The outgoing head of state Emmanuel Macron, as expected, won the first round of the presidential election in France, followed by the leader of the French far-right Marine Le Pen, with whom he will face in the second and decisive round on 24 April, a battle that is, however, heralded as much more contentious than in 2017.
Macron secured between 28.1 and 29.5% of the vote, while Le Pen secured between 23.3 and 24.4%, according to the calculations of four polling institutes (IFOP-Fiducial, OpinionWay, Elabe, Ipsos). However, the Agence France-Presse estimates that the outgoing president secured a little more, around 30%, after a strange election campaign, overshadowed in turn by the pandemic of the new coronavirus and the war in Ukraine.
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Battle for the next day
The two gladiators immediately called for rallying. Macron thanked those of the unfortunate candidates who called on their voters to guarantee that the far right would be defeated. Le Pen called on "all those who did not vote" for the outgoing centrist liberal president to "join" her.
Macron said he was ready to create a new structure to rally, regardless of "differences", what he called a "broad political movement of unity and action."
"Macron is president!" shouted, waving French and European flags, a thousand or so enthusiastic supporters last night, relieved by the president's performance, counting "and one, and two, and five more years".
Radical left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon came in third, with around 20 percent, not much lower than that of Ms. Le Pen, according to polling companies.
Macron victory seen in second round
Ahead of the second round, early polls see Macron prevailing, either marginally (51-49% according to IFOP-Fiducial) or outright (54-46% according to Ipsos), but in any case much less triumphantly than in 2017, when he received more than 66% of the vote.
"What will be decided on April 24 is a choice for society and culture", pitting "two visions" for the country's "future" against each other, Le Pen threw in, pledging to "restore France's national sovereignty" and "restore order".
"Let's not get carried away, nothing is decided," Macron warned for his part, "the dialogue we will have over the next 15 days will be decisive for our country and for Europe."
The gladiators have two major challenges ahead of them. The first is the abstention rate, which approached 30%. The second is attracting the votes of the undecided, at a time when many French people view Mr Macron's policies, for some of them the "president of the rich", with distrust as indignation.
The French left without exception came out against the far-right candidate, with Melanson leading the way. "Not a single vote should go to Marine Le Pen," he repeated three times to his supporters. Communists, socialists and environmentalists made the same appeal, as did the candidate of the traditional right, Valerie Pécres (4.8%), although according to her "Emmanuel Macron has played with fire."
In theory, there are two candidates whose votes can be considered a reservoir for Le Pen, the most important being Eric Jemour (around 7%). The far-right candidate, who for some analysts made Jean-Marie Le Pen's daughter "more electable", called on his supporters yesterday "to vote for Marine Le Pen". The second is the nationalist Nicolas Dupont-Henan (around 2%), who made the same appeal to his supporters.
However, the extent to which the appeals of the other candidates left out of the race to their voters to block Le Pen's way will be heeded remains to be seen, given the personality of Macron, who does not exactly evoke sympathy among left-wing supporters. For Sandrine Rousseau of the Greens, the president would do well "to search the voters of the left and the ecologists one by one." Political scientist Pascal Perignon overstated: Le Pen seems capable of reaching much further than in 2017, so Macron "must mobilise to attract votes from Jean-Luc Mélenchon's supporters", he told the ARTE television network.
Lepen like... It would be a double first: it would mark the first victory of a far-right candidate at the polls and the first election of a woman president. Louis Aliot of the Rassemblement national (RN), her party, enthusiastically said "a new electoral process is beginning."
The key moment of the next fortnight is predicted to be the traditional televised debate between the two candidates on 20 April.
In 2017, Macron swept the French political scene and his opponent (66.1% in the second round), but this year the daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen - the first far-right candidate to make it to the second round of presidential elections in France in 2002 - seemed better prepared. She focused her campaign on the purchasing power and living standards of the French - the main concern of the electorate, according to the polls - while Macron, largely devoted to diplomacy in the midst of the war in Ukraine, did not seem to give the required weight in the first round. His comfortable lead, which had been as much as 10 points in some polls just a month before the election, shrunk dramatically.
For Adrian Thierry, a 23-year-old supporter of Emmanuel Macron, Marine Le Pen went all over France in her campaign and proved that she "knows how to talk to people about their tangible problems. In the next two weeks, he (President Macron) will need to turn more of his attention to what is happening in France, to take a break from diplomacy."
The only certainty is that yesterday's vote confirmed the collapse of the two traditional parties in power in France, with the Republicans' Pécres not even above 5% and Anne Indalgo, the Socialist candidate of former President Francois Hollande, recording an even more disappointing performance, staying below 2% (at 1.7%).
Source: APM
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