From January 1 to May 4, 2012, the campaigns of the five major candidates in the presidential election (Bayrou, F. Holland, M. Le Pen, Nicolas Sarkozy and J.-L. Mélenchon) was scanned daily through content analysis and statistics applied to language (lexicometry). In total it is 2241 messages (speeches, interviews, press releases ..., or 1,774,000 words, which have been collected and analysed, offering a "radioscopy" of the contemporary French political communication: intensity and direction of the messages, self-exposure and critics against others, themes and style of each candidate. Except F. Bayrou who chose the explanation, the communication of the other four candidates was dominated by the critical or their key competitor(s). This choice had generated a "spiral of negativity". The presidential election of 2012 confirmed the predominance, in the contemporary political communication, of controversies and denigrations over the positive content.
