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The Socialist Party of France (PS) is a social democratic political party in France, founded in 1969 as a the successor to the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO). In 1981, PS founder Francois Mitterrand was elected President of France, and the party dominated the National Assembly from 1981 to 1986 and from 1988 to 1993. Jacques Chirac and his conservative Rally for the Republic would dominate politics during the early 2000s, but the Socialists won control of the senate in 2011 and won the 2012 presidential election, with Francois Hollande being elected president. By the 2010s, however, the party was divided into several factions, including the social democratic "Royalists" (supporters of Segolene Royal) and "Aubryists" (supporters of Martine Aubry), the democratic socialist "Fabiusians" (supporters of Laurent Fabius and the New Socialist Party (supporters of Henri Emmanuelli), the eco-socialist caucus of Christophe Caresche, and the liberal Delanoistes (supporters of Bertrand Delanoe and Hollande).

The Socialist Party's internal divisions led to the party's membership dropping from 173,486 members in 2012 to a mere 42,300 members in 2016, and Hollande chose to not run for re-election during the 2017 presidential election. The Socialist nominee, Benoit Hamon, received just 6.36% of the vote in the first round of the presidential election, and the Socialist Party did not qualify for the second round; The Republicans suffered the same fate, the first time that neither party made it to the second round. Instead, the centrist En Marche! party, consisting of moderate politicians from all parties, won the election with 66.1% of the vote, defeating the fascist National Front of France. On 18 June 2017, the Socialist Party's share of seats in the National Assembly was reduced from 331 seats to 45 seats, making it the third-largest party in Parliament, after The Republicans (whose seat count was depleted from 229 seats to 136 seats) and En Marche! (which won 350 seats), which swept the election. 

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