vienne and the overseas collectivity of Saint Pierre and Miquelon (6.5%, along with 5.1% for José Bové; only 6.7% for Le Pen).

The overseas department of Martinique has been strongly opposed to Sarkozy; Aimé Césaire, mayor of Fort-de-France and leader of the Négritude movement, refused to see him during his visit there in December 2005 (due to the UMP vote of the 2005 law on colonialism[91]).

Riots erupted in several urban centers including the capital Paris where some of the most intense clashes were reported in the Place de la Bastille.

[93] A gathering of opponents to Sarkozy there quickly ended in confrontations between the youth and the riot control forces, who tear gassed the whole place.

[100] On 20 March 2018, Sarkozy was arrested by the French Police because of the suspect having received 50 million euros for his presidential campaign from Muammar Gaddafi.