Hollande urges large turnout on Sunday

Hollande, tipped in opinion polls to win the two-round election by a comfortable margin, said he feared the positive predictions could lull Socialist voters into staying home, as in 2002. “Nothing is certain and nobody can tell what the final order and scores will be,” the 57-year-old told BFM television three days from a ballot that will eliminate eight of the 10 contenders before a runoff on May 6. Hollande and conservative incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy are expected to take the top two spots, with far-right leader Marine Le Pen, ranked third in many surveys, hoping to repeat the sensation her father Jean-Marie Le Pen achieved when he overtook Socialist Lionel Jospin to qualify for the run-off in 2002. While Hollande looks set to become France’s first left-wing president in 17 years, the vote will be driven more by anger at Sarkozy’s style and his unfulfilled promises on job creation than enthusiasm for the Socialist candidate. A survey by pollster LH2 published yesterday gave Hollande 56% support for the May 6 run-off, against 44% for Sarkozy. Sarkozy, who has sought as in 2007 to capture voters who may otherwise stray further right, also warned against voting for Le Pen, saying it would ultimately help his chief foe, Hollande. “A vote for Marine Le Pen serves Francois Hollande. If you want Socialist policy vote for the National Front,” he said during a meeting in eastern Paris. An abstention rate above 28% in the first round of the 2002 election and a large field of fringe candidates who split the mainstream vote turned the 2002 runoff into a stand-off between Chirac and the extreme-right National Front candidate. Some polls have suggested the turnout this year could fall further, to below 70% of France’s 44.5mn voters. Hollande said the memory of 2002 haunted him, and he noted that polls up to election day that year put Jospin in second place, four or five points ahead of Le Pen. Three days later Le Pen pipped Jospin by a point, sending the anti-immigrant former paratrooper into the run-off, which conservative Jacques Chirac won with the help of votes from left-wingers who were urged to close ranks against Le Pen. Marine Le Pen, who took over from her father as head of the National Front last year, trails further behind the two mainstream candidates in polls than her father did in 2002. In the latest dozen polls, she scores between 14% and 17% of the first round vote, averaging 16%, with Sarkozy taking 24% to 29% and Hollande 26% to 30%. Sarkozy gained some ground in the polls after launching his campaign in mid-February and briefly overtook Hollande in surveys for the first round after an Islamist shooting drama in March put the focus on security. However he has slipped back again in recent days, meaning a knockout punch in a TV debate before round two or an eleventh-hour alliance with a popular centrist may be his last hopes of securing a second term. Greens Party candidate Eva Joly took Sarkozy-bashing to a new level on Wednesday, leading reporters on a tour of sites linked to bad publicity or sleaze allegations around the president. Her tour included a swanky Champs Elysees nightspot where he feted his 2007 victory with millionaire friends, and the home of L’Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt, who is at the centre of an investigation into cash contributions to his 2007 campaign. Sarkozy’s camp called the stunt “pitiful” and the president kept up a defiant tone about his chances, telling Europe 1 radio: “Let me remind you that there’s never been a single election where the French people failed to spring a surprise.” Bayrou describes defections from Sarkozy camp to Hollande’s as a ‘wildebeest stampede’ “A wildebeest stampede for the watering hole,” is how a candidate in France’s presidential election has described the defection of several allies of President Nicolas Sarkozy to the camp of Socialist frontrunner Francois Hollande. Francois Bayrou, candidate of the centrist MoDem party, was commenting on RTL radio about the recent declarations of support for Hollande by several centre-right figures, including Fadela Amara, a former urban policies minister under Sarkozy, and Corinne Lepage, a former environment minister under Jacques Chirac. Bayrou, whom polls show running in fifth place with about 10% voter support, warned that “sometimes, in watering holes, there are crocodiles”. The former education minister is himself maintaining a stoic silence about whom he would support in a second round between Sarkozy and Hollande. Because none of the 10 candidates is expected to win an outright majority on Sunday, a second round between the two poll toppers – probably Hollande and Sarkozy – has been set for May 6. In a close contest between the Socialist and the incumbent, Bayrou could act as kingmaker. Foreign Minister Alain Juppe told Figaro magazine that he could “certainly” see Bayrou as a prime minister in a second Sarkozy administration.