Presidential elections were held in France on 5 December 1965, with a second round on 19 December. They were the first direct presidential elections in the Fifth Republic and the first since the Second Republic in 1848. It had been widely expected that incumbent president Charles de Gaulle would be re-elected, but the election was notable for the unexpectedly strong performance of his left-wing challenger François Mitterrand. Background This was the second presidential election since the beginning of the Fifth Republic. Under the first draft of the 1958 constitution, the president was elected by an electoral college, in order to appease concerns about de Gaulle's allegedly authoritarian or bonapartist tendencies. There had been a historical reluctance in France to have a directly elected president because Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte (the winner of the 1848 presidential election) had seized power in a coup d'état before the end of his term. However, a direct presidential election had always been essential to de Gaulle's political vision and he had it adopted by referendum in 1962. Candidates When the electoral campaign started, the majority of political commentators believed that de Gaulle would succeed in winning reelection in a single round. Many of the leaders of the opposition parties were therefore reluctant to challenge de Gaulle. Furthermore, some potential candidates such as former Prime Minister Pierre Mendès-France declined to run due to their opposition to direct presidential elections. Because he was not expecting a significant challenger, de Gaulle announced his candidacy only one month before the first round of voting and did not lead a very active campaign. The centre-left paper L'Express campaigned for the nomination of a candidate of the non-Communist opposition. One potential challenger identified was Gaston Defferre, Mayor of Marseille and an internal opponent of the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO, socialist party) leader Guy Mollet. In his municipality, Defferre led a coalition composed of the SFIO, the Radical Party, and the centre-right Popular Republican Movement (MRP). Nevertheless, the leaders of these parties refused to support his candidacy. The failure of Defferre's candidacy led to other politicians entering the race. The MRP leader Jean Lecanuet was nominated by his party and the National Centre of Independents and Peasants (CNIP) to represent the centre. He ran a liberal and pro-European campaign, influenced by John F. Kennedy, and criticizing the "archaism" and the "nationalism" of de Gaulle in a bid to rally younger and