Nicolas Sarkozy was right. The turnout for the first round, around 84 per cent and nearly a record, was a victory for French democracy.
And the way the votes were cast was, in the end, a victory for French opinion polls, too. Despite my own reservations - small samples, telephone polling to land lines only, Dom Toms excluded, so many people undecided or refusing to say - the pollsters can hold their heads very high this morning.
Sarkozy, Royal, Bayrou, Le Pen. Wasn't that the order in which the main four candidates appeared in most if not all polls? The gaps may have finished up more pronounced but that can be accounted for by acceptable margins for error.
What it also means is that on this occasion, braced for the worst after the events of 2002, we worried needlessly about the menace of Jean-Marie Le Pen.
It may be, as I suggested on BBC Radio Ulster this morning, that many instinctive Front National supporters saw enough of what they wanted in Sarko's manifesto to make a Le Pen vote pointless. But it doesn't matter; he was given a bloody nose and will surely not be up for another go as an 83-year-old in 2012.
Where we go from here seems straightforward enough. Sarko coasts to second round victory.
Ségo has only one way of stopping that. Assuming that the early polling reflects French opinion better than the fun poll to my left - 54/46 in Sarko's favour, and four fifths of voters in no doubt about their choice - there can be no other outcome.
But François Bayrou has six or seven million votes to play with. He cannot make his supporters vote this way or that in the playoff, of course. But he can give them a useful enough steer.
I never bought the idea of a Bayrou victory in the way that some rather silly commentators did. But he now comes into his own in terms of influence; an endorsement from him, if it went Royal's way, would make matters very interesting.
In short, she now has to come to a deal with him. That means two fingers, if needs be, up at Fabius and others on the Left who dismiss the man as just another right-winger with whom no self-respecting socialist would have any truck.
Socialism diluted to social democracy, bringing with it the possibility of an attractive united front for the coming legislative elections, must strike commonsense PS supporters as preferable to another five years of looking longingly at power from the outside.
Sarkozy is the clear favourite, and I am pretty much resigned to him winning. But it is up to Royal and her campaign team to decide whether they are prepared to settle for honourable defeat, having avoided the first round banana skin, or turn May 6 into a genuinely close run thing.
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