Le Pen shadow over French poll

Chirac has appealed for a high turnout to keep out Le Pen's National Front

PARIS, France -- French pollsters expect a drubbing for the Socialist Party of ex-Prime Minister Lionel Jospin in the first round of parliamentary elections on Sunday.

They also expect the National Front party of Jean-Marie Le Pen -- who reached the final stage of the recent presidential election -- to have influence in the results.

Warning that the outcome was still highly unpredictable, pollster Ipsos gave President Jacques Chirac's centre-right Rally for the Republic party a solid majority to govern after the June 16 second round with 339 to 381 seats in the 577-seat National Assembly lower house.

Its survey forecast just 174 to 216 seats for parties in the old coalition government of ex-premier Jospin, whose exit from politics after his bitter defeat in France's presidential election left the left wing leaderless and rudderless.

But both Ipsos and pollster CSA, which also forecasts a right-wing landslide, warned that the complex constituency-based vote was harder to predict than normal because Le Pen's resurgence had upset voting patterns.

EXTRA INFORMATION • In-Depth: France Decides 2002

Chirac's re-election on May 5 put him in a strong position, allowing him to name an interim centre-right government that could start putting policy into action while the left wing had to campaign on a questionable record and new promises.

Ipsos, which along with others failed to predict far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen's shock ousting of Jospin from the presidential runoff vote, said Le Pen's National Front (FN) would take between zero and four seats in the Assembly.

But the National Front was seen as an important deciding factor in many of the 577 seats.

Le Pen, who is not standing himself, predicted his party would be in many two-way duels or three-way contests.

"I am rather optimistic. The force on the rise is the FN," said Le Pen, who about 18 percent of the vote in the presidential runoff, to Chirac's 82 percent.

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Le Pen predicted at his final election news conference that his party, which has been scoring up to 15 percent of voting intentions in recent polls, would on Sunday surpass the 12.5 percent share of the vote needed to enter June 16 runoffs in some 350 constituencies.

Turnout is not expected to be high due to apathy caused by an assumed victory for the right-wing government appointed by Chirac that has scored solid popularity ratings.

Such a result would mean no repeat of the "cohabitation" accord that locked Chirac and Jospin in a frustrating power-sharing deal for the past five years that among other things brought an almost comic double act at summits with other European leaders such as Britain's Tony Blair.

It would also make Chirac the strongest president of the 43-year-old Fifth Republic because he already has a majority in the Senate upper house that has the right to amend legislation.

The interim government, led by Jean-Pierre Raffarin, has dominated headlines with tax cut pledges and tough new law and order policies aimed at reaching out to potential Le Pen voters.

Its key argument -- that a left-wing victory would ensure a repeat of the "cohabitation" that allowed Le Pen to lash out at a smug Paris elite -- appears to have been acknowledged by a majority of voters.

Chirac has appealed to the public for a big turnout amid concerns the far-right could win strong support.

"The object of democracy is not division and paralysis," Chirac told France-3 television. "We cannot indefinitely treat politics with derision."

A record abstention rate -- 28 percent -- in the first round of the presidential vote was among the factors that helped Le Pen move to the final round in the presidential vote.