Hollande, Sarkozy in Tight Race to Élysée Palace The second round of France’s presidential poll kicks off on Sunday, with between right-wing incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy is in tight race with his Socialist challenger Francois Hol
The second round of France’s presidential poll kicks off on Sunday, with between right-wing incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy is in tight race with his Socialist challenger Francois Hollande.
Polling stations opened at 8:00 am (0600 GMT). More than 43 million voters were elig
ible to take part in France itself, after voting began Saturday in the country's far-flung overseas territories. Polls were to close at 8:00 pm (1800 GMT), following immediately by initial results.
Hollande was expected to assume the leadership of France, the eurozone's second-largest economy and a nuclear-armed permanent member of the UN Security Council.
However, final opinion polls conducted on Friday, before campaigning was officially suspended for the weekend ,suggested the still energetic Sarkozy may have closed the gap on the frontrunner to as little as four percent.
Hollande campaigned as a consensus-building moderate focused on restoring economic growth and is seen as on course to become France's first Socialist president since Francois Mitterrand died in office in 1995.
Sarkozy had trailed consistently in opinion polls for the previous six months, but fought a bruising campaign focused on mobilizing voters fearful that immigration and globalization threaten the French way of life.
Voter turnout in the first round of voting on April 22 was high, at around 80 percent, and the dueling run-off candidates, both aged 57, have warned their supporters not to stay at home as every vote counts.
Hollande won the first round with 28.63 percent of the votes to Sarkozy's 27.18 percent, and both candidates have been fighting for the votes of those whose candidates failed to make the run-off.
Far-right anti-immigrant candidate Marine Le Pen, who won almost 18 percent in the first round, has said she will cast a blank ballot and observers expect many of her supporters to do the same.
The polling institute Ifop, however, forecasts that 55 percent of her voters would back Sarkozy and 19 percent Hollande.
The Socialist needs a strong mandate to implement his left-wing program and fight EU-driven austerity, while Sarkozy has played on fears that the election of a Socialist would send shudders through the EU and the financial markets.
