Spirits lifted in France's bedraggled Socialist opposition today after voters handed it a handsome advantage in nationwide local elections, marking a first electoral setback for President Nicolas Sarkozy.

As Mr Sarkozy's ministers fanned out to limit the damage in next Sunday's run-off, Socialist leaders said that the first round swing in their favour showed that France had turned sour on the once invincible "Super-Sarko".

"This was a vote of censure. The President had better listen," said Ségolène Royal, the Socialist who was defeated by Mr Sarkozy in the presidential election last May.

François Hollande, the Socialists' outgoing leader, said the vote showed that "there is life in the old party yet".

After three presidential and two parliamentary defeats in succession and Mr Sarkozy's recruitment of leftwingers to his Cabinet, France's main leftwing party had been in a state of breakdown for months.

It still has to pick a new leader in the autumn - a post that Ms Royal covets - and it has yet to reconcile feuding wings, but its morale has been boosted by the prospect of holding power in most of France's biggest cities.

Mr Sarkozy's Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) did not suffer the tidal wave of rejection that some polls had suggested following the President's fall from grace this winter. However the Socialists captured nearly a dozen cities outright in the first round, including Rouen and the central town of Rodez which changed camps after more than a half century.

It kept the city of Lyon and Bertrand Delanoe, the Socialist's Mayor of Paris was given a big vote of confidence that should translate into a landslide in the capital on Sunday. Strasbourg is all but certain to fall to the Socialists. All eyes are turned on Toulouse and Marseilles, the two biggest southern cities, in which Conservative mayors risk losing their seats.

The brightest spot for the UMP was the outright victory of Alain Juppé, the Mayor of Bordeaux. Mr Juppé, a former Prime Minister, lost his parliamentary seat last summer and appeared for a time to be likely to lose his city post. A longstanding party rival of Mr Sarkozy, Mr Juppé said that the UMP's losses on Sunday reflected impatience over the slow pace of the president's promised French renaissance. "There's a moment when the fruit of reforms will appear. It takes time, we must resist," he said.

Mr Sarkozy, who is in a trough of unpopularity, has remained largely out of sight during the campaign, leaving the work to François Fillon, his popular Prime Minister.

The President is to make one public appearance this week to talk about immigration in Toulon, near the Marseille electoral battlefield. He is expected to order a minor Cabinet reshuffle and maintain the quieter, presidential image which he has been cultivating since his showy, impetuous, style sped his fall from favour during the winter. Carla Bruni, the Italian super-model whom he married on February 2, has barely been spotted for weeks.

In something of a replay of last spring's campaign, the joker in the run-off for the municipal voting is François Bayrou, the centrist candidate who came third in the presidential race. Deserted by many MPs of his old right-of-centre Union for French Democracy, Mr Bayrou founded a new centrist party, the MoDem. After arriving third in many towns, the MoDem finds itself split between right and left as the big parties seek alliances.

In a sign of the continuing disorder in the Socialist camp, M Royal called on his candidates to side with the Socialists, but Mr Hollande tried to rule out any alliances. Patrick Devedjian, head of Mr Sarkozy's party, called for negotiations with Mr Bayrou's party "city by city".

The centrist, who is fighting for the Mayor's job in the Pyrenean city of Pau, said: "I am convinced that this vote, which has largely gone the way of the left, is not a vote in support of the Socialists but a warning vote against those in power."

In a sign the Government still enjoys support, 14 of 23 ministers running for local office were elected in the first round. Four face an uphill battle in the run-off. Among those in trouble are Christine Lagarde, the Finance Minister, and Christine Albanel, the Culture Minister, who are both running for seats in Paris.

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