François Hollande is on course for victory in Sunday's final round of presidential elections, a fresh poll showed on Monday, with his sizeable lead freeing him from pressure from the far-Left.
France's opposition Socialist Party candidate, Francois Hollande
A poll by Ipsos-Logica yesterday said the Socialist would win the run-off with 53 per cent support versus 47 per cent for Nicolas Sarkozy, the incumbent, who gained one point but nothing like enough to challenge Mr Hollande.
Some 22 per cent of those questioned, however, declined to say who they would vote for, giving Mr Sarkozy cause to hope his oft-repeated claim that a "silent majority" will vote for him on the day could still bring victory.
Amid squabbling over claims of dirty tricks from both sides, Mr Sarkozy yesterday vowed to take legal action against an investigative website that alleged he accepted 50 million euros from the late Muammar Gaddafi as a donation to the election campaign that propelled him to power.
The French president said he would make a formal "complaint" against Mediapart for producing a "fake" document showing that he and the late Libyan dictator had an illegal financial arrangement to fund his 2007 presidential campaign.
Saying the case would be filed this week he added: "There are morals, those who lie, those who are wrong must be condemned by justice.
"Do you really think Gaddafi would have made me a bank transfer? Why not a signed check? It's grotesque," he said.
The website denied smears, saying it believed the evidence was compelling. Mr Hollande, defended the website against claims of political bias.
"If it's a fake, well, the site will be condemned. If it is not a fake, then there will be some explaining to do," he said.
Mr Hollande, increasingly confident of victory, no longer needs to risk losing centrist votes by appealing to hard-left voters as the Communist-backed candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon fared worse than expected in the first round.
By contrast, Mr Sarkozy has little choice but to seek win over far-Right voters who backed the National Front's Marine Le Pen in round one, but not enough are heeding the call.
A survey yesterday found that 49 per cent of voters feel Mr Sarkozy's campaign is leaning too far to the Right, with 60 per cent of centrists unhappy with the conservative's tactics. Some 56 per cent of centrists, however judged Mr Hollande's campaign to be spot on.
"The very right-wing position adopted by the president to seduce National Front voters seems to have been totally counterproductive," said opinion pollster Gael Sliman of the BVA institute. He said Le Pen voters seemed annoyed he was using "such a thick line to fish them".
Perhaps Mr Sarkozy's last chance to turn the tide against Mr Hollande will be to lay a knockout punch in a lone televised debate on Wednesday evening.
Both candidates were preparing for May Day celebrations today, with Mr Sarkozy promising that "tens of thousands" would turn up to his rally on Paris' Trocadero square as a rival to traditional trade union marches to defend workers' rights.
Meanwhile, the far-Right National Front party will be holding its annual "Joan of Arc Day" rally, at which party leader Marine Le Pen has said she will spell out voting advice for her supporters ahead of the run-off.
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