5 jours avant le 2e tour

The media are flogging the 2e tour as if i were still a horserace and not sure money. The papers give us too many useless headlines like this:

ROYAL, SARKOZY ENGAGE IN BATTLE FOR CENTRIST VOTE
PARIS April 30, 2007 (G&M)

Having turned out their bases, where else would Ségo et Sarko be "battling" for votes? Though there is far less battling and far more political circus in evidence.

And not enough telling headlines like this (and the subjacent story):

TV DEBATE LAST CHANCE FOR DESPERATE ROYAL

PARIS April 30, 2007 (Australian/Times) - Segolene Royal, the left-wing finalist for the French presidency, has appeared to acknowledge that she needed a near-miracle from a debate on Wednesday to save her from defeat next Sunday by the conservative Nicolas Sarkozy.

As opinion polls showed Mr Sarkozy maintaining a five-point lead over the 53-year-old Socialist, Ms Royal threw caution to the winds and said that she could appoint François Bayrou, the centrist who was eliminated on April 22, as her prime minister. [Well, that was met with horror all round, so today she named a new favorite.]

Ms Royal needs most of Mr Bayrou’s seven million voters from the first round if she is to have a chance of defeating Mr Sarkozy, leader of the governing Union for a Popular Movement, on May 6.

On Saturday she held a friendly televised debate with the defeated candidate in which she appealed across party lines. She recognised the challenge facing her yesterday as Mr Sarkozy rallied 40,000 supporters in a show of strength at a Paris stadium.

A word about M. Bayrou's fabled votes. First, the majority were loaners from the left and the right. They were not UDF voters. Second, of those who come back to vote, they will come back to vote in their former guises as creatures of the left and the right. Third, M. Bayrou is not at the head of some stupendous new political dynamic. If he were he would be debating Sarko tomorrow and not Ségo last Saturday. So the only voters he is in a position to deliver are the UDF cadre, which he has orphaned by creating a new political party in the heady aftermath of his 1er tour loss. The reports and "news commentary" suggest M. Bayrou could deliver his 1er tour votes en bloc. Ah, Ségo so wishes that that were so.

"It is difficult, because I think there have been 200 polls saying that Nicolas Sarkozy is going to win, but voters are free," [Ségo] said on Canal+ television.

And there is a reason for some 200+ polls finding for Sarko.

French presidential debates, staged since 1974 in the days before the run-off, have a history of turning the tide.

Yes, and well they might, but this sounds like so much corner talk in the second round of a fifteen rounder.

PFFT (What is this?): Five points as good as twenty 4 | Rayonnement français 0