France voters go to polls in first round of presidential election

France's Nicolas Sarkozy faces a tough fight Sunday against nine challengers in presidential elections awash in fear and anger.


This has been a race of negative emotion and nostalgia for a more protected past: One of the world's top tourist destinations and biggest economies, France is feeling down about its debts, its immigrants, its stagnant paychecks and, above all, its future.


To voters, the conservative Sarkozy gets much of the blame. While he's likely to make it past Sunday's first-round voting and into the decisive second round May 6, polls show his support waning.


They predict another man will trounce Sarkozy in the runoff and take over the Elysée Palace: Socialist Party candidate François Hollande.


Under a quirk of French electoral rules, balloting got under way Saturday in France's embassies and overseas holdings, starting in the tiny islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, just south of Newfoundland. Campaigning and the release of poll data have been suspended until the first-round results come in Sunday evening.


Many French people also express a distaste for a president who has come to be seen as flashy following his highly publicized marriage to supermodel Carla Bruni early in his term, occasional rude outbursts in public and his chumminess with rich executives.


Pascal Rossignol / Reuters
A cyclist rides past electoral panels with campaign posters of the candidates for the 2012 French presidential election in Mons en Pevele near Lille.


"We have to get rid of Sarkozy," said Marc Boitel, a trombone player taking part in a street protest ahead of Sunday's vote. "People just want jobs."
Boitel plans to vote for tub-thumbing radical leftist Jean-Luc Melenchon, who wants an anti-capitalist revolution, and then Hollande in round two, reflecting a voter shift that is unsettling some financial analysts as feeble growth threatens deficit targets in Europe's No. 2 economy.
Still, Sarkozy is a more formidable campaigner than Hollande, who lacks sparkle.
The president's verve at the podium combined with his handling of a shooting drama in southwest France in March saw him claw back some ground in opinion polls last month. But he has since slipped back, leaving Hollande 10 or more points ahead in surveys for the deciding runoff.

Hollande is a whisker ahead for the first round, with an average 28 percent support in polls to Sarkozy's 27 percent. Both are far ahead of far-right leader Marine Le Pen, in third place at 16 percent, who wants to curb immigration and take France out of the euro zone.
Melenchon, whose crowd-pulling charisma and clench-fisted vow to end the power of markets over national economies have made him a star of the election race, ranks fourth with 14 percent, while centrist Francois Bayrou is fifth at 10 percent.