The blonde daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen is one of the few far-right candidates to make it through to the final round of France's legislative elections on Sunday - a poll which most believe President Jacques Chirac's allies will win by a landslide.

The game is not over - if the abstention rate is even a little lower in the second round then the situation could change dramatically

Dominique Strauss-Kahn Socialists

The 33-year-old Marine, who learnt the political trade by accompanying her father to meetings and rallies, is standing in the depressed northern town of Lens against a Socialist candidate, whom she is not expected to beat.

The National Front (FN) picked up just 11.3% of the vote in the first round last Sunday; only in 37 of the country's 577 constituencies did its candidates cross the 12.5% threshold required to go through to the second round.

Me Le Pen had hoped the party would contest at least 300, and win enough seats to take on a powerbroker role in parliament.

It is now expected to win two places at most.

Women's work

Mr Le Pen blamed his party's poor performance on the the large number of female candidates it fielded - it was one of the few to come close to meeting a law stipulating that 50% of candidates should be female.

Mr Chirac's coalition and the Socialists did not comply with this rule.

However, the male candidates of the FN hardly fared much better - with several prominent figures flopping badly.

Carl Lang, number three in the party hierarchy, crashed out in what had been seen as a far-right stronghold, while Mr Le Pen's deputy only scraped through to the second round.

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Miss Le Pen responded to the result by lambasting a voting system which does not allocate seats on the basis of the total number votes cast nationally.

"The voting system is unfair and undemocratic - National Front voters know in advance they won't gain representation," she said. "I can tell you now that doesn't exactly motivate them to go out to the polling stations."

The FN believes a record abstention rate - 36% - hit them harder than other parties.

But with so few candidates now through to the second round, correspondents say it is hardly worth the party's while continuing to campaign.

Crime and punishment

The Socialists also did badly in the first round, capturing 36%, compared to almost 44% for Mr Chirac's right-wing coalition.

The party has spent the last week trying to convince those voters who stayed away from the ballot boxes to cast a ballot on Sunday.

The party appears resigned to the likelihood that it will lose control of the parliament to the Mr Chirac's UMP coalition, but is hoping to remain a key force in the house.

"The game is not over," said senior Socialist Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

"If the abstention rate is even a little lower in the second round, and that's what I'm calling on leftist voters to give us, then the situation could change dramatically."

Polling institutes currently give the UMP a 10% lead over the left-wing in constituencies where the two parties are standing against each other in the second round.

Surveys have also shown high approval for the central planks of UMP policy: a string of tax cuts and a tough, albeit expensive, stance on crime.

Even though the FN has flopped, it is widely believed that Mr Le Pen has been successful in whipping up French fears about crime, and placing them at the heart of national politics - at least for the foreseeable future.