The first Presidential Election hold in french history was on December, 10th, 1848. The election ended with the landslide victory of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, the nephew of Napoléon Ier.

There had been a lot of discussion about wether the President should be directly elected by the people or only by the general Assembly. In the very end, it was the first option which prevailed after a tough fight of its opponents. Many representatives feared that a direct vote of the people would conduct to the election of Louis Napoléon Bonaparte. It was Alphonse de Lamartine who decided the assembly in favour of the direct election, in one of his most controversial speeches. However, if no candidate should earn more than 50% of the votes at election day, the election would have been thrown to the parliament.

There had been a lot of speculation about who would run in the election. Many candidates however, were discouraged by the perspective to convince 7 million voters, and didn't threw their hat in the ring. In the end, there were more or less six candidates who accepted the presidential challenge: Eugene Cavaignac, Louis Napoléon Bonaparte, Alphonse de Lamartine, François-Vincent Raspail, Alexandre Ledru-Rollin and Nicolas Changarnier.

Eugene Cavaignac had been the early favourite of the election. Supported by the press, and especially the newspaper Le National, Eugene Cavaignac was the chief of the provisory government since june 1848. However, he was also well-known for

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The first Presidential Election hold in french history was on December, 10th, 1848. The election ended with the landslide victory of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, the nephew of Napoléon Ier.

There had been a lot of discussion about wether the President should be directly elected by the people or only by the general Assembly. In the very end, it was the first option which prevailed after a tough fight of its opponents. Many representatives feared that a direct vote of the people would conduct to the election of Louis Napoléon Bonaparte. It was Alphonse de Lamartine who decided the assembly in favour of the direct election, in one of his most controversial speeches. However, if no candidate should earn more than 50% of the votes at election day, the election would have been thrown to the parliament.

There had been a lot of speculation about who would run in the election. Many candidates however, were discouraged by the perspective to convince 7 million voters, and didn't threw their hat in the ring. In the end, there were more or less six candidates who accepted the presidential challenge: Eugene Cavaignac, Louis Napoléon Bonaparte, Alphonse de Lamartine, François-Vincent Raspail, Alexandre Ledru-Rollin and Nicolas Changarnier.

Eugene Cavaignac had been the early favourite of the election. Supported by the press, and especially the newspaper Le National, Eugene Cavaignac was the chief of the provisory government since june 1848. However, he was also well-known for having bloodily repressed the worker's protests of june 1848, and was nicknamed "The butcher of June". Hated by the worker's Cavaignac wasn't beloved by the mostly monarchist conservatives, because of his republican loyalism. He had also to face a serie of scandals during the whole campaign, reported by the monarchist press.

The other moderate republican candidate was Alphonse de Lamartine who had been the symbol of the second Republic and member of the provisory government until june 1848. However, his incapacity to manage the worker's riots had cost him his popularity. What's more, Lamartine's half hearted campaigning "running for President would be presomptuous, refusing to run would be cowardice" didn't really lay the ground for an enthusiast campaign. Lamartine's candidacy was mostly ignored by everyone during the whole campaign.

On the left side of the french 1848 political spectrum, there were also two candidates.

The most well-known and who was expected to do well was Alexandre Ledru-Rollin who had worked with the provisory Government until june 1848, before strongly opposing the repression of the worker's riots. He was mostly favoured by the progressive Republicans and was the leader of "the Mountain", the progressive Republican faction in the french National Assembly.

The other left-winged candidate was François-Vincent Raspail, a socialist, who had been emprisonned after the events of june 1848. He benefited however from a certain support of the local press in the city Lyon.

The french conservative Republicans and Monarchists had a lot of difficulty to find the right candidate. They had thought about one of the heir of the french crown, Henry the V, but his candidacy was only supported by a fraction of the french monarchists called legitimists. No conservative candidates was popular enough to drain enough votes to come accross the 50% hurdle, and the legislative Assembly favoured Eugene Cavaignac. It was Adolphe Thiers, one of the most prominent conservative figure at that time who decided the whole conservative party to support Louis Napoléon Bonaparte, rather than to launch a bid on its own: there was no doubt for Thiers that Louis-Napoléon was an idiot that he could easily manipulate. Nearly the whole conservative press supported Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, besides from a few legitimists newspaper who preferred the general Nicolas Changarnier. Changarnier, however, after having accepted a draft, decided to withdraw from the race before the election.

Louis Napoléon wasn't supported only by conservative elements. He also benefits from the support of engaged Republicans, like Victor Hugo, who would later become one of his strongest opponent. The workers, willing to defeat Cavaignac at every cost, massively supported Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte. His popularity in the worker's community was also due to his well-known book, "The end of pauperism", were he promoted more rights for the workers. Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte was paradoxically supported by those who wanted a defender of the public order and those who wanted a revolutionnary candidate.

If many newspapers criticized him, making fun of his vain attempts to reach the power by state's strikes in 1836 and 1840, the press didn't had much reader outside of the big cities. Trials to paint Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte as a fool were numerous, but didn't changed anything to the vote, who was mostly to be decided in rural areas, were Napoleon's legend remained popular. Besides, unlike the other candidates, Louis Napoléon Bonaparte, who hadn't been allowed to come back to France until the late summer of 1848, hadn't have to take a stance on the June's 1848 events.

All this events resulted in the landslide victory of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte in 1848. He won in every départements but four of them, were Cavaignac came ahead. In a lot of rural areas, he scored over 90% of the votes. Even in big cities, his score remained very high, even if Cavaignac and Ledru-Rollin did well either in much of them. Louis-Napoléon caught more than 58% of the votes in Paris, for example. Cavaignac had been largely defeated outside of the big cities. Ledru-Rollin had lost most of his voters to Louis-Napoléon. He had been expected by Adolphe Thiers to attract between 2 and 3 million votes. He get less than 400000. Lamartine was completely humiliated. The elections to the National Assembly had seeing him gaining 1.6 million votes. He expected 500000, he didn't even get 18000. Even in his home district he didn't get over 7% of the votes. The trial to write in Nicolas Changarnier also failed, his best showing was a weak 4.5% in Marseille. François-Vincent Raspail did well in Lyon (around 14%) but was mostly a non-factor everywhere else.

Ten days after his electoral triumph, Louis Napoléon Bonaparte swear in as the first elected President of the french Republic.

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