French voters headed to the
polls on Sunday in round one of a presidential ballot, with
economic despair on course to make Nicolas Sarkozy the first
president to lose a fight for re-election in more than 30 years.
In a contest driven as much by a dislike of Sarkozy's showy
style and his failure to bring down unemployment as by policy
differences, Sarkozy and his Socialist rival Francois Hollande
are pegged to beat eight other candidates to go through to a May
6 runoff, where polls give Hollande a double-digit lead.
Hollande, 57, promises less drastic spending cuts than
Sarkozy and wants higher taxes on the wealthy to fund
state-aided job creation, in particular a 75 percent upper tax
rate on income above 1 million euros ($1.32 million).
He would be only France's second left-wing leader since the
founding of the Fifth Republic in 1958, and its first since
Francois Mitterrand, who beat incumbent Valery Giscard-d'Estaing
in 1981.
He voted early on Sunday in Tulle, a town in central France where he serves as the head of local government for the surrounding rural Correze region.
"Here's hoping," he whispered in the ear of an old lady. His
partner, journalist Valerie Trierweiler, admitted to hordes of
journalists she was "super-stressed".
Morning sunshine, which in theory could help turnout at the
margins, was forecast to give way to cloud and rain later.
Hollande has called on his supporters to take nothing for
granted, mindful of a fiasco for the left in 2002 when record
poor countrywide turnout saw the Socialist candidate pushed out
in the first round by the far right.
Interior ministry figures put the turnout by midday at 28.29
percent, a touch lower than the strong turnout of 2007, when the
rate at the same time of day was 31.21 percent.
Sarkozy, also 57, says he is a safer pair of hands for
future economic turmoil. But many of the workers and young
voters drawn to his 2007 pledge of more pay for more work are
deserting him as jobless claims hit a 12 year high.
He and his somberly-dressed ex-supermodel wife Carla Bruni
voted in the affluent west-of-Paris suburb of Neuilly, shaking
hands with bystanders but leaving without comment.
Many French people express a distaste for a president who
has come to be seen as flashy after his highly publicised
marriage to Bruni early in his term, occasional rude outbursts
in public and chumminess with rich executives.
"Sarkozy's divisive. Hollande's reassuring," said Helene
Boudot, 85, who was glad to have been released from a hospital
stay in time to vote in her village of Chailland in western
France. She was counting on her son to drive her 100 metres to
the local polling station.
EYES ON THIRD PLACE
Investors will be watching the first round to see how well
tub-thumbing radical leftist Jean-Luc Melenchon performs.
Melenchon, who wants an anti-capitalist revolution, has
channelled outrage at the poor economy to become a popular
figure on the campaign trail, neck-in-neck with far right leader
Marine Le Pen for third place.
On Friday, the risk premium investors charge to hold French
debt over safe-haven German bonds rose to nearly 1.50 percent,
betraying fears that Hollande's programme could be pulled to the
left if Melenchon's popularity leads to a strong bloc of seats
for the far left after parliamentary elections in June.
Sarkozy has proven to be a more vigorous campaigner than
Hollande, whose sober style, for some, lacks panache.
The president's verve at the podium combined with his
handling of a shooting drama in southwest France in March saw
him claw back some ground in opinion polls last month. But he
has since slipped back, leaving Hollande 10 or more points ahead
in surveys for the deciding runoff.
Hollande is a whisker ahead for the first round, with an
average 28 percent support in polls to Sarkozy's 27 percent. Le
Pen, who wants to curb immigration and take France out of the
euro, has polled at around 16 percent and Melenchon at 14.
Polls close at 6 p.m. in some towns and at 8 p.m.
everywhere, when the first official projections of the result
based on a partial count will be released.
French law bans publication of any results before then in
France, and the polling watchdog has threatened to punish any
media breaking that embargo with fines and legal action.
During the last election, French voters hungry for
information crashed the websites of several Swiss and Belgian
newspapers.
France is struggling with weak economic growth, a gaping
trade deficit, 10 percent unemployment and strained public
finances that prompted ratings agency Standard & Poor's to cut
the country's triple-A credit rating in January.
Sarkozy has played up his credibility as an economic steward after he helped steer the euro zone
through the worst of its crisis last year. Hollande has blamed him for
the parlous state of France's public finances and for the rating
downgrade.
Some investors see a risk that Hollande's focus on tax rises
over spending cuts, his slower timetable for balancing the
budget and his plan to raise taxation on the financial sector,
could drive up French bond yields.