Macron and Le Pen appear headed to runoff in French presidential election
Paris — French polling agency projections show President Emmanuel Macron and far-right rival Marine Le Pen leading in the first round of France’s presidential election.
If borne out by official results, the two will advance to a presidential runoff on April 24 with strong echoes of their last face-off in the 2017 election. The projections show Macron with a comfortable first-round lead Sunday of between 27%-to-29% support, ahead of Le Pen, who is expected to capture 23%-to-24% of the vote. Official results are expected later Sunday night.
But the second round is likely to be tight.
The election’s result will impact Europe’s direction as it tried to contain Russia and the havoc wreaked by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine. The April 24 runoff appears set to pit the centrist president seeking to modernize the economy and strengthen European cooperation against the nationalist Le Pen, who has seen a popularity boost after tapping into voter anger over rising inflation.
Bundled up against an April chill, voters lined up to cast ballots at one polling station in southern Paris on Sunday before it opened. Once inside, they placed their paper ballots into envelopes and then into a transparent box, many wearing masks or using hand gel as part of COVID-19 measures.
Many candidates made early visits to their own polling stations, smiling to journalists.
Valerie Pecresse of the Republican Party cast her vote in Velizy-Villacoublay, southwest of Paris, while Le Pen cast hers in Henin-Beaumont, a town 120 miles northeast of Paris. Macron and his wife cast their votes in the town of Le Touquet, in northern France.
Macron for months looked like a shoo-in to become France’s first president in 20 years to win a second term. But that scenario blurred in the campaign’s closing stages as the pain of inflation and of pump, food and energy prices roared back as dominant election themes for many low-income households. They threatened to drive many voters into the arms of Le Pen, Macron’s political nemesis.
Macron trounced Le Pen by a landslide to become France’s youngest modern president in 2017. The win for the former banker — now 44 — was seen as a victory against populist, nationalist politics, coming in the wake of Donald Trump’s election to the White House and Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, both in 2016.
With populist Viktor Orban winning a fourth consecutive term as Hungary’s prime minister days ago, eyes have now turned to France’s resurgent far right candidates — especially National Rally leader Le Pen, who wants to ban Muslim headscarves in streets and halal and kosher butchers, and drastically reduce immigration from outside Europe. This election has the potential to reshape France’s post-war identity and indicate whether European populism is ascendant or in decline.
Meanwhile, if Macron wins, it will be seen as a victory for the European Union. Observers say a Macron reelection would spell real likelihood for increased cooperation and investment in European security and defense — especially with a new pro-EU German government.
With war singeing the EU’s eastern edge, French voters cast ballots in a presidential election whose outcome will have international implications. France is the 27-member bloc’s second economy, the only one with a U.N. Security Council veto, and its sole nuclear power. And as Putin carries on with the war in Ukraine, French power will help shape Europe’s response.
Russia’s war in Ukraine has afforded Macron the chance to demonstrate his influence on the international stage and burnish his pro-NATO credentials in election debates. Macron is the only front-runner who supports the alliance while other candidates hold differing views on France’s role within it. Melenchon is among those who want to abandon it altogether, saying it produces nothing but squabbles and instability.
Such a development would deal a huge blow to an alliance built to protect its members in the emerging Cold War 73 years ago.