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FRENCH PRESIDENT EMMANUEL Macron and his far-right rival Marine Le Pen are preparing for two weeks of tough campaigning after they reached a run-off of presidential elections that promises to be far tighter than their encounter five years ago.
With more than 90% of the vote counted in the first round, projections showed Macron scoring 28-29%, with Le Pen on 22-24%.
As the top two finishers, they will progress to a second round on April 24.
Despite entering the campaign late and holding just one rally, Macron performed slightly better than expected and won immediate support from most of his defeated rivals ahead of the run-off.
“Make no mistake: nothing is decided,” he told cheering supporters at his campaign headquarters. “The debate that we are going to have over the next fortnight will be decisive for our country and Europe.”
He added: “When the far-right with all its forms is so high in our country, you can’t say that things are going well.”
Far-left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon came close to qualifying for the second round after a late surge gave him a projected score of around 21%.
The candidates for France’s traditional parties of government – the Socialists and the Republicans – were meanwhile on course for humiliating defeats and historic low scores.
Final results are expected today, while four new polls last night suggested a tight second round between Macron and Le Pen.
One by the Ifop-Fiducial group suggested Macron had a razor-thin winning margin of 51% versus 49%, but the average of them indicated a Macron victory by around 53% to 47%.
Macron announced last night that he would be out campaigning today in northern France, while Le Pen is set to meet her campaign team before resuming her months-long grassroots efforts in small towns and rural France later in the week.
‘Fundamental choice’
Bidding to be France’s first female president, Le Pen increased her first-round score from 2017 and she will pick up votes cast for her far-right rival Eric Zemmour in the second round.
Zemmour, an anti-Islam newcomer who failed in his bid to outflank Le Pen with a more radical programme, was projected to win around 7%.
Le Pen (53) said the run-off would present “a fundamental choice between two visions” with Macron representing “division, injustice and disorder… to the benefit of a few” against her plan for “social justice and protection” guaranteed by the nation state.
It would be a “choice of society and even of civilisation”, she said.
The election campaign has been overshadowed by the war in Ukraine, while surging prices of everyday goods have made the cost of living the overwhelming priority issue for voters.
The outcome of the two-stage election will have major implications for the European Union, which Le Pen says she wants to radically reform.
She has also said she wants to pull out of the joint military command of the US-led Nato military alliance.
Macron said Sunday: “I want a France that places itself in a strong Europe, that continues to form alliances with the world’s democracies to defend itself.
“Not a France which, once out of Europe, would only have the international alliance of populists and xenophobes as allies. That’s not us.”
Pivotal debate
A pivotal moment in the next stage of the campaign will come on April 20 when the two candidates are set to take part in a TV debate broadcast live on national television and watched by millions.
The final debate often has a crucial impact on the overall outcome, including in 2017 when Macron was widely seen as bettering a flustered Le Pen.
While her opponents accuse her of being divisive and racist, Le Pen has sought to project a more moderate image in this campaign and has focused on voters’ daily worries over inflation.
But Macron is expected to target her past proximity with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, her policies on the EU, as well as the cost of her economic programme that includes massive tax cuts.
He also floated the idea last night of a “large movement of political unity and action” and a “new method” of governing, which could see him invite rival parties to formally join his political movement.
Among the other candidates, Sunday’s vote spelled humiliation for Socialist Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, who was projected to win 1.8-2%, a historic low for the party which held the presidency just five years ago.
The vote for the right-wing Republicans party, headed by nominee Valerie Pecresse, also collapsed to an estimated 4.3-5%, down from 20% in 2017.
“The traditional parties have been smashed,” said Jerome Jaffre, a political scientist at Sciences Po university in Paris.
Greens candidate Yannick Jadot was also left disappointed with a projected score of under 5%.
Tax cuts
This marks the third time that a far-right candidate has made the run-off vote of a French presidential election, after Marine Le Pen’s campaign in 2017 and the breakthrough by her father Jean-Marie in 2002 that shocked France.
Macron, who came to power aged 39 as France’s youngest president, is bidding to be the first French president to win a second term since Jacques Chirac in 2002.
If he does, he would have five more years to push through reforms that would include raising the pension age to 65 from 62 and enacting further tax cuts for businesses in a bid to further reduce unemployment, currently at a 14-year low.
He would also seek to consolidate his position as the most influential leader in Europe after the departure of German chancellor Angela Merkel.
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Large scale immigration is also an issue .. and when you ignore peoples concerns you get Brexit or a swing to people who will listen.
- “She has also said she wants to pull out of the joint military command of the US-led Nato military alliance.”
This would basically mean Putin’s biggest victory since the start of the Ukraine war being not in Kyiv but in Paris, and the implications could be mindblowing.
