Royal vs Sarkozy: Battle for the 'Bayrouistes'

Thomas, 29, looks like a typical Nicolas Sarkozy voter but he detests Nicolas Sarkozy. He is a young, neatly dressed executive, soon to be married. He wants France to "break out of our rigid, inward-looking way of doing things". He wants France to, "open its windows on the world".

On Sunday, Thomas says he faces an "agonising choice". He will either vote for the Socialist candidate, Ségolène Royal - "who does not impress me at all" - or he will cast a spoiled, or blank, ballot. And why not vote for M. Sarkozy, the front-running, centre-right candidate? The man who claims to represent a more modern, less rigid, outward-looking future for France?

"No. Never," Thomas says. "The man is dangerous. He is a French Berlusconi, or even worse, a French Mussolini. He will divide France and maybe tear us apart."

Welcome to Rouen, the largest city in France run by centrists and a key battleground in the second round of the presidential election on Sunday.

I met Thomas when he was watching a speedboat race on the river Seine. The event - like the city of Rouen itself, part- dynamic, part-picturesque - symbolises the choices France faces on Sunday. Old vs New is easy. But what is old and what is new? What is old, but worth preserving; and what is new, but menacing?

Mme Royal has sometimes compared herself to Joan of Arc, who was the last, significant, female, would-be leader of France. Joan was tried and burnt to death in Rouen nearly 600 years ago this month. Mme Royal's fate could also be decided here, in the capital of upper Normandy, on Sunday. The votes of hundreds of thousands of young, educated, anxious, middle-class voters in provincial cities such as Rouen will decide the next president. They are the "18-35 Club": liberal, economically and culturally; ambitious but not selfish; patriotic but pro-European.

They are unimpressed by the old left-right ideological warfare. They are frustrated by the hidden ceilings and blockages in French society. They are angry with the self-seeking, vacuous clannishness of French politics.

In the first round, they voted for the centrist candidate François Bayrou. Now they face a "terrible dilemma", according to Jean-François Mabire, 36, who was president of the "Young People for Bayrou" campaign in the Rouen area. "In the second round, for many young people, including me, the choice is not, as you might imagine, between Royal and Sarkozy. It is between Royal and a blank ballot," he says.

"It is a question of deciding whether Sarkozy is so dangerous that you must vote TSS - Tous Sauf Sarkozy (anyone but Sarkozy) to keep him out. Or whether you should register your milder feeling of repulsion for Mme Royal by abstaining or, better still, voting 'blank'." That is why tonight's televised debate between the remaining candidates will be pivotal - more so than similar debates in the past.

M. Sarkozy, 52, holds a lead of four to five points over Mme Royal, 53, in the opinion polls, but it is shrinking slowly. Many younger viewers, such as Thom-as and Jean-François, will be watching the debate not to judge between "Sarko" and "Sego". They will be giving Mme Royal a final chance to impress them.

There are many other unknowns. Will the poor, multi-racial suburbs - where M. Sarkozy is loathed - turn out once again en masse as they did in the first round on 22 April? Will the voters of the extreme left and extreme right - one in five of all votes last time - switch in large numbers to Mme Royal and M. Sarkozy. Or will many stay at home? The far-right leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, yesterday urged his voters to "abstain massively".

Most commentators agree, however, that the key to France's future lies in the 6,800,000 votes cast for M. Bayrou on 22 April - 18.85 per cent of the vote. More precisely, the key lies in part of the Bayrou electorate, which can be split into three segments. The smallest group came from the centre left. They are the culturally liberal, middle-aged lefties or so-called "Bourgeois Bohemians" (Bobos). They are teachers and middle-ranking civil servants and have returned meekly to Mme Royal.

Part of M. Bayrou's vote came from the centre-right, out of distaste for the aggressive, divisive style of M. Sarkozy. However, they will now back the former interior minister.

That leaves the largest and least predictable part of the "Bayrouistes": the floating voters or first-time voters or long-term supporters of M. Bayrou's centrist party, the Union pour la Démocratie Francaise (UDF). How will they vote in the second round on Sunday?

Laure Leforestier, an assistant mayor of Rouen, will be the UDF - soon to be renamed "Democratic Party" - candidate for Rouen in the parliamentary elections in June.

