More than half of France's voters would prefer a candidate from the political left to conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy for the 2012 election, a survey said on Sunday.
The survey to be published by Liberation newspaper on Monday, said 55 percent preferred either Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund and a favourite of the centre-left, or Socialist Party leader Martine Aubry to any from the right.
When it came to personalities, 44 percent of those asked said they preferred Strauss-Kahn as president, while 24 percent said they preferred Sarkozy. Aubry was chosen by 31 percent.
The poll highlights voter's growing discontent as Sarkozy struggles to deal with France's economic woes and political scandals that have mired his government in recent months.
With unemployment stuck at 10 percent, Sarkozy returns from his summer break this week to face an even tougher battle with unions vowing to fight a planned pensions reform aimed at cutting budget deficits.
The telephone poll of 1,003 people, conducted between August 18-20, showed that 50 percent of French voters trusted the Socialist Party to propose viable solutions to finance France's pension needs, while 49 percent trusted them on jobs.
Even more worrying for the 55 year-old president, voters trusted the left to change the country's political morale sapped by the Bettencourt scandal.
"Indeed, it is the mixture of these three issues that are a kind of major Achilles heel for President Sarkozy and his party and are favouring the opposition," said Francois Miquet-Marty of Viavoice that conducted the survey. However, the survey like others these past weeks, showed that the conservatives were greatly favoured to deal with voters' security concerns.
This would give some comfort to Sarkozy who has come under fierce criticism for his anti-crime plan unveiled in July after urban riots. The plan includes dismantling illegal camps, deporting hundreds of Roma people and stripping French nationality from criminals of foreign origin.
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