Socialists Fall Short in French Vote : Mitterrand’s Party Gains, But Fails to Win Majority

President Francois Mitterrand’s Socialist Party, despite large gains, failed to win a majority of seats in elections for the National Assembly on Sunday, clouding the French political scene with confusion and intrigue.

To govern well, Mitterrand and Premier Michel Rocard, a Socialist appointed only a month ago, will probably try to seek support in the next few days from outside their party, most likely from centrists who are now part of the large conservative coalition. Days of dealing and wooing lie ahead.

Mitterrand called Rocard and several key ministers to a meeting at the Elysee presidential palace late Sunday to map strategy.

Conservatives Win 269 Seats

At 2 a.m., today, returns compiled by the Paris newspaper Le Monde showed that the Socialists and their allies had won 272 seats, the conservative coalition 269 seats, the Communists 26 seats, and the National Front of extreme rightist Jean-Marie Le Pen one seat.

The results of the contests for nine remaining seats were uncertain, including two in French Polynesia, where voting is not due to be completed until next week. But, no matter what the final outcome for these nine races, the Socialists will fall short of the 289 seats needed to make up a majority of the 577-seat Assembly.

In a brief television address, Rocard said that “the voters had chosen prudently” and had given a majority of seats “to the forces that had supported the President.” But he added that they had decided not to give that majority to a single party.

‘Will Have to Wait’

“We will have to wait a few days,” he said, “to see the consequences of their decision.”

Although the conservatives, in the face of dismal predictions from pollsters, managed to prevent a Socialist majority, they failed to hold onto the majority that they won in parliamentary elections two years ago.

This fact ensures that Mitterrand will not have to face the trying situation of 1986, when the conservative parliamentary victory forced him to name rightist Jacques Chirac as premier. The two politicians, wary of each other, operated in a kind of two-headed executive system that the French called “cohabitation.” It did not end until Mitterrand defeated Chirac for the presidency in May.

The conservative loss of control of the National Assembly prompted many Socialists to boast of victory. But the boasts were muted, for the Socialists were obviously disappointed by the results. In the wake of Mitterrand’s decisive reelection a month ago, Socialists, with backing from pollsters, had expected a majority so great that they feared its size would embarrass them. In the end, their embarrassment stemmed from a lack of seats, not from too many.

Socialists took solace, however, from the showing of the left as a whole because the Communists, by winning more than a score of seats, ensured that leftist deputies will have a majority of the seats in the assembly. But Communist leader Georges Marchais said it is “out of the question” for the Communists to join the government.

The returns produced a crushing defeat for Le Pen, widely regarded as a racist for his continual attacks on the presence of immigrants, especially from North Africa, in France. Le Pen himself was defeated by a Socialist candidate in Marseilles, and his National Front lost in every district except one.

The usually jaunty Le Pen, a burly former paratrooper, appeared glum on television as he blamed “an unjust and undemocratic” system for the losses. Under a proportional representational system in 1986, the National Front won 32 seats in the Assembly. But France went back this time to its traditional system of electing separate candidates from each district in two rounds.

Le Pen also failed to benefit from his deal with the conservative coalition after the first round of voting a week ago. In almost all cases, National Front candidates withdrew in favor of conservatives who had finished ahead of them while conservatives did the same for National Front candidates. But, in the main, conservative voters, refusing to follow the logic of the deal, failed to vote for the National Front candidates.

Some conservatives, regarded as centrists, sounded conciliatory toward Mitterrand after the returns came in Sunday night. Simone Veil, a former minister of health likely to be asked to come into the Rocard government, said that “the returns reinforce the power of the president.”

By this, she evidently meant that Mitterrand, who insisted during his campaign that he wanted a government of “ ouverture ,” or openness, to other parties, does not now have to contend with a powerful Socialist Party that probably would have preferred to govern alone.

Former Premier Raymond Barre, a conservative candidate who was eliminated in the first round of the presidential elections in April, said the results produced “a moment of uncertainty” at a time when “the nation needed a government of stability.”

Barre, who upset other conservatives at the start of the campaign by saying he expected a Socialist majority, did not gloat over the Socialist failure but said that Mitterrand “must choose the orientations that will allow the construction of a majority that France needs.”

Former President Valery Giscard d’Estaing, who appears to be trying to win leadership of the conservatives, went much further than Barre, insisting that the returns mean that the voters want Mitterrand to create a government in which “the two halves of France work together.” That seemed to imply some kind of government of national unity.

“Perhaps we have carried out a victory this evening over our hereditary enemy--division,” Giscard said. “If there is a single victor in this election, it is the unity of France.”

The most truculent comment of a conservative leader came from Chirac, the former premier defeated by Mitterrand in the presidential election. “The Socialist Party and the president of the republic,” he said, “have failed in their attempt to win a Socialist majority in the assembly and thus all powers to themselves. I rejoice for France.”

Although the Socialists failed to win a majority of the seats, they did manage to transform the National Assembly considerably. In the outgoing assembly, the conservative coalition had 295 seats, the Socialists and their allies 215 seats, the Communists 35 seats and the National Front 32 seats.

The outcome may increase pressure on already nervous French financial markets. In Business.