WHETHER he is discussing teenage contraception at a round-table with women's groups on a housing estate, or debating tax policy with small-business owners, François Hollande, the Socialist presidential candidate, does a good job of appearing sympathetic and solemn. Pen and paper at the ready, he furrows his brow, jots down notes and throws out the odd pledge: yes, teenage minors should have access to free contraception; yes, small companies should pay a lower tax rate than big firms.

With just over a week before the presidential election's first round on April 22nd, Mr Hollande has, against the odds, turned himself into a serious-looking candidate. Polls may place him neck-and-neck in the first round with Nicolas Sarkozy, the right-wing incumbent, but they consistently make him the favourite to win the run-off on May 6th, by between six and ten points. Yet although he stirred crowds by declaring war on “the world of finance” at his opening rally in January, Mr Hollande still fails to inspire. His campaign poster gives him the air of a provincial bank manager. Crowds at his rallies, in municipal gyms in eastern France or flanked by palm trees under the Mediterranean sun, applaud warmly, but not wildly.

Mr Hollande was never the Socialists' natural candidate. Many of those running his campaign expected to be working for Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former IMF boss, before he was felled by a sex scandal last year. Raised in Normandy by a doctor and a social worker, Mr Hollande has spent his entire career inside the Socialist Party, running it for 11 years until 2008. He has never had a ministerial job, and is currently president of Corrèze, a small rural department. Despite his bold plan for a 75% top tax rate, he is seen by many as a woolly, consensus-seeking moderate. Within the party, he was once nicknamed “Flanby” (a brand of caramel pudding).

So Mr Hollande has tried to turn the election into a vote of confidence on Mr Sarkozy's presidency. He ticks off the black marks of the past five years: public debt up, unemployment up, industrial jobs gone. He mocks Mr Sarkozy's effort to promise to be a “different” president. “Morning, noon and night, the outgoing president comes up with a new idea…he just forgot to put any of them in place over the past five years!” cried Mr Hollande in Nice. Against Mr Sarkozy's divisive politics, he promises unity; against his extravagance, he vows to be a “normal” president.

This approach has appeal. “Hollande is less arrogant, less divisive and listens to people,” comments Christophe Estrada de Tourniel, a teacher in Reims, as Mr Hollande works the crowd near the cathedral. “It's the different style of governing that is attractive.” The trouble is that, with Mr Sarkozy energising the right, this is not enough to quicken the electorate's pulse.

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Into the left's emotional void has stormed Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a former Socialist senator and one-time Trotskyite who is now running for president, backed by the Communists. Over the past six weeks Mr Mélenchon's fiery speeches, clenched fists and Utopian promises have captured the left's imagination and made Mr Hollande look pale by comparison. With a nod to 1789, he promises a “civic insurrection”, withdrawal from NATO, a 20% rise in the minimum wage, a 100% top tax rate and retirement for all at 60. It goes down a storm. His rallies in public squares, including at the Bastille, end with the singing of the “Internationale”.

As Mr Mélenchon's poll numbers have climbed, sometimes putting him in third place, Mr Hollande's have dropped. But the hot-blooded left-winger may have reached his ceiling. His vote is in some ways a romantic protest before reality hits. “People say ‘My God, we're going to have to vote Hollande so let's have a last fling with Mélenchon',” says Valérie Pécresse, Mr Sarkozy's budget minister. Still, this puts Mr Mélenchon in a strong bargaining position for the second round.

Mr Hollande says he will not negotiate between the two rounds. But he will need Mr Mélenchon's support for the run-off, particularly to ward off abstention. At what price? Mr Mélenchon has no parliamentary party, but the Communists may demand uncontested constituencies at the parliamentary election in June. He may try to extract ministerial jobs or policy concessions. Either way, Mr Hollande faces hard bargaining with an uncompromising leftist just when he needs to appeal to the moderate centre to secure a majority.