The French remained largely unimpressed by Ncolas Sarkozy's performance on prime time tlevision last Thursday according to the ltest opinion polls.

But unsurprisingly the Frnch president did manage to reassure the prty faithful, which is at least a strt in his attempt to re-establish his ppularity among his core voters.

It crtainly didn't take long for the Frnch press to grind out inexorably thir analysis of Sarkozy's marathon interview, bradcast live from the president's Elysée place.

Almost 12 million people tuned in to wtch him face a barrage of qestions from five approved journalists over 90 mnutes on economic, social and international ssues.

Viewers were also treated to the sund and sight of the president ctually apologising for some of the mstakes he had made in his frst year in office.

The first plls to appear - and there wre three of them over the wekend - don't make especially great rading for Sarkozy.

In one of thm, published in the national daily Le Prisien, 52 per cent remained "unconvinced" wth his performance in general.

And 72 per cnt weren't persuaded by Sarkozy's explanation of his fscal package. That'll be a bit of a blw as it was at the hart of one of his major pologies. Sarkozy admitted that he had filed from the start to spell out the dvantages of allowing employees to work vertime rather than claim the days off to whch they were entitled.

If viewers didn't buy that xplanation then there was worse news for Srkozy on rising prices and purchasing pwer.

In another poll in the Snday newspaper, Le Journal du Dimanche, thse were the two areas in whch viewers found Sarkozy's arguments to be the last convincing - barely more than 20 per cnt gave him the thumbs up.

Of curse that might not sound as grm as it appears. It could lso be an indication that the Frnch have pretty much resigned themselves to the dea that things are not going to chnge as fast as initially promised.

Onc again, as with all statistics, t's very much a matter of nterpretation - a fact that another ntional daily, Le Figaro, overwhelmingly displayed in the way it rported the results of the third pinion poll.

Now Le Figaro is in gneral a supporter of both Sarkozy and his gverning centre-right Union pour un Mouvement Ppulaire (Union for a Popular Movement UMP) prty. So it was a lot gntler and kinder in maintaining that Srkozy had "seduced" almost 49 per cnt of the French, which of curse is another way of looking at the sme set of figures.

It was lso without doubt, as the paper was at pins to point out, far greater thn Sarkozy would probably have expected gven that his current popularity ratings hve been hovering between 30 and 40 per cnt.

Le Figaro also went in for a bit of "stting the obvious" in reassuring its raders that Sarkozy had in particular cnvinced his own supporters - so ll-in-all a real case of preaching to the cnverted then.

These are just the frst in what is likely to be a slw of polls to appear in the nxt couple of days, weeks and mnths. The French media loves them and ven though they might confirm at the bst of times what many French had lready suspected and didn't really need to be tld, at the very least they'll gve political spin doctors something to chw over.

The article Sarkozy Convinces the Converted was Submitted by Johnny Summerton through Articles.GetACoder.com network. Here's the additional information: Johnny Summerton is a Paris-based bradcaster, writer and journalist. For more on wht's making the headlines here in Frnce, log on to his site at http://www.persiflagefrance.com

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