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But the overriding explanation given by French political analysts the morning after was that the public was simply tired of the aloof, arrogantly aristocratic Giscard and was anxious for a change. Admitted U.D.F. Leader Jean Lecanuet: "The idea of keeping the same leadership for 14 years was a factor." Jacques Fauvet, editor of the left-leaning Le Monde, agreed. "François Mitterrand's victory is first a victory for alternation, that is, for democracy," he wrote in a front-page editorial. "For more than 20 years the same family, in spirit, had been in power. A large part of the country, particularly the underprivileged classes and the youth, will finally feel, we hope, that it is better liked, better understood and better protected." Virtually no one, apart from Socialist and Communist idealogues, saw the leftist victory as a sign of popular support for Mitterrand's nationalization and economic reform program. Rather, as Journalist Jean-François Revel put it, Giscard's "strange defeat was due to the most common illness among those who exercise power: the loss of contact with reality."
Reality came crashing down on Giscard at 6:30 p.m. on election Sunday with the insistent ringing of a telephone at the family's chateau de Varvasse in the village of Chanonat (pop. 850). Campaign Manager Jean-François Deniau had some bad tidings: early computer projections showed Giscard a loser by 4%. (The final official tally: 15,714,598, or 51.76%, for Mitterrand; 14,647,787, or 48.24%, for Giscard.) By 8:20 p.m., shortly after the results were made public, the Elysçe released a terse statement in which Giscard expressed his "wishes"—nothing warmer —to his successor. As if to say I-told-you-so, Giscard added: "I think I did everything I could to explain to the French the extent and the consequences of their choice."
One of the "consequences" Giscard had campaigned most strongly against was Mitterrand's bold plan for economic and social reform. In addition to nationalizing the country's remaining private banks and eleven basic industries, including mining, communications and aerospace, Mitterrand's program calls for the creation of 210,000 public sector jobs, a higher minimum wage, tax hikes for the wealthy and a 35-hour work week. Critics see this as a guarantee of more inflation, more balance of payments deficits and a weaker franc.
The prospect of such sweeping measures sent shock waves through the French financial and business community. On the morning after Mitterrand's election, for the first time in its history, Paris' venerable stock exchange, the Bourse, had to postpone its opening because there were no buyers to establish prices. When the doors did open at 1 p.m., there was an avalanche of sell orders from anxious investors. Stock prices fell by 9% within minutes and trading had to be suspended. Hardest hit were stocks of the industries that Mitterrand proposes to nationalize.