Royal has the left and Sarkozy has the right

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Au revoir — and good riddance — to the fondness for fringe-party voting that has recently plagued French politics. That was the central message of the first round of the nation's presidential elections. In a stark contrast to 2002, when 4.8 million people voted for Jean-Marie Le Pen of the far-right National Front and another 11.5 million for a gallimaufry of no-hopers, an unprecedented 37 million voters turned out on April 22 to propel Nicolas Sarkozy of the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) and Socialist Ségolène Royal into a May 6 runoff between mainstream right and left. The strong showing of centrist contender François Bayrou (who captured 18.5% of the vote, compared to Sarkozy's 31% and Royal's 26%), now presents the two remaining candidates with the classic task of wooing the moderate vote without alienating their partisans.

That's a healthier challenge for France than putting out the fires of extremism. Sarkozy's success came in tandem with the collapse of Le Pen, who garnered just 10% of the vote. Le Pen's base proved vulnerable to Sarkozy's unapologetically conservative rhetoric, which featured a tough law-and-order stance, talk of national identity, Christian roots and new curbs on immigration and welfare. It worked: no right-wing presidential candidate has fared as well in the first round since 1974.

The presidency isn't won yet, however. Though Sarkozy enters the frantic push toward the runoff as the favorite, he must now make a turn to the center, which may prove to be treacherous territory. Bayrou's surprisingly strong showing means he has replaced Le Pen as the nexus of French discontents, but in defeat Bayrou has given his voters no explicit guidance on how they should vote in the second round.

Sarkozy calls himself the "candidate of work" and courts the France that gets up early: he wants simpler labor laws, lower taxes and a leaner public service. Much of that ought to resonate with voters for Bayrou's Union for French Democracy (UDF), which, since its inception in 1978, has frequently allied itself with the right. But Sarkozy's sometimes gleeful propensity for sowing division sits more easily with those already in his corner than with the broader electorate he needs to win over.

In his victory speech on election night, Sarkozy launched his bid to broaden his support by projecting a gentler image of himself. He dreamed, he said, of "a France that leaves no one behind, a France that's like a family where the weakest, the most vulnerable, the most fragile has the right to as much love, respect and attention as the strongest." This produced some eye rolling from those who believe Sarkozy exacerbated France's social conflict by referring to delinquents in the immigrant-filled banlieues as "scum." He'll be trying to maintain his new, conciliatory tone until the runoff, even as the Socialists remind voters of the divisive talk he favored when he was romancing the right.

Royal, for her part, wants the state to fund a massive job-creation program for the millions of young people who currently can't find employment. Outside her camp, her emphasis on equality and social peace doesn't engender fear of conflict, but neither does it inspire hope of creating the dynamic growth that France needs. For now, Sarkozy's hand seems stronger than Royal's. Even as he sent lieutenants out to key UDF parliamentarians to encourage them to join his team, he was confident enough to vow at a rally in Dijon on April 23 that he would "seal no alliances to the detriment of my convictions." It's unlikely that he'll need to do so. André Santini, one of half a dozen udf mainstays who have moved into the Sarkozy camp, says, "We've already seen Sarkozy talking more about Bayrou's issues, like cutting the debt and reinforcing social supports." Santini adds: "You have to go back decades to see a first-round result like Sarkozy's. If he's a 'divider,' he's done pretty well."

Royal, meanwhile, desperately needs to entice Bayrou's voters if she's to close the 5% gap between her and Sarkozy. She will no doubt try to make the most of her softer image, which may seem particularly welcome to voters wary of Sarkozy's daunting and sometimes disconcerting intensity. She will also need to ramp up her courtship of Bayrou's lieutenants, which has included a promise to assign ministerial posts to prospective allies from the UDF if it comes to her aid against Sarkozy. Many elected officials from the udf are open to persuasion by their historical allies on the right. But Bayrou's voters are another story: polls suggest Royal could attract almost half of them, while Sarkozy is the remaining choice for only a quarter. Yet some of them are bound to resist any lures from either Sarko or Ségo. "Both of them talk about protecting us — the mother protector and the father protector," says Renaud Gaultier, an industrial designer in Paris. "I have a mother and father; I'm an adult, and I don't need this infantile discourse." Gaultier says he'll drop an unmarked ballot into the box on May 6, and he won't be the only Bayrou adherent to exercise that civic protest against what he sees as a choice between second-raters.

Such tactics may assuage the conscience, but they're unlikely to change the outcome of the May 6 vote; they even seem slightly out of step with the sober, every-vote-must-count mood of the moment. In this election, even the 18-to-24-year-old age group moved decisively away from fringe parties and protest votes in favor of mainstream candidates. In 2002 the conservative Jacques Chirac and Socialist Lionel Jospin secured only 22% of the young vote; this time, three-quarters of young voters went to Royal, Sarkozy or Bayrou. Paule Drubigny, 26, a Paris music student, says she didn't vote in 2002, but this year felt compelled to vote against Sarkozy, whom she considers "incapable of promoting peace and fraternity." Her way of doing so was to vote for Royal — "without enthusiasm," she says, "but with a clear conscience," aware that her vote had a chance of making a difference.

Yet Drubigny's preference for a mainstream candidate, like that of an overwhelming majority of her compatriots, is no endorsement of the status quo. Everybody wants a France that is more economically dynamic, less afraid of the future, more confident in the face of the challenges of globalization. The discussion of how to get there is the main stuff of the short campaign ahead. For Sarkozy, the answer is a more forceful hand in immigration and policing coupled with a new flexibility in the labor market. For Royal, the answer lies in a plethora of government programs that would strengthen the role of the state and reinforce social solidarity. Whichever of them wins on May 6 faces a singular challenge: to deliver on a promise for radical change from within one of two parties that have each so consistently disappointed that neither has been able to hold a parliamentary majority for two consecutive terms since 1969. If all the talk of change turns out to have been no more than empty campaign rhetoric, the trust that's been broken will be broad, and so will be the disillusionment that follows.