Campaigning ended this week in one of the most divisive presidential elections in modern French history, with the incumbent, Jacques Chirac, expected to win a second term by a landslide in the final round of voting on Sunday, but enjoying no popular mandate and with many of his prospective voters casting ballots for him reluctantly.
Chirac, a conservative whose party claims the legacy of the late president Charles de Gaulle, emerged as the choice of both the left and right after the extreme right's leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, unexpectedly took second place in the first round of voting on April 21. Now even Le Pen has conceded he has little chance of victory, with polls showing Chirac could win 75 to 80 percent of the vote.
"All political logic says Jacques Chirac will win," said Stephane Rozes, of the CSA polling firm. "He is not the candidate of the right -- he is the candidate of the republic."
Rozes said winning 30 percent of the vote would be "a success" for Le Pen whose views have long been considered outside the political mainstream. For Le Pen to win 35 percent, Rozes said, would be "an earthquake."
At a news conference today, Le Pen -- a 73-year-old former paratrooper who once called the Holocaust "a detail" of history -- seemed to be preparing his supporters for a mammoth defeat, saying, "A giant electoral fraud operation is being prepared." He told voters, "Don't let yourselves be intimidated" by the massive outpouring against him, which he said had created a "totalitarian climate."
Chirac, 69, said he recognized the widespread discontent that allowed Le Pen to win nearly 17 percent of the vote on April 21 and reduced his own first-round total to just 19.88 percent, the lowest first-round vote for an incumbent president.
"What is in question is not our institutions, but the ability of the men who are in charge of governing France to listen, understand and act," Chirac said in a radio interview. "You don't change problems by changing institutions, you do it by attacking problems and solving them."
With a Chirac victory all but certain, all sides appeared to be looking ahead to legislative elections to be held in two rounds on June 9 and 16. Those elections will determine whether Chirac's anticipated victory Sunday will boost prospects for a center-right parliamentary majority, or whether the parties of the left -- Socialists, Communists and Greens -- have become so energized by two weeks of street protests that they can reverse their humiliating loss in the presidential race and maintain their hold on government.
A key question is whether Le Pen's showing in the presidential race will translate into legislative gains for his National Front party. Le Pen has always been more popular than his party, but analysts said they fear a strong Le Pen showing on Sunday could improve the party's showing in the parliamentary vote, and perhaps leave the National Front holding the balance of power in as many as 150 of France's 577 legislative districts.
Le Pen himself now seems to have his eye on the parliamentary races. "We shouldn't resign ourselves if we're beaten," he told a crowd of supporters at his final campaign rally in Marseille Thursday night. "There are still the legislative elections. We must complete the victory or make up for the defeat."
Le Pen's unexpected appearance in the runoff has created one of the broadest -- and oddest -- political coalitions imaginable, with Chirac's longtime adversaries, including Communists, environmentalist Greens and even his nemesis, Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, all calling on their supporters to vote for him.
Eric Halphen, an investigating magistrate who spent the past seven years investigating Chirac for corruption, said he believes the president is dishonest, but that he still plans to vote for him, to block Le Pen.
"The choice is obvious, unfortunately," said Halphen, who resigned in disgust as prosecutor when he was removed from the case and when France's highest judicial body, the Constitutional Court, ruled that Chirac was immune from prosecution, or even being called to testify, while serving as president. "When one candidate is not an advocate of democracy . . . it's necessary to vote for the one who is a democrat," he said in an interview.
France's defending World Cup champion soccer team also came out today to express its distaste at Le Pen. The team, whose members come from diverse backgrounds, was hailed as an example of France's new multicultural identity when it won the championship in 1998. The players "are unanimous today in condemning resurgent ideas of racism and exclusion," said team captain Marcel Desailly, of Ghanaian origin, according to the sports newspaper L'Equipe.
Many French students and others said they planned to express their distaste at being forced to vote for Chirac when they go to the polling booth. Some said they would wear clothespins stuck to their noses. Others plan to wear prison garb -- suggesting that Chirac should be in jail -- or rubber gloves, reflecting their casting of a "dirty" vote.
But today the council overseeing the election warned that any such overtly political display would be illegal, and could cause votes to be annulled. A spokeswoman for the council said the law did not allow any such protests at polling stations, and that votes were supposed to remain secret.
Despite the polls, and the predictions of a Chirac landslide, Le Pen's voters still seemed energized, and hoping for a reprise of April 21 when their candidate, capitalizing on voter fears of immigration and rising crime, fared far better than poll predictions. Le Pen's final rally in a stadium in Marseille was sparsely attended, but the crowd was enthusiastic.
Cecile Jouan, a party youth worker, said, "Of course we believe in victory. We wouldn't be fighting otherwise. There is no racism" in the National Front," she added. "I know two Jewish militants and, look, the singer onstage is black, and she's been with us for years."
Francine, a 61-year-old retiree, said, "Le Pen is a very nice guy. I'm voting for him because he's the only candidate who cares about pets; it's in his program. His wife created lots of associations to protect animals. She also created an association called Children of Iraq. When she goes there, she wears their clothes and adapts to their culture. If only they were doing it here. The Algerians are the worst out of the Arabs; they are the ones who are racist, not us."
The only concern now for Le Pen's opponents is apathy. With so many polls predicting a Chirac landslide, they said, many voters may not feel inclined to vote at all.
Special correspondent Corinne Gavard in Marseille contributed to this report.