Sarkozy Losing in French Center-Right Presidential Primaries

With ballots from more than half of polling stations counted, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy is not likely to move on to the next round of the center-right election, preliminary results on the official website of The Republicans' primaries indicated Sunday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Former Prime Minister Francois Fillon is leading with 43.7 percent of the votes, another former Prime Minister Alain Juppe is in the second place with 27.8 percent, while Sarkozy is behind both of them with 21.7 percent, the data from 7,365 polling stations out of 10,229 shows.

Recent surveys showed that, considering the unpopularity of the ruling Socialist Party, the center-right nominee would be likely to face the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen as the main contender in the general presidential election, slated for April 2017.