“Sarkozy Loses” is the headline up on the Drudge Report over a dispatch of France24 with the early results of the first round of voting in the presidential election. It shows the socialist, Francois Holland, at around 29% and President Sarkozy at around 27%, which means the two of them will go into a runoff in which Jean-Marie Le Pen’s daughter, Marine, will play an outsized role. She was the big winner in the first round in the sense that her showing, at 18.5%, not only in third place but three or four percentage  points stronger than the polls had been indicating just before the first round. Francois Bayrou came in at 9%, significantly lower than the 13% that had been indicated in the polls. The ragtag fringes of the right and left held no surprises.

We’re happy to be able to report that our erstwhile correspondent in France, Michel Gurfinkiel, isn’t backing off from suggestion that President Sarkozy could still emerge with a second term. He seemed relatively alone in stressing that point before the vote, but now the wires and the various papers are echoing his line. Mr. Gurfinkiel cautions us that he’s not making a hard forecast; not all votes are counted yet. He does say the Le Pen vote will be “crucial,” as he put it in his latest telegram. He notes that the socialists have already started to woo the Le Pen voters openly. “I doubt they will succeed,” he writes. He adds that most of the present Le Pen voters are “former conservatives” who were disappointed with the classic Right. “They will not support the Left, nor suffer a Leftwing victory.”

Plus, Mr. Gurfinkiel writes, the other Le Pen voters are “former communists or socialists” who moved right and “who see extra-European immigration as the main reason for their economic hardship and the disintegration of French society: they are not going to support M. Hollande, who says he will grant voting franchise to foreign residents.” He says that Mme. Le Pen will have a say but “doesn’t own her followers and sympathizers’ votes. If she tells them to vote for Hollande, she is dead. If she says she doesn’t take sides, most of them will understand they must prevent a Leftwing victory. If she suggests the Right is just slightly better than the Left, they will see it as a full fledged endorsement.”

What M. Gurfinkiel is predicting is that something like 60 % of Mme. Le Pen’s voters in the first round will support Monsieur Sarkozy, while but 10 % will switch to Monsieur Hollande, and 30% will abstain. Monsieur Bayrou’s voters, he thinks, will not support the Left, as those who were prepared to do so already switched in the first round. The rest of the Bayrou voters will vote for Monsieur Sarkozy. Mr. Gurfinkiel writes that things may not yet be entirely clear. But writes he: “If I am right, we may have on May 6, in very broad terms: Hollande : 29% socialists + 12 % Melanchon + 4 % Leftwingers + 2% Le Pen + 1% Bayrou. Total :  48 % more or less. Sarkozy: 27% conservatives + 2% Dupont-Aignan + 16% Le Pen + 8% Bayrou. Total:  52 % more or less.”

Mr. Gurfinkiel cautions us that the pollster CSA gives much better odds to Monsieur Hollande, predicting he’ll win the presidency with 56% of the vote, and ascribing to him a much better share of both the Le Pen and Bayrou votes. On verra. Two weeks of hard campaigning are still ahead of both candidates. The thing that gets us about all this is that France raised up, in Monsieur Sarkozy, a president who was more pro-American than any in our adult lifetime. He wasn’t perfect by any means. But what a refreshing change from President Chirac. It strikes us that the change was an opportunity for a dynamic American leader with a genuine strategy for Europe to make a connection, to work it, and to build some excitement. Somehow that eluded our current president. There may be good reasons for this; the French are nothing if not difficult. But if the French center is lost to the socialists, there will be those asking “Who lost France?” And what is Mr. Obama going to say? All the more reason to hope that Mr. Gurfinkiel is right in his guesstimates of the outcome of the second round.