Charge of the Right brigade?

Last Modified: 20 Apr 2007
By: Jonathan Rugman

French presidential front-runner Nicolas Sarkozy campaigns two days ahead of the poll.

His rivals depict him as the right-wing raging bull of this campaign, but Nicolas Sarkozy was happy to end it down south today with a joke at his own expense. "You wouldn't believe it", he said surrounded by prize specimens. But "bulls are clever". They move from left to right.

"I must be careful no to fall off", he added. But though his hard man image scares some, the latest polls still have Sarkozy ahead of the pack.

"My message is to come and vote in massive numbers and don't abstain. You have to take part in writing the history of France. So France regains its confidence! France has the energy and deserves better."
- Segolene Royal, Socialist candidate for President

But with one in three voters still undecided, his Socialist rival is leaving nothing to chance. Segolene Royal this afternoon hoping her smile would melt shopkeepers in the heart of Paris. And telling me France can only change if it mobilises behind her.

"My message is to come and vote in massive numbers and don't abstain. You have to take part in writing the history of France. So France regains its confidence! France has the energy and deserves better." - Segolene Royal, Socialist candidate for President

Before some 20,000 in Toulouse last night, she painted Sarkozy as a divisive brute, a lapdog of George Bush. But the man snapping at her heels is Francois Bayrou, an easygoing centrist farmer, the wild card of this battle for the Elysee palace.

Jean Marie Pen now 78, today claimed he'd breeze through, as the National Front leader did 5 years ago. But barring another major upset, most pollsters predict it will be 2 fifty-somethings in the final.

No woman has comes as close to the Presidency of France as Segolene Royal. But this is the most hotly contested election in decades, and she's campaigning until the very last minute, for the very last vote.