2007 French presidential election  The 2007 French presidential election, the ninth of the Fifth French Republic was held to elect the successor to Jacques Chirac as president of France (and "ex officio" Co-Prince of Andorra) for a five-year term. The winner, decided on 5 and 6 May 2007, was Nicolas Sarkozy. The first round of voting took place on Saturday 21 April 2007 (French territories in the Americas and the Eastern Pacific) and Sunday, 22 April 2007 (French territories in the Western Pacific, Indian Ocean, and Metropolitan France). As no candidate obtained a majority (50 percent plus one), a second round between the two leading candidates, Nicolas Sarkozy and Ségolène Royal, took place on Saturday 5 May and Sunday, 6 May 2007. Sarkozy and Royal both represented a generational change. Both main candidates were born after World War II, 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 first round saw a very high turnout of 83.8% – 36.7 million of the 44.5 million electorate voted from a population of 64.1 million (not including French people living abroad). The results of that round saw Sarkozy and Royal qualify for the second round with Sarkozy getting 31% and Royal 26%. François Bayrou came third (19%) and Jean-Marie Le Pen fourth (10%), unlike in 2002 when Le Pen got a surprising 16.9% and qualified for the second round. 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. This was the first time since 1981 that Laguiller had endorsed the Socialist Party's candidate. Olivier Besancenot called his supporters to vote against Sarkozy. Frédéric Nihous and Gérard Schivardi never officially supported either Royal or Sarkozy. Philippe de Villiers called for a vote for Sarkozy. Le Pen told his voters to "abstain massively" in the second round. On 25 April, Bayrou declared he would not support either candidate in the runoff, and announced he would form a new political party called the Democratic Movement. He criticised both major candidates, and offered to debate them. Royal agreed to hold a televised debate, while Sarkozy offered to have a private discussion but not a televised debate.