French voters headed to the polls yesterday in round one of the presidential election, with economic despair on course to make Nicolas Sarkozy the first president to lose a fight for re-election in more than 30 years.
In a contest driven as much by a dislike of Mr Sarkozy's showy style and his failure to bring down unemployment as by policy differences, the president and his Socialist rival Francois Hollande are pegged to beat eight other candidates to go through to a May 6 runoff, where polls give Mr Hollande a double-digit lead.
Please enable cookies in your browser to display the rest of this article.