In 2007, Bayrou won his constituency against all comers, getting 37 % in the first round (PS 23%), and beat the PS candidate in the second round, 61 to 39.

So the answer to that question is no. The relevance is in the first round : the absence of a PS candidate might ensure that he's not knocked out by the UMP. But that's rather condescending; I don't think he's in any danger on his home turf.

All the more so if the UMP endorses Nihous. That's a way of throwing the election to Bayrou without doing so explicitly; to avoid insulting the future, as they say.

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}