A series of militant killings has defied predictions it would shake up France's presidential race, where Socialist challenger Francois Hollande is still just ahead of incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy. Many observers predicted Al-Qaeda militant Mohamed Merah's murder of seven people, including Jewish children and Muslim troops, would benefit right-wing Sarkozy, who could assume his statesman's mantle to unite a shocked France. While the president had a national role to play at victim funerals and memorials, his opponents remained in the background and it would have been unseemly for them to seek to capitalize on the killing spree. An opinion poll by Harris Interactive on Wednesday said that 65 percent of French approved of Sarkozy's attitude following the Merah crisis, and 59 percent had the same opinion of Hollande. But only 37 percent approved of the attitude of far right leader Marine Le Pen, who was at pains to link extremism with Muslim immigration during and after the crisis and had also been expected to get a bump in the polls. Since police killed Merah in a shootout at his Toulouse flat on March 22, Sarkozy and Hollande remain neck-and-neck in the first round on April 22 with slightly less than 30 percent of votes each.
