Joan of Arc hijacked by politics

The Joan of Arc statue emerges from a crowd of pro-Le Pen flags

PARIS, France (CNN) -- Right-wing presidential candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen held his party's traditional homage to French heroine Joan of Arc in Paris on May Day, as left-wingers marked Labour Day.

Police are out in their thousands to prevent any ideological clash overspilling into violence.

CNN's Jim Bittermann is on the streets of Paris watching events.

Bittermann: It's Le Pen's traditional demonstration, but this year, of course, he's a presidential candidate in the runoff vote against incumbent Jacques Chirac on Sunday, which has changed things a little bit.

Le Pen is renowned for his rousing pro-nationalist speeches when marking Joan of Arc days.

In fact, his candidacy has brought a lot more people out on the street. It has also produced four other demonstrations with people protesting against his candidacy and actually out there trying to oppose him in the presidency.

One anti-Le Pen protester told me she had gone out onto the street to "defend values."

"It is more than just politics," she added. "The issue is to defend our French and Republican values."

"People have abandoned their civic duties. They have abandoned politics, giving the impression that the country is devoid of the kind of people who made France.

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"I believe, in fact, now is the time when the issue is to defend this fragile thing that is democracy."

Another woman told me: "If we do not mobilise, they will grow. It's not just because of the vote on Sunday. They will keep growing and it is in everyday life that we have to fight them."

About 3,500 police officers are out here trying to keep the rival demonstrations separated.

The protests are actually in slightly different parts of town and they're taking place at slightly different times.

However, there's going to be an awful lot of people on the streets of Paris and the police are really concerned there could be some kind of problem. And Le Pen's support is growing, pollsters say.

One of the things that we got just a couple of days ago was the last poll, which does show that his support is increasing over what he had in the first -round of the election on April 21.

A giant screen outside Paris Opera House showed the speech

They're now putting his support as high as 29 percent of the electorate -- he polled 17 percent in the first-round.

We won't know exactly until those elections on Sunday, but there is some sense that for those elections he may get as high as 29 percent.

Le Pen himself said that if he didn't break 30 percent, it would be a failure for him. So he's fully expecting to do better than 29 percent.

It's very difficult to know. One of the things that the polls, pollsters tell us is that it's difficult to measure his support because people aren't honest when they talk about whether or not they support him.

They're kind of embarrassed about supporting him and so they don't tell the pollsters the truth, necessarily. The pollsters put in a fudge factor and the fudge factor isn't always accurate.

So they've been notoriously wrong in the past, as they were on April 21 when the elections were held here and they miscalled the elections very badly.