Campaign Swerves Right

Far-right veteran Jean-Marie Le Pen stunned France in the presidential election in 2002 by clinching 16.9 percent of the vote in the first round and knocking then-Socialist candidate Lionel Jospin out of the race.

Five years later, there are fears in certain quarters that the National Front candidate might pull off a similar feat and make it to the run-off for France's highest office.

But there's little chance of that happening, according to Alain Howiller, president of the Institute of Political Studies in Strasbourg.

"Le Pen won't make it to the second round this time," he said.

Frank Baasner, director of the German-French Institute echoed the view.

"Experience shows these things don't repeat themselves," he said.

"National identity" as a vote-getter

But campaign managers at former Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy's conservative UMP camp remain wary. According to French satirical weekly Canard enchaine, Sarkozy's aides reckon that Le Pen's anti-immigrant National Front could take as much as 20 percent of the vote.

Daniela Schwarzer, an expert on France at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin also said that Le Pen's influence could not be written off.

"The National Front's voter potential is possibly higher than the surveys show it to be," she told DW-WORLD.DE.

Sarkozy's campaign managers seem convinced that the election will only be won on the right. And as if to emphasize that point, their candidate has been focusing all his energies on the topic of national identity in the final days leading up to the first round of voting on Sunday.

The conservative frontrunner has said that only those who speak French sufficiently well will be allowed to settle down permanently in France. Sarkozy has also backed quotas for immigrants and choosing them on the basis of professional qualifications. He has said he would set up a "ministry for immigration and national identity" if he's elected.

"France is embittered that its national identity is endangered by unlimited immigration," Sarokzy said recently.

That's a classic ploy of the far right, according to Alain Howiller.

"Those are ideas that Le Pen has been propagating for 25 years," he said.

Royal shows nationalist streak

And it's not just Sarkozy angling for votes from the far right. Even Sarkozy's Socialist challenger, Segolene Royal, has displayed a strong nationalist streak in recent weeks.

At a campaign rally two weeks ago, Royal urged her supporters for the first time to sing the national anthem. Over the weekend, Royal stepped up her new-found nationalist drive by urging all French to have a French flag at home.

Experts, such as Daniela Schwarzer, worry that the "irresponsible" way Royal and Sarkozy have been flirting with the topic of national identity could have serious long-terms political consequences.

"If the whole discussion in a left-wing party like the PS (the Socialist Party) and a moderate right-wing party such as the UMP leans so strongly towards the far-right fringe then it changes the whole atmosphere in society," Schwarzer said. "Then even openly xenophobic slogans don't horrify anymore."

Le Pen in unfamiliar territory

Sarkozy and Royal's right-wing dabbling may end up benefiting Le Pen, not just in the long term, but also more immediately.

The veteran politician has said he's "happy" about the right tilt the election campaign in France has taken so far.

"That's because it shows all the French that I'm right," Le Pen said recently.

The Front National candidate has been charting unfamiliar territory during his campaign this time. In a bid to stay relevant in the fight for both frustrated voters on the far right as well as protest voters, the 78-year-old has a young women, apparently from North Africa, advertise for him on posters.

Le Pen has also been campaigning in the depressed suburbs with the slogan: "Neither friend, nor black, white nor North African -- French!"

The strategy might just work. According to studies by the Paris-based Cevipof Institute, around 100,000 immigrants from North Africa could vote for Le Pen on Sunday.

"Everything but Sarkozy"

The one campaign slogan residents of the suburbs seem to agree on is: "Everything but Sarkozy." It's obvious that they haven't forgotten the conservative frontrunner who described violent youth there as "scum" during riots in late 2005.

A long announced campaign visit by Sarkozy to the Lyon suburb of Villeurbanne, where the UMP candidate planned to talk to youth amid whirring television cameras in an obvious publicity gimmick, never took place.

"Many youth in the suburbs will vote for Le Pen because he offers them a chance to explode a system that they hate, because they see no chance for themselves in it," said Schwarzer. "For that they're ready to overlook his xenophobic comments."