Twelve candidates ran for the top spot. If neither of them receives more than 50% of the ballots, the top two will face each other in a run-off on April 24. But a run-off is almost guaranteed – no French presidential candidate has ever won in the first round under the current system. The contest was marked by voter apathy, according to IFOP-Fiducial. Voter turnout was estimated at 73.3%, the lowest in a first round in 20 years. While Macron looks well on his way to winning the first round, he is a polarized figure whose acceptance score lags behind in his first term. Macron is aiming to become the first French president to win re-election since Jacques Chirac in 2002. While opinion polls gave him a solid lead over the field, the race tightened significantly last month. Le Pen’s support has been steadily rising in recent weeks. Although better known for its far-right policies, such as drastically restricting immigration and banning the Muslim headscarf in public, it has launched a more mainstream campaign this time, softening its language and focusing more on pocket money issues such as cost of living, a top concern for the French electorate.
In her speech on Sunday, Le Pen promised to be president for “all the French” if she wins the second round and called on those who did not vote for Macron to support her in the second round. In third place was the left cannon Jean-Luc Melenchon with 20.1%. Melanson enjoyed a burst of support and was considered a potential black candidate to challenge Macron. No other candidate received more than 10% of the vote, according to the analysis. Extreme right-wing political commentator Eric Zemour, who ran for president until March according to an IFOP poll, came in fourth with 7%. Candidates well on their way to losing quickly began to support the top two. While Zemour urged his supporters to vote for Le Pen, others urged their supporters to stay away from her.
Melanson told his supporters that “we should not give a single vote to Ms. Le Pen” and that candidates from the traditional center-left and center-right parties, the Socialists and the Republicans, have already backed Macron. Socialist candidate Ann Indalgo said a Le Pen victory would instill in France “a hatred of all against all”, while Republican Valerie Pecres said she was sincerely concerned about the country because “the far right has never been so close to victory”. “Marin Le Pen’s work will open France to discord, incompetence and collapse,” Pecres said.

The rematch

Investigations ahead of the match showed that Macron’s second round against Lepen was the most likely outcome. Macron beat Le Pen five years ago, but experts said a second bout between the two would be much tougher than the 2017 bout. Macron is no longer a political leader and must run with a mixed record. While his ambitious plan to strengthen the autonomy and geopolitical weight of the European Union has earned him respect abroad and at home, he remains a divisive figure in domestic politics. The handling of the yellow vest movement, one of France’s longest-running protests in decades, has been widely publicized and its history of the Covid-19 pandemic is unclear. Macron’s signature policy during the crisis – which required people to show proof of vaccination to get on with their lives – helped boost vaccination rates but sparked a vocal minority against his presidency. Macron, so far, has done very little campaigning. Experts believe that his strategy was to avoid the political mud as much as possible in order to present his image as the most presidential of all the candidates. The poll showed him to be firmly ahead of all the candidates, and he was considered to have participated in the second round. “The widespread dissatisfaction with Macron (especially among young people) means that the outcome is uncertain and unpredictable. Le Pen will continue to exploit it and therefore a major political upheaval remains possible,” said Dominique Thomas, head of the French and French-speaking Ministries. at UCLA, he said about the possible second round. Le Pen tried to portray herself as a very different candidate from the one she lost to Macron in 2017, when she tried to position herself in the forgotten French working class in response to her country’s then-US President Donald Trump. While her economic nationalist stance, her views on immigration, her Euroscepticism and her positions on Islam in France remain unchanged, Le Pen has sought to broaden her reach. The contest was originally intended to be a referendum on the dominance of the far right in French politics, but the war in Ukraine – another key issue for voters – overturned the race. Macron has retained first place in most polls ahead of this year’s election. The IFOP poll found that support for him peaked in early March as potential voters rallied around the flag and rewarded the president for his efforts to mediate the conflict in Ukraine before the Russian invasion, even if it was a failure. Many experts also expected the war to hurt Lepen, who was an outspoken admirer of Vladimir Putin, the Russian leader who has become outspoken in the West over the Kremlin’s decision to invade Ukraine in late February. Le Pen visited the Russian president during her 2017 campaign, but this time, she was forced to remove a pamphlet with a photo of herself and Putin from that trip after Russia’s unprovoked attack on its neighbor.