John Rapley

On Sunday, French voters will render their final decision on who will govern their country over the next five years. Last week's first round of voting whittled down the list to the two remaining candidates. The country now faces a clear choice between the socialist Sigoline Royal and the conservative Nicolas Sarkozy.

The first round of voting stood out for one thing in particular: France finally purged itself of the demons of2002. Then, much of the electorate, turned off by politics, stayed home. Those that did vote registered their dismay with the French system by opting in unusually large numbers - nearly a third of the electorate - for extremist candidates.

The left suffered especially badly. Its vote was so splintered that its candidate failed to make it through to the second round. France was horrified to find that its second round of voting pitted the unloved conservative Jacques Chirac against the neo-fascist Jean-Marie Le Pen. Shocked that the world's eyes were on them, and for all the wrong reasons, the French turned out in droves to hold their noses and vote against Le Pen.

US invasion

The last few years only deepened the gloom. Mr. Chirac's popularity scarcely improved, except for a brief bounce at the start of the Iraq war when he prominently opposed the US-led invasion. As if to put the past five years behind them, the French came out in record numbers to vote this year. And when they did so, they eschewed the extremes, delivering the highest combined vote to the two mainstream candidates in a generation.

Polls have consistently indicated that Mr. Sarkozy enjoys the edge going into the final round of voting. It will be an uphill battle for Ms. Royal. Coming out of the first round, the pool of left-wing voters is smaller than the pool of right-wing voters. This means she has to win more than half of the centrist vote, which in the first round went to Francois Bayrou.

Mr. Bayrou has being cagey. His instinct appears to be to keep his vote-base secure as a prelude to a re-run in the 2012 election. Thus, in spite of his evident dislike for Mr. Sarkozy, he has not delivered his support to either candidate. Given her need for centrist votes, therefore, Ms. Royal has had to go further than Mr. Sarkozy in appealing to the centre, both directly to voters and indirectly through overtures to Mr. Bayrou.

Defeated candidates

That, however, poses a problem the defeated candidates of the far left have tended to throw their support behind Ms. Royal for the second round, they are clearly not pleased with her moving further from their pole in her search for votes. Even within her own Socialist Party, Ms. Royal's strategy is stirring anger and opposition. It is, therefore, not obvious that she'll be able to deliver on all the promises she makes to the centre.

This lack of confidence in her ability to deliver has saddled Ms. Royal all through the campaign. She hasn't helped matters with her periodic stumbles. Indeed, her speech on election night failed to win many supporters, whose suspicions of her own lack of leadership ability were apparently confirmed.

As it has seemed all along, this election seems to be Mr. Sarkozy's to lose. Given his own penchant for extremist statements - something he especially did in the first round when he was trying to lure some of Mr. Le Pen's supporters - it is not beyond Mr. Sarkozy to shoot himself in the foot. But it reflects how far the French left has fallen when their victories depend on what happens on the right.