French polls could yet produce an upset

All of the signs point to a comfortable victory for President Jacques Chirac's centre-right grouping in the French parliamentary elections, to be fought over two rounds, tomorrow and next week.

But the most recent opinion polls show a slight movement towards the left, and some sort of surprise cannot be ruled out. In recent French elections, the unexpected has become the rule.

French opinion polls have proved unreliable in the past, largely because voters tend to mislead the pollsters. The electorate is unusually volatile this year. The electoral system is complex and perverse. The impact of the resurgence of Jean-Marie Le Pen's far right is difficult to gauge.

President Chirac, who is supposed to remain above the parliamentary fray, has made several direct appeals in recent days to be given a "clear majority" in the national assembly to push through reforms – including tax cuts and a campaign against crime – that he promised in the presidential elections in April and May.

His new Prime Minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, has also appealed to the French electorate not to create another split government with a centre-right President and a parliament dominated by the left.

The opinion polls suggest that the far-right National Front, which shocked France and the world by coming second in the first round of the presidential election on 21 April, will perform less well this time. Mr Le Pen, the National Front leader, scored almost 17 per cent on that occasion and slightly more than 18 per cent in the second round on 5 May, when he was utterly crushed by a coalition of left and centre-right votes for President Chirac.

But opinion polls consistently underestimate the strength of the NF, which is concentrated in northern and eastern France and along the Mediterranean coast. With the mainstream left and centre right divided, even scattered, in many areas, the NF is likely to top the poll in a record number of constituencies tomorrow. Mr Le Pen, who is not standing, has been boasting in advance that his party will become the largest in France.

In the second round, the NF is likely to be quashed, as Mr Le Pen was on 5 May. His xenophobic, anti-European, anti-American movement has only ever won one seat under the two-round constituency system now in force, which favours parties able to make tactical alliances in the second round.

Political analysts say the most that the politically friendless NF can win in the second round next week is four seats, and that it might win none.

But a powerful performance by Mr Le Pen in the first round would cause further domestic anguish and international obloquy for France. It could also muddle all of the prospects for the outcome next week.

A record number of NF candidates is expected to qualify to stay in the electoral battle, creating scores of three-way contests in the second round, which would help the left. There might also be dozens of two-way contests where the NF faces an opponent from either the left or centre right.

This would take France into new electoral territory and confuse calculations for the decisive round of voting next Sunday. The centre right seems likely to win, but a shift of 1 per cent in the popular vote could make the difference between a landslide and a tight contest.

The great unknown is how many people will vote. Left-wing electors helped to create the Le Pen breakthrough in April by failing to turn out for the former prime minister Lionel Jospin, a Socialist. They then voted with great enthusiasm to block the far right, even though it meant supporting the centre right President Chirac.

The left seems to have subsided into apathy again. But a resurgence of anti-Le Pen feeling could yet cause an upset.