Segoléne Royal, it appears, won the battle of the TV shows. Despite the loss of two key economic advisers in recent days, she gained four percentage points against the frontrunner in the French presidential election, Nicolas Sarkozy, in the aftermath of a feisty, howler-free personal TV appearance this week, watched by 8.9 million viewers. Mr Sarkozy, now only 51 to 49 per cent in front in head-to-head polls, only attracted 8.2 million viewers, well shy of the 10 million he predicted.
Yet, increasingly, the French media is talking about a three- or even a four-horse race. The conventional wisdom had it that the trauma of seeing the Front National's Jean-Marie Le Pen make it through to the second round in 2002 would concentrate the minds of France's electorate on the two frontrunners. However, the emerging truth may be that the fear inspired by Mr Sarkozy and the lack of confidence by the gaffe-prone Ms Royal is opening up the field again.
Mr Le Pen is now running at about 11 per cent in the polls, although certainly an underestimation as voters tend to be embarrassed to admit to pollsters they are going to back the far-right candidate. Ahead of him now, however, is the much-less-threatening centrist François Bayrou, polling about 17 per cent.
Mr Bayrou has been dismissed until now as too boring to be elected or, somewhat contradicting that image, in the words of one Socialist, as "the Che Guevara of the extreme centre". A former minister of the centre-right Union for French Democracy (UDF), and a passionate European, Mr Bayrou has been campaigning against what he sees as the artificial left-right divide in French politics. He has now pitched strongly for disaffected Royalistes by offering, if elected, to name a socialist-lite prime minister in the mould of a young Jacques Delors. And although the UDF is aligned with the ruling Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) in parliament, he has long been a vocal opponent of Mr Sarkozy.
One poll suggests that if Mr Bayrou did get through to the second round he would defeat either of his probable opponents, Mr Sarkozy by 52-48, or Ms Royal by 54-46. Another found recently that 74 per cent of voters saw him as the most credible candidate. According to another, about one fifth of left-wing voters who supported defeated Socialist Lionel Jospin in the 2002 presidential race say they want to vote for Mr Bayrou this time. If disillusioned voters begin to believe that a split vote is unlikely again to propel Mr Le Pen into the second round, with the wind now in his sails, Mr Bayrou may yet have a real chance of pulling off un vrais choc politique.