With abstentions at a record level, the French vote in yesterday's European Parliament election comforted the left-wing government of Prime Minister Lionel Jospin and dealt a severe blow to the Gaullist supporters of President Jacques Chirac, according to early exit polls.
As voting closed at 10 p.m. French time, one poll said 52.5 per cent of French voters, a record in a country where elections are usually followed with great interest, had not bothered to turn out. This was just over five points more than the abstention rate in the last European elections in 1994.
The main winner, according to the IFOP polling institute, was the Socialist Party of Mr Jospin. This, headed in the European campaign by the party first secretary, Mr Francois Hollande, took 20.5 per cent of the vote, perhaps as much as nine points ahead of its nearest rival, the Gaullist Rally for the Republic (RPR) party.
IFOP, whose findings were largely reflected by other institutes, predicted a final score of 11.5 per cent for candidates of the RPR, led by the party's interim president, Mr Nicolas Sarkozy. Mr Sarkozy took over the party in April when the previous incumbent, the volatile Mr Philippe Seguin, unexpectedly left the party leadership.
The RPR was twinned with the free market Liberal Democracy party for the European election. If this low score is confirmed, Mr Sarkozy will almost certainly be evicted from the RPR's top job, in which he has not yet been confirmed.
The third-placed party, if the early polls were right, should be the Greens list led by Mr Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the German leader of France's May 1968 student riots that nearly toppled President Charles de Gaulle. IFOP credited Mr Cohn-Bendit with 11.5 per cent of the votes. In France, voting for the European elections is by national lists - not by constituency or by region - and by proportional representation. One surprise was the relatively good score of the extreme right.
The leader of the far right anti-immigration National Front, Jean-Marie Le Pen, seemed set to obtain the 8 per cent that polls predicted he would have. But Bruno Megret, his former number two, who split with Mr Le Pen in December to found his own party, the National Movement, was heading for 5 per cent - the threshold for seats in the Strasbourg assembly. The last opinion poll before the election credited Mr Megret with only 2 per cent.
If the exit polls were correct, the extreme right as a whole received 13 per cent, not that far behind its almost regular score of 15 per cent in other recent elections. Among other predictions, the dissident Gaullist Mr Charles Pasqua was set to obtain 10.5 per cent with his anti-federalist list and the centrist Union for French Democracy (UDF) party was heading for a weak 8.5 per cent.
The Communist Party was below earlier poll predictions with a probable 7.5 per cent, while the Trotskyite Ms Arlette Laguiller's list was set to take 6 per cent. Another 11 minor lists fell below the 5 per cent barrier, meaning they will have no seats. The main point of interest in the vote as Mr Chirac and Mr Jospin square up to be rivals in the next French presidential election, which has to be held by 2002, was that the left-wing ruling coalition of Socialists, Greens and Communists looked like taking a total 39.5 per cent, a full eight points ahead of the conservative supporters of Mr Chirac.