Former justice minister Christiane Taubira finished on top of the People’s Primary, a vote intended to pick a left-wing candidate for the French presidency from a divided and squabbling field.
The Primaire Populaire (People's Primary) ended Sunday after four days of voting, during which doubts remained that a unifying figure on the left would emerge.
A total of 467,000 people signed up to take part in the online vote, which started on Thursday. They had to rank five professional politicians and two civil society candidates on a scale from "very good" to "inadequate".
The winner of the best average rank, it was hoped, could then rally all the other candidates and their voters behind them, giving the left a fighting chance to unseat President Emmanuel Macron in the April election.
But the exercise, initiated by political activists including environmentalists, feminists and anti-racism groups, was dogged by serious drawbacks.
The biggest was the upfront refusal by leftist firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Socialist Party candidate Anne Hidalgo and the Greens’ Yannick Jadot to pay any attention to its result.
"As far as I'm concerned, the popular primary is a non-starter and has been for a while," Jadot said Saturday, while Mélenchon has called the initiative "obscure" and "a farce".
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Former Socialist minister Taubira had said she would accept the primary’s verdict. Her win Sunday could prompt her to declare a formal bid for the presidency.
Polls currently predict that all left-wing candidates will be eliminated in the first round of presidential voting in April.
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Macron, who has yet to declare his candidacy for re-election, is the favourite to win according to surveys, with the far-right's Marine Le Pen the likely runner-up.
But pollsters warn that the political landscape remains volatile, with the vote's outcome very difficult to call.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP)
