The President and Prime-minister of the French Republic, l'Escroc and Vile Pin, are record-breakers. That is to say they are record-breakingly unpopular as AFP reports (in French) that a mere 29% of the French voters that l'Escroc is satisfactory and that even fewer, 24%, approve of Vile Pin. These are dops od 10% and 13% repsectively compared to a month ago. Apparently, although AFP doesn't say this in the article I have linked to, these levels of popularity are the lowest since the either opinion polls began or the fifth republic was formed - I heard this on the radio and didn't pick up exactly what the measurement was. Anyway it puts President Bush's "dire approval ratings" in some sort of context. Needless to say this is entirely due to their "decisive" handling of the CPE where they managed to hold out long enough to make the unions look like they had a fight on their hands before living up to the stereotype of "Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys" and giving in to the protestors.
Not surprisingly much of the news and commentry seems to be about how the 2007 presidential campaign has already started and how the battle between Sarko and Royal is shaping up. Sarko seems to be getting rather less positive headlines at Yahoo compared to Ms Royal but IMO the anti-Sarko headlines may be actually help him amongst the (large and growing) proportion of French voters who seem to dislike the way the press handles issues such as immigration. For eample these are a sample of the relevant headlines at Yahoo France earlier today (with my translations and [explanations]):
Ségolène Royal accentue son avance sur Nicolas Sarkozy ( Reuters, dimanche 23 avril 2006, 20h12) Ségolène Royal increases her lead on Sakozy [but if you read the article its a miniscule increase of 1% from 52:48 last month to 53:47 this]
Nicolas Sarkozy accusé de copier Philippe de Villiers ( Reuters, dimanche 23 avril 2006, 20h08) Sakozy accused of copying Philippe de Villiers [another rightwing pol, more nationalist than the UMP but not extreme like le Pen]
A large part of Sarko's appeal to the electorate is that he is seen to be an outsider (to an extent anyway) and a voter reading these headlines sees that Sarko is indeed being treated as an outsider by the politicians and "main stream" journalists in France. To some extent Royal is also seen as different because she is the first female candidate, and I think this may explain part of her success. She is also binning large chunks of traditional socialist rhetoric on a number of issues as well, which I think explains why many traditional socialist politicians, such as her husband and potential rival François Hollande, are less than happy to see her so popular.
It is almost certain that next year's election is going to concentrate on "right wing" issues such as crime and immigration hence the manoevering by both Sarko and Royal, manoevering captured perfectly in this Delize cartoon today with Le Pen fishing in the river, Sarko fishing in Le Pen's catchbowl and Royal doing the same to Sarko.