Ignore no-hopers, says Jospin as voters head for the fringes

The French Prime Minister, Lionel Jospin, appealed to voters yesterday not to waste their ballots on no-hope candidates in Sunday's first round of presidential elections.

With just days to go before the poll French voters are displaying a level of skittishness that has worried mainstream candidates and is confounding the pollsters. Rather than gravitating to one of the front-runners in the last few days of campaigning – the President, Jacques Chirac, a Gaullist, or his Socialist challenger, Mr Jospin – voters appear to be doing precisely the opposite.

With 14 other candidates to choose from, France is revelling in the luxury of choice. Given that both Mr Chirac and Mr Jospin represent established power – the President has "cohabited" with the Socialist Prime Minister for the past five years – voters have to look to the political fringe to register any sort of protest.

Clearly rattled by the threat, Mr Jospin concentrated his fire yesterday on Arlette Laguiller, one of three Trotskyite contenders. Polls show she is running at between 7 and 11 per cent of votes. Latest polls show support for Mr Chirac and Mr Jospin waning to the point where both could attract less than 20 per cent.

Mr Jospin said: "The candidate for the Workers' Struggle party has already said she is not interested in what is going to happen after next Sunday. So maybe it is better if people vote right from the first round for someone who is interested in what happens next, is interested in progress."

The Chirac campaign is stressing his presidential authority. He used a trip to Corsica yesterday to denounce the devolutionist instincts of the socialists.

The Jospin campaign is taking a "grassroots" approach, dispatching special envoys, in the shape of known activists, ministers and elder statesmen, to all corners of the country to bring out the vote.

Both campaigns fear the rise of the "small" parties, not because their candidates' passage to the second round of voting is threatened, but because a poor first-round performance would inevitably detract from the eventual victor's mandate.

A big factor in the increased fragmentation has been the start of publicly funded election broadcasts, which give all 16 candidates equal television air time.