President Nicolas Sarkozy faces a severe drubbing in mid-term regional elections today which will - temporarily at least - scramble the arithmetic of French politics.
According to the final opinion polls, the much-divided and quarrelsome main Opposition party, the Socialists, will replace Sarkozy's centre-right as the most popular single political force in France.
In alliance with a booming Green movement, the centre-left seems certain to win 20 of the 22 French regions in the second round of the elections next weekend.
There is even a chance the moderate left and Greens could sweep the board in what will be the final nationwide poll before the presidential elections of 2012.
In the European elections last June, Sarkozy's party, the Union Pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP), topped the poll, despite his low approval ratings.
Even with its centrist allies, the UMP is predicted to score only around 27 per cent of the nationwide vote compared to 30 per cent for the Socialists.
Some political commentators suggest Sarkozy is paying the price for unpopular, but necessary, reforms since his election in May 2007.
Others say he is being punished for erratic and contradictory policies and monarchical lapses, such as the aborted promotion of his 23-year-old son to the political leadership of the La defence office. Sarkozy's supporters will dismiss the results as a mid-term accident, influenced by the global recession from which France is only just beginning to recover.
With 50 per cent of the electorate predicted to stay at home, the regional elections will provide an uncertain guide to the behaviour of voters in 2012. They do however, point to significant, long-term shifts in the middle and lower ground of French politics.
The Greens, under the label Verts-Europe Ecologie, headed by Daniel Cohn-Bendit, leader of the May 1968 student rebellion, are expected to repeat their excellent results in the French European elections. They are expected to take from 13 to 15 per cent of the vote, making them the third largest political force in France.
The far right National Front will probably sink to fourth place with 9 to 10 per cent of the national vote compared to nearly 15 per cent in 2006 regional elections. Attention will focus on the performances of the veteran far right leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, 81, who is probably fighting his last campaign, and his daughter, Marine, 40.
If "papa Le Pen" - standing in the Provence-C te d'Azur region - is comfortably outscored by his daughter, she will become the odds-on favourite to assume the leadership of a weakened and divided party next year.
Opinion polls suggest the vote will also be a calamity for the centrist former presidential candidate, Francois Bayrou (predicted to take 5 per cent) of the Modem Party (Mouvement Democrate) and the cuddly Trotskyist postman, Olivier Besancenot (2 per cent). Besancenot's creation of a broader movement of the far left in 2008 (the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste) has proved to be a flop.
Issues of race, and allegations of racism, have provided a constant drum-beat in the background to this campaign. A senior member of Sarkozy's party, Gerard Longuet, the head of the UMP in the Senate, recently criticised the possible choice of a Socialist politician of Arab origin to head France's main anti-discrimination agency. Longuet said he would prefer someone from the "corps fran ais traditionnel" - literally the "French mainstream" but with connotations of "a French physique".
He - and the UMP - have been accused of playing the National Front card. Both have apologised.
Yesterday British Conservative Party leader David Cameron became embroiled in an embarrassing row with Sarkozy after it emerged that the French have complained about a series of jibes at their leader's lack of height.
French officials have lodged a protest after the Tory leader appeared to make a comment about "hidden dwarfs" in relation to a photo of himself and the 1.67m (5ft 5in) Sarkozy, according to a report in the Mail on Sunday.
The remark, made in a newspaper interview six months ago, was followed by another slight, when shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne publicly described a box placed at a speaker's lectern as a "Sarkozy box".
WHO VOTES
Any of France's 45 million registered voters.
WHEN
First round is today. Second round is in a week.
WHAT FOR
Voters are choosing 1880 regional councillors for the country's 26 regions, 22 on the mainland and four overseas from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean.
HOW
Voters choose by party list. Half of candidates on each list must be women. The region's president is the person at the top of the winning party list.
WHAT'S AT STAKE
Regional budgets are used for such things as roads and public transport, and for jobs programmes, a key issue amid rising unemployment. The vote is seen in part as a referendum on conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy halfway through his term.
- INDEPENDENT
Nicolas Sarkozy. Photo / AP
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