HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK ---------------------------French Polls See Chirac Landslide in Vote on Sunday
Sat May 4, 8:58 AM ET
By SUZANNE DALEY The New York Times
PARIS, May 3 On the last day of France's tense presidential campaign, polls continued to predict a landslide for the center-right president, Jacques Chirac. But it may be a hollow victory, won simply because most of the electorate objected to the extremist views of his opponent, Jean-Marie Le Pen, whose share of the vote, polls suggested, could be greater than ever before.
One poll published today by the Ipsos polling institute predicted that Mr. Le Pen, who has repeatedly made racist and anti-Semitic statements, would get 18 percent to 25 percent of the vote. When he qualified for the runoff against Mr. Chirac, unexpectedly edging out the Socialist candidate, Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, Mr. Le Pen received 17 percent, up from 15 percent in the 1995 elections.
Pollsters warned that there were still many factors that could influence the final results, including a high rate of abstentions, which could increase Mr. Le Pen's percentage of the vote on Sunday without his collecting a larger total.
"I think we can say that there is no suspense over the result of the election," said Pierre Giacometti, director general of Ipsos. "Mr. Chirac will win. The question is, by how much?"
Mr. Giacometti said Mr. Le Pen whose campaign has been anchored in attacks on the European Union (news - web sites), illegal immigration and corruption among the government elite did not appear to have improved his standing in the last 10 days.
Support for Mr. Le Pen appears to have held steady since last week, he said. The latest Ipsos poll, conducted by telephone from Tuesday to Thursday, surveyed 1,012 registered voters. The group does not publish its margin of error, but a survey of that size would normally have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.
Mr. Chirac, meanwhile, has been buoyed by a popular rejection of Mr. Le Pen. In the first round of voting, the 69-year-old incumbent received less than 20 percent of the vote, the worst showing of any sitting president. But leaders from the right and left have rallied behind him, saying France must "build a dam" against the far right. Several prominent Socialists have said that the honor of France is at stake.
Such sentiment is likely to give Mr. Chirac the biggest victory of his life, experts say, although they described the election as more of a referendum than a personal endorsement.
The left, while encouraging its supporters to vote for Mr. Chirac, has done nothing to improve his image. "Better the crook than the fascist" is a favorite slogan among left-leaning voters.
In fact, hundreds if not thousands had intended to cast their ballots for Mr. Chirac wearing clothespins on their noses or surgical gloves as a sign of their distaste, until the Constitutional Council, the august body that oversees French elections, saw fit today to rule such behavior illegal.
"The paradox is that the bigger Mr. Chirac's score, the harder it will be for him to claim that the vote was really an endorsement of his policies," said François L. Heisbourg, director of the French Foundation, a research institute.
As the candidates wrapped up their 12-day campaigns, 24 hours before Election Day as the law requires, Mr. Le Pen predicted major electoral fraud perhaps as a way to prepare his supporters for defeat while President Chirac urged voters of all persuasions to side with him, even if it pained them.
Rising crime and the state of the economy were the major issues under discussion before the first round of elections on April 21, when it was widely expected that Mr. Chirac would be pitted against Mr. Jospin, his long-time rival.
But neither Mr. Chirac nor Mr. Le Pen have spent much time detailing their programs since they qualified for the runoff. Mr. Chirac has cast the election as a choice between good and evil. Mr. Le Pen has tried to paint himself as a champion of the people, fighting the smug and insensitive government power structure. He rarely misses an opportunity to remind the public of the many allegations of corruption that have been made against Mr. Chirac.
At a news conference today at his headquarters in suburban Paris, the often fiery Mr. Le Pen, who has predicted he will get 40 percent of the vote, embellished on his theme of electoral fraud in a fresh attack on the government establishment.
Saying France was about to witness a huge vote-rigging scheme against him, Mr. Le Pen illustrated his point by holding up two ballots one for Mr. Chirac and one for himself to point out that the president's ballot was slightly whiter. His darker ballot, Mr. Le Pen said, was to convey the message that he was less desirable, if only subliminally.
He also complained that his posters were not being displayed, that postal carriers were refusing to deliver his election material and that his supporters were being harassed.
At his only recent public rally, on Thursday night in Marseille, much of the 7,000-seat stadium was empty. He ended the rally urging his supporters to look to the legislative elections in June a request that seemed to hint at an acceptance of defeat.
For his part, Mr. Chirac gave a radio address today in which he called Mr. Le Pen a "personal enemy," begging for people's votes, no matter what their political affiliation, as a means of "standing in the way" of the extreme right. He also said leaders of Mr. Le Pen's National Front party had put themselves "outside the rules of democracy."
"In the exceptional situation we find ourselves in today," Mr. Chirac said, "we must defend the values that all nonextremist Frenchmen have in common."
That exceptional situation Mr. Le Pen's candidacy has convulsed the country, sparking near-daily protest rallies, which came to a head on Wednesday with an estimated million people marching through the streets of France to show their opposition to the ultra-right.
Like the United States, France feels that its values hold a universal message for mankind. It has been quick in recent years to hand out moral lessons to other European nations, like Austria, which have voted heavily for rightist candidates, making its new sense of humiliation all the harder to bear.
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