French pollsters, lambasted for failing to predict far-right leader Mr Jean-Marie Le Pen qualifying for Sunday's presidential run-off, are proceeding with extreme caution in the campaign's final week.
Few opinion polls have appeared since Mr Le Pen stunned France's political establishment with his first round triumph on April 21st, forcing Socialist Prime Minister Mr Lionel Jospin out of the race for the Elysee.
Mr Le Pen will face incumbent Mr Jacques Chirac in Sunday's decisive run-off vote.
The latest poll, conducted by the IPSOS polling institute and released yesterday, forecast a wide margin of victory for Mr Chirac with 74 to 81 per cent of the ballots, leaving Le Pen with 19 to 26 per cent.
A second IPSOS poll is due to be released on Friday.
But as not a single poll predicted Mr Le Pen would beat Mr Jospin in the first round, some institutes have been unwilling to go out on a limb on run-off forecasts, and media organisations are thinking twice before using polling data.
Critics charged that opinion polls ahead of the first round helped Mr Le Pen to victory. By leading voters to believe Mr Chirac and Mr Jospin were shoe-ins for the final round, they bolstered the record abstention rate of 28.4 per cent, allowing Mr Le Pen to squeeze through.
The BVA group said Friday it would not publish any further polls until after the election, citing fears it could not ensure "the right degree of credibility".
Public television station France 2 decided not to use any polls before the vote, as did radio station RTL, the newspaper Liberation reported at the weekend. News channel LCI said it would use "as few as possible".
But an official at private television station M6 defended use of polling information, saying voters needed to take responsibility for their choices and stop blaming the institutes.
AFP