KEY POINTS:
After weeks of flying high in the opinion polls, Segolene Royal has gone into a tailspin in her effort to become France's first woman president.
Smart campaigning by her conservative rival, Nicolas Sarkozy, but also lacklustre electioneering on her part and a series of blunders qualified by her managers as petits couacs (small hitches) have transformed her from likely winner to possible loser, with just under three months left to polling day.
For the first time since she won the Socialist Party's primary last November, Royal now trails Sarkozy, with 48 per cent of polled support, against his 52 per cent.
Sarkozy, the Interior Minister, has skilfully sidelined or silenced his rivals on his way to gaining the candidacy of the Union for a Popular Majority (UMP) at a party conference this month. He then launched a smooth campaign targeting voters.
Fighting his image for smugness and elitism, Sarkozy has emphasised humility and solidarity, and while his Socialist opponent has opted for vagueness he has gone big on detail.
In an economic programme unveiled this week, Sarkozy boldly vowed to slash employment levies - such as welfare contributions and unemployment insurance - by four percentage points in order to stimulate employment and spending. But he also declared he would not touch a wealth tax that is loathed by France's rich.
Royal, on the other hand, has run into dissent, even sabotage, from within her party. Diehards hate her huggy, personality-focused campaign and are demanding fiscal and social policies that are red in tooth and claw.
Her biggest problem has come from her own partner, Francois Hollande, the party's secretary.
Hollande abruptly suggested that higher taxes be slapped on anyone earning more than €4000 euros ($7400) a month - a proposal greeted with dismay by middle-class taxpayers, including the so-called caviar Socialists who are Royal's natural constituency.
Hollande's remarks were clumsily dismissed by Royal as a personal initiative that did not have her backing. Her troubles piled up when her spokesman, Arnaud Montebourg, asked on television as to what Royal's weaknesses were, said she had only one weak point - her companion - before adding: "Just kidding."
Royal disowned Montebourg but only partly. She said she was suspending him from her campaign for a month.
"There are things I can't accept. I gave him a yellow card," she said.
According to the daily Liberation, the tensions within the Socialist Party are worst in the provinces, where grassroots officials are at odds with Royal-ists in the election campaign committees.
Royal argues that it is a sign of strength and good health when a party can house a variety of views.
"What I want to do is to bring everyone together with all their independence and their originality," she said in a radio interview. "This is part of the left's strength, that not everyone thinks the same way."
The public, though, now seem to disagree. Indecisiveness, poor choices in her lieutenants, soft focus rather than detail, hostage to the party's doctrinaire left - these are the perceived factors in her decline.
