French conservatives rally voters in tightening primaries race

The race for France's conservativepresidential nomination looked tighter than ever on Saturday,with voting due to begin within 24 hours and polls suggestingwhoever emerges on top will make it all the way to the ElyseePalace.

Ahead of Sunday's vote, which will select two candidates forthe decisive Nov. 27 second round, centrist Alain Juppe had lostmost or all of his early polling lead as his fellow former primeminister Franois Fillon enjoyed a late surge.

After Britain's shock "Brexit" vote in June and last week'selection of Donald Trump as U.S. president, the French electionnext spring will be the next test of strength between weakenedmainstream political forces and rising populist insurgents.

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Opinion polls have for months suggested that far-rightNational Front leader Marine Le Pen will make it to the decisiverun-off in May, but that Juppe would beat her if he won theconservative Les Republicains nomination.

His lead, however, has been eroded by two party rivals tohis right - ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy and Fillon, who servedas Sarkozy's prime minister from 2007-2012.

"I can sense a surprise coming," Fillon told supporters at arally on Friday in Paris. He urged them to "shake up" theprimaries, winning wide applause and shouts of "Fillon forpresident" from a crowd of over 3,000.

Long trailing in the polls, Fillon has come from behind inthe past week, making the race even harder to call. He wasjudged the winner of Thursday's final televised debate beforethe weekend vote, an opinion poll showed.

'Im not Hillary'

Anyone can vote in the primary, in which there are sevencandidates, which opens an already unpredictable contest totactical participation by left-leaning and far-right voters.

Lack of confidence in pollsters, who failed to predictTrump's win and Britain's vote to quit the European Union, hasdeepened uncertainty surrounding the conservative and Socialistprimaries as well as the election itself.

But Juppe was confident on Friday that no such upset willhappen. "I am not Hillary Clinton," he said on public radio,"and France is not America."

Predictions of right andfar-right faceoff

Under unpopular President Franois Hollande, France's rulingSocialists are deeply divided and seen as unlikely to get pastthe presidential election's first round next April. That wouldclear the way for whoever clinches the conservative nominationto face Marine Le Pen in the deciding vote.

Juppe is seeking to draw support from centrists andleft-wing voters determined to prevent a Sarkozy comeback or LePen's National Front from winning power.

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Sarkozy, whose campaign has emphasized law and order, mockedJuppe at a rally in Nimes, southern France, for being too"soft.""I will be the president who re-establishes theauthority of the state," he said.

Some market analysts have started taking more seriously thepossibility Le Pen could become president, an event some believecould weaken or break up the European Union and the euro zone.

But polls have consistently shown her falling short. Theelectoral system requires her to win over 50 per cent of votes ina second-round run-off, and she has persistently polled onlyaround 30. French pollsters have in recent elections also tendedto overestimate her appeal rather than underplay it.

But should Sarkozy or Fillon emerge as her conservativeopponent, polls and analysts suggest, Le Pen's electoralprospects would improve.

In a note after Thursday's TV debate, Charles Lichfield ofEurasia Group gave Le Pen a 25-per-cent likelihood of victoryagainst Juppe. But her chances would jump to 35 per cent againstSarkozy or Fillon, he said, reflecting their lack of appealbeyond the right-wing electorate.