Just finished watching the TV debate between Ségolène and Nicolas on France 2 (nice webstream). I was quite surprised by the aggressive style of Mrs Royal, putting Mr Sarkozy in a slightly favourable position of defending his positions and achievements. Personally, she didn’t impress, while he gave a show of self-confidence and presidentialsm. Sorry Ségolène, the performance had its good moments, but you should have played softer to my mind.
Europe was given 10 minutes of slogans, nothing of real notice. Typical referendum vs. mini-treaty debate and Turkey.
My bet would be: Sarkozy will be more presidential than De Gaulle (as noted by FT recently) giving the French a tough lesson of economics, while Segolene might end up with a right-wing parliament, thus unable to put in place her few reforms promised. If something goes wrong with Sarkozy while he’s in power, he can do serious damage, with Royal we know already now she will be harmless. And perhaps we can even get a decent chance for a start of the reform of the French republic.
Meanwhile BBC reported 80% of voters in France have decided already. But I wonder: if the audience was really so high, this might change. The change of tone of Ségolène was noticeable.
ADD: The complete transcript of the debate in French was put on-line by Liberation. Very prompt.