The first-round campaign may have been confused, but the enthusiasm of voters, the emergence of two clearly defined camps and the relative youth of Ségolène Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy - neither of whom has stood for the presidency before - have given France a sense of democratic renewal.
The main losers in the first round were the extreme right-wing leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, who lost nearly one million voters compared to five years ago, and the nine "little" candidates, including three Trotskyists, whose support collapsed.
Marie-Georges Buffet, the communist candidate, won only 1.93 per cent of the vote - an all-time low for the party that commanded 25 per cent of French votes after the second World War.
In one sense, Mr Le Pen won. As his daughter and campaign director noted mournfully on Sunday night, Mr Sarkozy's success marked "the victory of the ideas of Jean-Marie Le Pen".
The right-wing candidate, Mr Sarkozy, won more than 31 per cent of the vote, the highest first-round score for a right-wing candidate since 1974. Polls conducted on Sunday indicated that Mr Sarkozy would win between 52 and 54 per cent of the vote in the May 6th run-off, against 46 to 48 per cent for Ms Royal.
Arithmetic suggests that Ms Royal cannot win. But Mr Sarkozy, who is known for his hot temper, could lose the election in one impulsive moment. A televised debate between the two candidates on May 2nd could be decisive.
Mr Sarkozy won the first round after steering campaign themes into Mr Le Pen's territory - immigration, national identity and patriotism. To win the presidency, he must keep the extreme right-wing voters whom he stole from Mr Le Pen happy, and seduce about one-third of the 18.57 per cent who voted for the centrist François Bayrou. That is not an insurmountable task since Mr Bayrou came from the right.
Mr Sarkozy fixed his sights on Bayrou voters as soon as the results were announced on Sunday night. He continued efforts to appear more of a humanist yesterday by visiting a home for women in difficulty in Paris. Mr Sarkozy's staff say he will now concentrate on "the France that gets up early in the morning and works hard" - a discourse more appealing to centrist voters than the National Front themes of recent weeks.
With 25.87 per cent of the vote, Ms Royal also won the first round of the election, simply by qualifying for the run-off. In 2002, the socialist candidate, Lionel Jospin, lost second place to Mr Le Pen, and the Socialist Party was haunted by the possibility of a repeat. "Her score was higher than the socialist candidates' in 2002 and 1995," Ms Royal's companion and head of the party, François Hollande, crowed at a press conference yesterday. "It was higher than François Mitterrand's in the first round in 1981."
If one adds the votes of six "little" candidates from the left, which are almost certain to go to Ms Royal, her real score is more than 36 per cent in the first round, Mr Hollande continued.
Until the May 6th election, she will concentrate on three themes: employment, education and ecology, he said. But Mr Hollande ducked the two most important questions: how will Ms Royal attract Mr Bayrou's voters, and will he, at last, undertake the modernisation of the Socialist Party, which has never thrashed out its relationship with capitalism?
If all the votes for right-wing candidates go to Mr Sarkozy, he can already count on about 45 per cent of the vote on May 6th, compared to about 36 per cent for Ms Royal. Both need a chunk of Mr Bayrou's 18.57 per cent to reach the magic 50.1 per cent. But Ms Royal has a lot further to go.
Mr Bayrou is savouring his role as kingmaker. "Suddenly, we have a lot of friends," his campaign director, Marielle de Sarnez, laughed yesterday. But she earlier warned that the centrist UDF was "not for sale".
Mr Sarkozy's spokesmen say "a hand is held out" to Mr Bayrou's voters.
Ms Royal last night proposed a dialogue with Mr Bayrou, "on condition that it be public".
Mr Bayrou will announce his intentions at a press conference tomorrow. After criticising Mr Sarkozy severely in the first round, he would lose credibility if he now rallied to him. Instead, the centrist is expected to change the name of his party and fight for seats in the legislative election in June, in the hope of outshining the socialists in opposition to Mr Sarkozy.
France invented the left-right divide during the 1789 revolution. Editorialists and politicians yesterday congratulated the country for reaffirming what they see as a healthy tradition. But ideological differences are blurred. Whole sentences of the Sarkozy and Royal speeches on Sunday night, about enabling people to succeed in their lives and protecting the disadvantaged, were interchangeable.
Ms Royal sends mixed signals on economic policy. Every time she announces plans for new types of welfare payments, she stresses that she's against handouts. She claims she wants to "reconcile the French with business". But, "the French Tony Blair is Sarkozy, not Ségolène Royal", claims a Sarkozy supporter. The right-wing candidate is also compared to Margaret Thatcher.
Mr Hollande has promised to increase taxes for the rich, whom he defines as anyone earning more than €4,000 per month. "Those who dream of the victory of Nicolas Sarkozy are the rich and powerful," the socialist leader said yesterday. Fifty-five per cent of those earning more than €4,000 per month voted for Mr Sarkozy on Sunday; only 11 per cent voted for Ms Royal.
Mr Sarkozy's voters tend to be old and affluent; Ms Royal's young and poor. Perhaps that was what the left-right divide was always about anyway.