"What is absolutely clear," she says, "is that the great divide in the Bayrou vote is a generational one. People over 40, especially those who have always voted UDF, are still conditioned by our tradition of electoral alliances with the right, the Gaullists and now with (Sarkozy's party), the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP). They have an aversion to voting left. They will mostly vote for Sarkozy.

"But the younger people who voted for Bayrou in great numbers are either turning in droves to Mme Royal or they are undecided. They may vote blank or abstain on Sunday but it is clear that they cannot stomach Sarkozy. They are scared by him, as I am. There is something totalitarian about Sarkozy, something uncompromising and unRepublican. He says he represents a new approach but, to me, he is the old, intolerant, clan politics made even more brutal."

There is a great paradox here. M. Sarkozy presents himself as a youthful man: a man who is going to revive France economically and "morally". He talks of - or, at least, he used to talk of - "rupture" with the past. The sociology of the first round vote paints a different picture. Among those aged 18 to 40, Mme Royal was the clear winner and M. Bayrou ran M. Sarkozy close for second place. Among voters above 40 - especially the over 60s - M. Sarkozy was the runaway victor.

This suggests that M. Sarkozy's true appeal is conservative and patriotic, not modernising and reforming. If you go to a Sarkozy rally, you get both versions: Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

M. Sarkozy rants like a populist outsider against, "politicians and technocrats, trades unionists and fraudsters". He makes protectionist attacks on the euro and world trade policy. Then he makes moderate and sensible-seeming proposals for liberalising the French economy.

The sociology and age-profile of the first-round vote suggests that it was the "ranting" Sarko who topped the poll in the first round; not the reasonable one. Hence the aversion to M. Sarkozy - bordering on hatred - of thoughtful, moderate people such as Jean-François Mabire, a legal adviser to a large company in the Rouen area. He is an economic liberal but believes in the importance of the Republican values of fraternity and equality.

France can only succeed, he says, if it moves forward together, breaking down its old rigidities and borders of race, class and political, or ideological, clan.

"This is what terrifies me in Sarkozy," he says. "The spirit of the times is about removing boundaries and releasing energy and sharing power.

"Sarkozy's brutal language, his subliminal message, his whole way of being, is bullying and clannish and totalitarian."

M. Bayrou has been playing footsie with the Socialist candidate in recent days without formally supporting her. The unprecedented, unofficial TV debate between second and third placed candidates last Saturday, "did Mme Royal a great deal of good", Mme Leforestier believes.

Her boss, the UDF mayor of Rouen, Pierre Albertini, has already declared for M. Sarkozy. So have most of the UDF members of the national assembly. Mme Leforestier says the apparent split between M. Bayrou and his party is easily explained. The UDF deputies have been subjected to "extreme pressures" from M. Sarkozy's UMP.

She prefers not to elaborate. Other officials say the UMP has threatened to run candidates against them in the parliamentary elections in June - unless they declare for M. Sarkozy. Traditionally, UMP and UDF candidates have stood down for one another in the second round.

Tensions are running high within the UDF. Leading figures such as Mme Leforestier are under intense, pressure from both sides. She has yet to announce officially which way she will vote on Sunday. She told me, however, that she had decided - after only a few minutes' hesitation on 22 April - that she would vote for Ségolène Royal.

"In the end, although she may be unimpressive in many ways, she is the more modern candidate of the two," she said. "She understands the desire for a new, less bombastic, more grass-roots approach to politics. Sarkozy just doesn't get it."

According to the polls, about 40 per cent of the Bayrou vote is going to Mme Royal and 30 per cent to M. Sarkozy. The rest - one in three, or more than two million votes - are still undecided or will abstain. Everything will depend, Mme Leforestier says, on how many young Bayrou supporters decide in the next couple of days to substitute a Royal vote for a "blank" ballot or a decision to stay at home.

Mme Royal cannot win on Sunday. Nicolas Sarkozy can perhaps lose. I pressed Thomas, beneath the noise of the boats, for his likely decision. Royal or a blank ballot? "I don't know. I don't know," he says. "I just cannot imagine Mme Royal measuring up as president. I will decide after I see the debate. Maybe."