It seems as if it could be down to Melenchon’s 21% – he’s told his supporters not to vote for Le Pen, but he didn’t tell them to vote for Macron. Many may simply stay home, and though it still seems most likely Macron will end up taking it, it’s within the margin of error meaning it’s essentially a toss-up.
I’m starting to think what the implications could be. France out of Nato? Then Turkey could follow, and then either a domino effect or Putin taking a gamble, closing off the narrow corridor between Poland and Lithuania, and attacking the Baltic states.
And then even if Len Pen took Frexit off the table, she’s talking about ‘reform’ in such a way we may still end up with some form of ‘Frexit’. I wonder what the Brexiteers are making of all this, but I don’t fancy taking a look at the Daily Express, as it may make for an even more depressing read than it usually does.
@Mick Tobin: to be honest, France out of Nato wouldn’t be a bad thing. What we need is a true European army and a more United Europe
@Michael Legris: Well, the more united Europe is firstly not what you’d be getting in that scenario, rather the opposite, and secondly France is precisely the powerful military one would need. With the UK due to Brexit things have already turned weaker, and for the Germans to tool up will take time.
It’s about the fracturing of a security arrangement, or the prospect of it, that couldn’t possibly come at a worse time. I would fully expect Putin to take advantage of that and escalate, with potentially disastrous consequences.
Incidentally I looked on OddsChecker to see what the bookies are making of it, and it’s 1/7 Macron vs 5/1 Le Pen (which translates into roughly 13% vs 87% probabilities). In other words, the bookies apparently consider a Le Pen victory much more likely, and they’re frequently more accurate than polls. So I don’t think any of this is looking very good.
@Michael Legris: What we need is neutrality, not more cartels for the arms dealers of Europe and the USA.
@Mick Tobin: You get better odds on the candidate least likely to win, no?
@Mick Tobin: you have that the wrong way round. The odds have Macron as heavy favourite to win
@Mick Tobin: firstly she’s decidedly unlikely to win. Secondary even if she did she wouldn’t have the political capital to enact what she’d like. As for Russia attacking the Baltic states? That leads to war with NATO which they’d badly lose if their military was what we thought it to be. It’s not. They’d lose even worse now.
@Michael Legris: yes it is. We don’t need an EU army and France leaving leads to more not less division.
@Declan J Walsh: Thank you Declan, some neurons must have misfired.
@Mick Tobin: Sorry for the cut&paste but there’s nothing new about France withdrawing from NATO – “On 21 June 1963, France also withdrew its Atlantic and Channel fleets from NATO command. The rift deepened on 10 March 1966, when General de Gaulle officially announced that France intended to withdraw from the Alliance and demanded that all NATO bases be removed from French territory”
The world seem to have gone crazy and it looks like the democracy we once knew will not last forever.
@Claude Saulnier: democracy is very delicate isn’t it? Throughout history it’s been there and gone many times in many forms, but it’s moments have been fleeting, they’re far outweighed by authoritarian regimes, totalitarian regimes, monarchies and Imperial rule.
French voters are unhappy with the social-economic condition of their country. The yellow vest agitation indicates urban-rural and class divides in the regions. Many voters are registering a protest against image politicians. Something similar has been happening in Ireland.
@Garreth Byrne: except that LePen is all image. She worked as a lawyer for a few years, but apart from that has been a professional politician, never actually running anything, other perhaps then the party she inherited from her father
If people you disagree with can get elected there’s something wrong with democracy.
The Le Pen is mightier than the sword
It’s possible that enough leftist voters will vote for Le Pen, not because they actually support her, but just to protest and wipe the smug world economic forum grin off of Macrons face, now that their preferred candidate has been eliminated.
The predominant feature of the first round votes is a consolidation of voters around three blocks, each of which secured a higher percentage of votes than in 2017. On either side of Macron in the centre, there is a populist/extreme right, led by Le Pen, and a populist /extreme left, led by Melenchon. The two traditional centre right and centre left parties have been squeezed between these three. While the PS had already suffered this in 2017, in this election the biggest drop in support was for les Republicans, who went from close to 20% of the votes in 2017 to less than 5% this time.
Despite Melenchon calling for not a single vote from his supporters to go to Le Pen, their programmes overlap, notably on NATO and on some social issues.
I hope and pray that Macron wins. Democracy is walking a thin line these days. If Le Pen wins, it will be another nail in the coffin of Democracy. I would not believe one word that LePen says, it will be a ploy for her to get into The Presidental Palace through lies.
Seriously France? You can do better. Nothing is worth risking a return to the far right.
They should actually have a duel with pistols just like in the old days
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