French Campaign Wraps Up

Official campaigning for round one was due to close at midnight Friday, after which opinion polls are prohibited and the media banned from reporting statements from the 12 candidates.

After a day meant for discussion among family and friends, voting opens across France at 8 a.m. Sunday morning and ends 12 hours later, with normally reliable projections due out immediately.

The two front-runners from the ballot qualify for a decisive second round on May 6 -- the system having been devised for the 49-year-old Fifth Republic so that all presidents are elected with more than half the vote.

The leading contenders held their last rallies on Thursday evening, appealing to the third of the 44.5 million voters that pollsters say are still undecided. On Friday, Sarkozy, Royal and Bayrou limited themselves to photo-calls, with short declarations to accompanying reporters.

Sarkozy in the saddle

Sarkozy, the 52-year-old former interior minister and head of the ruling Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), visited a bull ranch in the southern Camargue region, posing for photographers in jeans and checkered shirt.

"A presidential campaign is obviously exhausting, but I don't feel exhausted, I don't feel at the end of my resources. I still have things to say," he said.

Royal shops for voters

Royal, 53, who is a former environment minister and wants to be France's first female president, was in Paris where she shared a walkabout in a city center market with Socialist mayor Bertrand Delanoe.

Earlier she urged "all those who have republican and humanist values" to vote for her in round one "because the history of France must be written with the largest number of citizens."

Bayrou is confident

Bayrou, the 55-year-old leader of the small Union for French Democracy (UDF), visited the World War I cemetery and memorial at Verdun, where he said he was "confident that the French will vote for me, because everyone knows that my candidacy can beat the super-favorite in round two."

With Sarkozy seemingly assured by opinion polls of a place in the decisive second round, speculation is focusing on who will come in second on Sunday.

Royal has been consistently placed a few points ahead of Bayrou, but the UDF leader is the only candidate that polls suggest is sure of beating Sarkozy on May 6. This raises the possibility that left-wing voters will switch tactically to Bayrou in order to keep out Sarkozy, analysts said.

Le Pen won't go away

Another unknown is the level of support for far-right veteran Jean-Marie Le Pen, 78, who says that his poll rating of between 12 and 16 percent underestimates his true level of support.

In the 2002 election, Le Pen transfixed the world when he beat Socialist candidate Lionel Jospin in round one -- despite polls that had put him well behind in the run-up.

Cleaning up after Chirac

France is choosing a successor to Jacques Chirac -- who has been president since 1995 -- in an election seen as one of the most exciting and important in recent times.

All three main candidates come from a new generation of political leaders, and all claim to represent a radical break from the past. All also describe France as a country in crisis, thanks to massive debt, high unemployment, low income levels and simmering discord in the riot-hit suburbs.

In Sarkozy and Royal, voters face a clear choice between a right-wing program based on free-market ideas and a left winger promising to safeguard the country's "social model."

All eight other candidates have been polling at less than 5 percent. They include three Trotskyites, a Communist, a Green and anti-capitalist campaigner Jose Bove. The other two are a hunters' rights candidate and the Catholic nationalist Philippe de Villiers.