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PARIS - France is bracing for change following a campaign for head of state that has opened up debate about some of the country's secret problems but also left many people confused or anxious about the future.
A huge minority of undecided voters - as many as one in four, according to some opinion polls - will determine who is next president.
The elections kicked off last night with a first round of voting. Results were due this morning, but the contest is expected to go to a runoff vote in early May.
Whatever the result, the next incumbent in the Elysee presidential palace will be a break with the past as he or she shoulders the task of reviving France's dragging economy, integrating its Arab and African minorities and defining its place in the world.
For one thing, a generational shift beckons. After the avuncular 74-year-old Jacques Chirac, the frontrunners are relatively youthful.
The conservative Nicolas Sarkozy, the Socialists' champion Segolene Royal and centrist Francois Bayrou are all in their 50s, which means they will become the first president to have been born after World War II.
The fourth major contender, Jean-Marie Le Pen, is 78, but if he makes it to the Elysee Palace - which is very much an outside chance - he would be France's first far-right president.
Sensing a place in history, but also the realisation that this is likely to be their last or only shot at the top job, the four have driven campaigns that have been big on personality and ambition.
The consequence has been an electorate even more adrift than in 2002, when the xenophobic Le Pen won more votes than the Socialists' Lionel Jospin - a shock that prompted nationwide handwringing about disaffection with the mainstream parties.
This time, the controversy has come not from Le Pen but from Sarkozy, the 51-year-old former Interior Minister, who has spent the last five years fine-tuning his strategy. He poses as a man of action, of referring to youths in the troubled high-immigration suburbs as "scum", pledging to sweep away youth crime and encourage entrepreneurship.
To a country that has been sleepwalking for the past 12 years, Sarkozy has been a thunderclap. He has prised open the issues of ethnic minorities, labour law and private enterprise.
But the French prefer the sweet talk of consensus and view the culture of capitalism suspiciously. Many are shocked, and see "Sarko" as a polariser who is stirring the muck to satisfy his presidential dream.
Of the candidates' election posters in Paris, Sarkozy's face is by far the most defaced, adorned with devil's horns and goatee beard, while on the internet, he is lampooned as "The Penguin" because of his short stature and posture, or as "Ceausescu" (a reference to the last Communist leader of Romania) because of his Eastern European origins and dictatorial nature.
On the left, those seeking to avoid a replay of the disaster of 2002 have been dismayed by Royal.
Her inexperience in government and ignorance of foreign policy and defence - the two main areas of responsibility for a head of state - were so disastrous for her that, at the end of the campaign, she scrapped interviews with the press and kept to photocalls and soundbites.
But most grating of all has been her pitch on personality. Royal, like Sarkozy and Le Pen, played the patriotism card, alienating many on the traditional left who harbour long memories of the dangers of jingoism. And she has put a big emphasis on her gender, reminding voters again and again that she is a mother who would be France's first woman president. Ironically, it is women voters who seem most irritated by this.
The term was previously for seven years but was restricted to five years following a referendum during the Chirac era.
In the last five voter surveys, Sarkozy had 26.5 to 30 per cent support, Royal 22.5 to 25.5 per cent. Bayrou got 18 and 20 per cent in two polls, but in one got only 16 per cent and was beaten by Le Pen.
Under the constitution, the president has to be elected by a majority of votes. Lacking such an outcome in today's vote, the two candidates who pick up most votes in the first round will face off on May 6.
