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.

Mr Hollande, 57, promises less drastic spending cuts than Mr Sarkozy and wants higher taxes on the wealthy to fund state-aided job creation, in particular a 75% upper tax rate on income above €1 million (£810,000).

He would be only the second left-wing leader of France since the founding of the Fifth Republic in 1958, and its first since Francois Mitterrand, who beat incumbent Valery Giscard-d'Estaing in 1981.

He voted early on Sunday in Tulle, the town in central France where he is the head of the regional government.

Mr Hollande has called on supporters to take nothing for granted, mindful of a fiasco for the left in 2002 when poor turnout saw the Socialist candidate pushed out in the first round by the far right.

Interior ministry figures put the turnout by midday at 28.29%, a touch lower than the strong turnout by that time in 2007.

Mr Sarkozy, also 57, says he is a safer pair of hands for future economic turmoil. But many workers and young voters drawn to his 2007 pledge of more pay for more work are deserting him as jobless figures hit a 12-year high.

Many in France also express a distaste for a president who is seen as flashy after his marriage to supermodel Carla Bruni early in his term, occasional rude outbursts in public, and friendships with rich executives.

"Sarkozy's divisive. Hollande's reassuring," said Helene Boudot, 85, voting in her village of Chailland in western France.

Investors will be watching the first round to see how well tub-thumbing radical leftist Jean-Luc Melenchon performs. Mr Melenchon, who wants an anti-capitalist revolution, has channelled outrage at the poor economy to become popular on the campaign trail, neck-and-neck with far-right leader Marine Le Pen for third place.

On Friday, the risk premium investors charge to hold French debt over safe-haven German bonds rose to nearly 1.50%, betraying fears that Mr Hollande's programme could be pulled to the left if Mr Melenchon's popularity leads to a strong bloc of seats for the far left after parliamentary elections in June.

Some investors already see a risk that Mr Hollande's focus on tax rises over spending cuts, his slower timetable for balancing the budget and his plan to raise taxation on the financial sector, could further drive up the price of borrowing for the government. Sarkozy has played up his credibility as an economic steward after he helped steer the euro zone through the worst of its crisis last year. Mr Hollande has blamed him for the parlous state of France's public finances.

The president's verve at the podium combined with his handling of a shooting drama in south-west France in March saw him claw back some ground in opinion polls last month. But he has since slipped back, leaving Mr Hollande 10 or more points ahead in surveys for the deciding runoff.

Mr Hollande is a whisker ahead for the first round, with an average 28% support in polls to Mr Sarkozy's 27%. Ms Le Pen, who wants to curb immigration and take France out of the euro, has polled at around 16% and Mr Melenchon is on 14%.

France is struggling with weak economic growth, a gaping trade deficit, 10% unemployment and strained public finances that prompted ratings agency Standard Poor's to cut the country's triple-A credit rating in January.