France's presidential candidates observed a one-day truce today on the eve of a first-round vote expected to send President Nicolas Sarkozy and Socialist challenger Francois Hollande through to next month's runoff.
Final polls before a mandatory media blackout on campaigning from midnight on Friday showed Mr Hollande narrowly ahead of the conservative leader for tomorrow 's first-round vote but the comfortable winner of the second round on May 6.
Voting began today in French overseas territories, including the north Atlantic islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon just off the coast of Canada.
Many of the 44.5 million registered voters have complained about a lacklustre campaign, and the prospect of a record abstention looms over tomorrow's vote in mainland France. On the streets of Paris, disappointed voters said the main candidates had ignored the pressing challenges facing their country, including unemployment running at a 12-year high and gloomy economic prospects.
"The campaign has not been serious enough. The important issues have not been discussed," said Frederic Le Fevre, a self-employed businessman. "They've focused on childish arguments, throwing blame at each other."
Candidates argued for weeks about halal meat and the cost of a driving licence. Even the leading contenders tried to win the limelight with largely symbolic proposals, like Mr Hollande's plan to scrap the word "race" from the constitution and Mr Sarkozy's offer to bring monthly pension payments forward by eight days.
An Ifop poll in early April suggested that 32 per cent of registered voters might not bother to vote in the first round. Mr Hollande, mindful of an upset in 2002 when far-right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen knocked out Socialist Lionel Jospin in the first round amid the highest-ever abstention rate, warned supporters against complacency at a closing rally yesterday.
"It's the sixth of May when we will have a president but April 22 will decide the dynamic one way or another," he said.
After trailing Mr Hollande for months, Mr Sarkozy edged ahead in first-round voting intention polls for a few weeks, helped by his strong response to a shooting spree by an al Qaeda-inspired gunman who killed seven people in southwest France last month.
He lost that lead in the last week before the election, and polls yesterday showed Mr Hollande winning the first round by 28 per cent to 27, and taking the second by 55 per cent to 45.It would be the first time in France's Fifth Republic, founded in 1958, that an incumbent president has not finished top of the first round.
Reuters