By
The Associated Press
PARIS - Two major polling firms put the Socialists well ahead of President Jacques Chirac's conservatives in the race Sunday for Paris City Hall, which has been a bastion of the right for a quarter-century.
An exit poll by CSA said the Socialists, led by Bertrand Delanoe, had won at least 82 seats on city council, the minimum needed to take the mayor's office. CSA said the number could be as high as 95.
Another firm, Ipsos, reported that the Socialists had won at least 86 seats, while the right had won no more than 77. The exit polls were in line with one by Sofres, which had indicated earlier that the Socialists were ahead.
Official results from the Interior Ministry were not expected until early Monday. The mayor, to be chosen Friday, needs 82 votes from the 163-member council.
Paris - where Chirac served as mayor for 18 years - is the plum of this round of municipal elections, with the race between Delanoe, who led in a first round of voting March 11, and Philippe Seguin of Chirac's conservative Rally for the Republic party, known as RPR.
The city halls of Paris, Lyon and Toulouse are the real tests for the staying power of Chirac's right ahead of next year's presidential and legislative elections, and for the ability of Prime Minister Lionel Jospin's left to gain political ground - as it did with its overwhelming victory in 1997 legislative elections.
Chirac and Jospin may face each other in the presidential contest.
In Toulouse, Philippe Douste-Blazy of the right won over Socialist Francois Simon, 53 percent to 47 percent, according to final poll results by Sofres.
Jospin's camp also suffered setbacks in Avignon and Blois, where two high-profile ministers lost. Education Minister Jack Lang, a Socialist standard-bearer, lost his mayor's post in Blois to the right by 34 votes. Labor Minister Elisabeth Guigou lost, by a wide margin, her battle for the Avignon mayor's office to Marie-Jose Roig of the RPR.
In Lyon, France's second-largest city, the race remained tight, but first estimates showed the vote evenly split between the left and the right.
The left also lost the mayor's office in Rouen.
Early signs in Paris were good for the left, but the Socialists were not yet prepared to open the champagne.
"There is still a lot of uncertainty ... lessons will be drawn over the course of the night," Francois Hollande, Socialist First Secretary, told French television.
Estimated voter turnout nationwide was higher than last week's first round of municipal voting, with 69 percent of the 40 million eligible voters going to the polls, according to Sofres and CSA. The rate last week was 53 percent.
In Paris, Delanoe, 50, a virtually unknown senator a year ago, hoped to pluck away Chirac's political bastion from contender Seguin, 57, former RPR leader with a national profile.
While serving as mayor, until 1995, Chirac built his neo-Gaullist RPR into a powerful political machine that became the main rightist force in France. The RPR's grip on Paris has been so complete that, in the 1980s, the party twice captured all 20 arrondissements, or districts.
Delanoe, who took 31 percent of the vote in the first round, was counting on the Green Party, which had 12 percent of the vote.
Seguin came out of the first round with 26 percent of the vote, but in the past week persuaded incumbent Mayor Jean Tiberi ñ who got 14 percent of the vote ñ to withdraw from some districts.
Tiberi, expelled from the RPR for refusing to bow out of the race, is hobbled by kickback scandals that allegedly date to the days of Chirac.
