In the tightest contest in a generation, Sarkozy's photoopportunity on a bull farm in the Camargue showed the lengths to which he is prepeared to go in his mission to convince the French people that he has changed.

Today, as the French go to the polls to choose their next president, the 52year-old son of Hungarian immigrants stands on the threshold of realising his burning ambition. But the question troubling the voters is whether they can believe him when he claims to be the man who can reunite France. He is, after all, the controversial former interior minister who set the Paris suburbs alight by describing rioters as "scum" and threatening to clean them off the streets with a power hose.

But questions abound, too, about the presidential qualities of his main competitor, the Socialist candidate Segolene Royal, who is bidding to become France's first woman head of state, her finger on the nuclear button.

"Sarkozy is the better candidate, " a Socialist party campaigner confided in a moment of candour.

The debate about their suitability as the successor to Jacques Chirac, and how they plan to tackle the woes of the ailing "French model" have created a well of uncertainty among the electorate. The number of floating voters has remained exceedingly high, and on the eve of the poll more than a third of the 44million entitled to vote said they were undecided.

Their uncertainty opened the door to Francois Bayrou, the centrist who has disturbed the two-horse race between Sarkozy and Royal by gaining around 20% of voter support. And Jean-Marie Le Pen . . . who provided another of the campaign's striking images by arriving at an agricultural show in a cow-hide Stetson . . . remains a potent threat.

Credited with 14% of the vote, the 78year-old extreme-right firebrand is confident that he can once again create a surprise by gaining a place in the decisive run-off vote on 6 May.

After 12 years of economic decline under Chirac, the French want change.

The election, which will produce a generational change at the top with a president in his or her 50s, is expected to produce the highest turnout since the election of the Socialist, Francois Mitterrand, in 1981.

The Socialists are confident that they have put behind them the nightmare of 2002, when the then prime minister, Lionel Jospin, was knocked out in the first round by Le Pen. In that contest, Socialist voters stayed away en masse, leading to the highest first-round abstention rate in more than 40 years.

This time, there are no such worries, and turnout in today's first round could be a respectable 80%