Affluent Frenchmen with university degrees support socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, while those of modest education and income prefer Gaullist President Jacques Chirac.
French people feel threatened by the European integration that the socialists espouse.
They see it as a vector of economic liberalism and mass immigration. At the end of November, the two leaders were running neck and neck, with Mr Chirac receiving a confidence rating of 54 per cent and Mr Jospin 53 per cent. Mr Jospin knows that the left's new upper middle class following is precarious. They place their hope in finance minister Laurent Fabius, an economic liberal, to adopt unsocialist measures, including private pension funds and the privatisation of state-owned companies. He demanded the immediate banning of meat and bonemeal in animal feed, and wider BSE testing.