The first round of the 2012 French presidential election officially kicked off in mainland France on Sunday morning.

The first round of the 2012 French presidential election officially kicked off in mainland France on Sunday morning.

With polling stations opened at 8:00 a.m. local time (06:00 GMT), some 44.3 million registered voters are expected to cast their ballots for one of the ten candidates.

A latest IFOP survey released Friday showed that incumbent President Nicolas Sarkozy was neck-and-neck with his Socialist arch-rival Francois Hollande, with both projected to garner 27 percent of the vote.

Meanwhile, Marine Le Pen, a candidate from the National Front, trailed behind with 16 percent of the vote, according to the survey, China state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

The 85,000 polling stations across the country are set to close at 8 p.m. local time (1800 GMT) in big cities and at 6 p.m. local time (1600 GMT) in other places.

According to French law, no exit poll or release of early results of the first round of the presidential election is allowed before all polling stations are closed.

At his last rally in Nice on Friday night, just hours before campaigning officially stopped, Sarkozy told his supporters that “the moment of truth” had arrived.

Earlier Friday, in an uncharacteristically contrite interview with a French radio station, Sarkozy apologized for the “mistakes” he made following his election triumph in 2007, acknowledging that he did not immediately understand “the symbolic dimension of the role of president”.

The wave of “anti-Sarkozyism” - as it’s known in France – has been seized on by Hollande, who has consistently led the polls in the run-up to the election.

At his final campaign stop in the north-eastern industrial town of Charleville-Mezieres on Friday, Hollande noted that, "This is a region that put its faith in Nicolas Sarkozy, who came here making speeches on industry, jobs, workers.

Everybody can see the scale of the disappointment,” he said before adding, “"Now, it's the left's turn to govern the country.”

France’s left has not governed since 1995 and there has been only one leftist president during the Fifth Republic – Socialist François Mitterrand.

According to the France 24 International News, If, as the polls suggest, Sarkozy loses the May 6 second round, he will be the first French president since 1981 to not win a second term in office. The last president to be voted out of office after completing his first term was the centre-right Valery Giscard d’Estaing.

Under French law, if no candidate wins 50% of the vote, the top two contenders head for a knock-out round, set for May 6 this year.