Amid rising unemployment, an increasing national debt, and problems with immigration,  France has turned the conservative Nicolas Sarkozy out of office and elected a liberal socialist,  Francois Hollande,  a man who has promised to work for the Middle Class.
Sarkozy, who saw unemployment rise to its highest level under his austere plan of not raising taxes on the wealthy and who seemed unable to stem the flow of immigrants into the country or to control the national debt as the Euro fluctuated, was handily defeated in Sunday's election.
Hollande has pledged to raise taxes on the wealthy to 75%, severely curtail immigration, especially from the Middle East, and has promised to balance the budget by 2016. 
He is the second Socialist president of the French Fifth Republic. The first was François Mitterrand. Hollande modeled himself on Mitterrand in his campaign; he embodied him in his stump speeches to the point of imitating him.
He would be a "normal president;" that was the central message of his candidacy. What he meant was that he would be the opposite of Sarkozy.
He promised to leave the day-to-day administration of France to the government, as was the practice before Sarkozy. And he wanted to be the opposite of his predecessor in every other respect as well.
He promised to promote social justice and to help the disadvantaged youths in the banlieues, the working class suburbs of large French cities.
And in recent weeks, his campaign had increasingly focused on the central leitmotiv of resistance against Europe's austerity policy. Hollande's speeches adopted an almost messianic tone on this issue -- he promised the peoples of Europe that he would free them from the yoke of austerity and thereby from the clutches of Angela Merkel, of Germany,  the ally of his opponent Sarkozy.
On Sunday evening, Hollande said in Tulle: "Austerity is no longer a fate." He said he would "tell Germany as much, in the name of friendship that binds us, and in the name of the responsibility we share." And the crowd cheered.
Kind of has a familiar ring in reverse to it, doesn't it?
At the airport, as he prepared to depart for Paris, behind him stood his partner, Valérie Trierweiler. She is France's first unmarried First Lady, and she appeared not yet to have embraced her new position. When a journalist asked her later that evening: "Is this not the most beautiful day of your life?" she quickly replied: "No."
The new president has never been married, although he has four children by a former partner before he began his current relationship with Ms. Trierweiler.
Some information provided by:  https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/analysis-of-election-victory-of-french-president-fran-ois-hollande-a-831762.html