French candidates face tough fight for Bayrou votes

By Francois Murphy

PARIS (Reuters) - With centrist Francois Bayrou out of France's presidential race, his large chunk of voters will be crucial in deciding the winner, but analysts say they are a mixed bag, likely to split between the two contenders.

Right-wing former interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy, who won over 31 percent of the first round vote on Sunday, and Socialist Segolene Royal, who won around 26 percent, made it through to the May 6 presidential run-off.

The 18 percent of voters who supported third-placed Bayrou are now a rich prize.

"Bayrou's voters will decide the second round," Le Parisien daily said on its front page on Sunday's first-round vote.

But they will not be an easy catch.

"It is one body but it is a two-headed eagle, facing left and right," said Pierre Giacometti of pollster Ipsos, adding that Bayrou's voters were split into three roughly equal parts favoring Royal, Sarkozy and abstention.

Sarkozy won 31.2 percent of Sunday's vote to Royal's 25.9 percent, according to the final result published on Monday.

Bayrou's share of the vote leapt up from 6.8 percent in 2002 as disillusioned voters from the Socialist left and Sarkozy's UMP party turned to his camp, but that support comes with its own baggage.

"There are Socialists who are skeptical about Segolene Royal's program and her ability to govern and there are UMP supporters who are skeptical about Nicolas Sarkozy's personality and his ability to exercise power without abusing it," Christophe Barbier, editor of weekly L'Express, told LCI television.

"There are hard-core centrists, those who were already there in 2002. There are also no doubt many abstentionists to whom Bayrou gave back their political enthusiasm."

Pollsters have given various numbers on which way Bayrou's supporters will swing -- CSA put Royal's support among them at 45 percent to Sarkozy's 39, with 16 percent abstaining, while Ifop said they would favor Sarkozy.

Any announcement by Bayrou at a news conference he's called for Wednesday could push them in either direction.

"Bayrou's position on Wednesday will be important. It depends on how he presents things," Giacometti said.

The first hint of possible haggling between camps appeared on Monday, when popular labor minister and Sarkozy supporter Jean-Louis Borloo suggested that there should be many members of Bayrou's UDF party in a government under Sarkozy.

But after having pilloried both candidates' camps and pledged to continue on the path of an alternative to the left and the right, it seemed unlikely that Bayrou would come out clearly in favor of either Royal or Sarkozy.

"One thing is sure: we are not for sale!", his campaign director, Marielle de Sarnez, told Le Parisien.