PARIS - In a huge upset, extreme-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen qualified yesterday to face President Jacques Chirac in the runoff for French president, according to media projections based on exit polls.

Le Pen, who virulently opposes immigration, was projected to place second by all three major French networks, beating Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, who was in third place.

The projected result was seen as a political earthquake. For months, polls had consistently projected that Chirac, a Conservative, and Jospin, a Socialist, would be the top two finishers in yesterday's first round of voting.

A shocked Jospin announced he would retire from political life immediately after the presidential election, which ends with the May 5 runoff.

Yesterday's first round of voting featured a record 16 candidates and an abstention rate estimated at 28 percent - the highest in nearly four decades.

Le Pen is founder and head of the National Front party, which historically has blamed immigrants for high unemployment and urban violence. He is notorious for once describing the Holocaust as "a detail" of history. He has denied he is anti-Semitic.

Le Pen, 73, has played a central role as kingmaker in past presidential elections, with a typical score of 15 percent. He placed third in the last two races. This is his fourth presidential campaign.

During the campaign, Chirac denied allegations that he met personally with Le Pen between the two rounds of the 1988 presidential election.

France has been governed since 1981 by Chirac's mainstream right or the Socialists on the left. Centrists held power in previous terms.

For Jospin, a political heir of the late Socialist President Francois Mitterrand who has served as prime minister since 1997, it was a crushing blow.

The three French TV networks based their projections on exit polls conducted by three top polling firms: Sofres, IPSOS and CSA.

The firms estimated variously that Chirac had won 19.8 to 20 percent of the vote; Le Pen 17 to 17.9 percent; and Jospin 16 to 16.1 percent.

Le Pen, speaking just after the projections were announced when polls closed at 8 p.m., said on French television that he had predicted the result.

"It's a great flash of lucidity by the French people," he said. Neither Chirac nor Jospin had an immediate comment.

He attributed his apparent victory to the deep concern among French voters over rising crime - a concern that, he said, hadn't been addressed by the government.

"There is a dramatic state of (public) insecurity in our country," he said, "and those responsible for it, the people have understood, are Jospin and Chirac."

Under the French constitution, if no candidate wins outright with more than 50 percent of the votes cast, the two with the most votes face each other in the runoff. The runoff is scheduled for May 5.

French people in the streets expressed astonishment when they heard of the media projections.

"That's not possible," said Agathe Romon, 17, a student in Paris. "It's unbelievable. We were all expecting a duel between Jospin and Chirac."