By SPA
Paris : French local elections got under way Sunday, a test for conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose plummeting popularity has given an advantage to the left, AP reported.
People across France were voting in a first round to elect mayors, deputy mayors and municipal councilors. The final round is March 16.
Ten months after Sarkozy’s election, the economy remains sluggish and he has backed off from many of the sweeping reforms that he promised before his election.
The left, led by the Socialists, hopes voters will punish Sarkozy, and it also wants to turn the tide after a wave of victories by conservatives in the last municipal elections, in 2001, and a defeat in the May presidential election.
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