PARIS (AP) - French voters turned out in force Sunday to choose a new president in one of the country's most suspense-filled elections in recent times, after a frenzied campaign by a dozen contenders left voters undecided but eager for a say.
Early turnout reached levels not seen since 1981, soaring in the first four hours of voting to one-third of France's 44.5 million electorate, the Interior Ministry said.
Only four candidates, including the conservative front-runner Nicolas Sarkozy and Socialist Segolene Royal, had a real chance of being among the top two to reach a final round of voting May 6. Francois Bayrou, a legislator with farm roots, was a wild card.
The new president will succeed Jacques Chirac, who ends 12 years as head of state at the close of his second mandate, and must revive a large but listless economy and bring alienated young Muslims into French life.
At least one-third of the electorate has said it was undecided ahead of the vote, and their ballots could skew soundings from opinion polls.
"There will, indeed, be a big change after the elections," said 80-year-old Colette Martin, voting in Versailles, west of Paris. "Another generation will come to power."
All three leading contenders are in their fifties with backgrounds that set them apart from the old guard political elite. Each has promised a new approach to politics and each has vowed to change the status quo. Royal is the first woman to become a serious contender for the French presidency.
The country was also watching Jean-Marie Le Pen, the extreme right leader who places fourth in polls and who unexpectedly reached the second round in 2002. The anti-immigrant candidate who blames newcomers for France's problems has promised another "big surprise" this year.
The other contenders range from the anti-globalization sheep farmer Jose Bove to Trotskyist Arlette Laguiller.
Sarkozy, the former interior minister who has led polls for months, frightens some voters with his tough-talking ways. Some also fear he could barrel France into a full market economy at the expense of coveted protections in the workplace and other areas of life. Such traits are deemed qualities by supporters of Sarkozy, who say France needs a leader who won't mince words.
"I am waiting calmly," said Sarkozy, voting in posh Neuilly-Sur-Seine, just west of Paris, where he presided as mayor.
"What is important is that the French turn out in large numbers to vote and that this be a great moment in French democracy," said Sarkozy, who has the powerful Union for a Popular Movement, the governing party, behind him.
Eliane de Pouzolz, 60, a retired secretary in the poor Paris suburb of Clichy-Sous-Bois, where three weeks of countrywide youth rioting started in 2005, reflected concerns of voters who despair that, despite the promises, France will refuse to change.
"Politicians talk a lot but nothing ever changes. France is stuck," she said.
Bayrou, trying to open a middle course between France's left-right divide, is the only one of the top three candidates to have run for president in the last election in 2002, when he finished with a lowly 6.8 per cent of the vote.
Now, with his close, third-place showing in polls, he threatens to steal votes from the Socialist candidate, as do five other leftists with no hope of winning, and from the right.
In Conflans-St.-Honorine, on the Seine River west of Paris, many voters said their choice was determined by the desire to ensure that Sarkozy is not elected - a scenario also being played out in rough suburbs.
"He is a wonderful orator," Samuel Verdier, a 19-year-old first-time voter, said of Sarkozy. "But I feel that he is extreme-right and that he just doesn't admit it."
Verdier voted for Bayrou instead.
