Socialist Party (France)
The SFIO did not nominate a candidate for the 1965 election. Consequently, it supported the candidacy of François Mitterrand, a former minister of the Fourth Republic who had been a conservative, then an independent of the left. He was resolutely anti-Gaullist. He obtained an honourable result and faced De Gaulle in an unexpected second ballot. He thus appeared as the leader of the non-Communist left.