Emmanuel Macron Y Marine Le Pen They will repeat their duel of 2017 in the second round of the French presidential elections, after the first round this Sunday left the outgoing president with a slightly larger margin of advantage than expected by the polls.
The announcement of the results coincided with calls from the majority of the defeated candidates to establish a new “cordon sanitaire” and prevent the far-right Le Pen from reaching the head of state in the second round on April 24.
The liberal Macron obtained between 28 and 29% of the votes, according to the projections on the first votes counted, while his rival obtained between 23 and 24%, which means the best result in the history of the extreme right in a first presidential round.
After hearing the results, both were quick to ask for the support of those who had not voted for them, given the prospect of a second round that the polls anticipate will be much closer than that of 2017.
Macron extended his hand “to everyone” and was willing to “invent something new to unite diverse convictions and sensitivities” ahead of the second round, as he said in his speech amid the noisy enthusiasm of his followers.
He insisted that his project is “the only one” that can respond to the challenges facing the country, such as defending the purchasing power of citizens or the fight against climate change.
Instead, an exultant Le Pen assured that the president and she represent “two different visions of society” for which she called for unity around herself: “All those who have not voted for Macron are invited to join to this unification.
Behind the two winners of the first round was the veteran leftist leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon (21%), who was frustrated to get the useful vote of all the leftist and environmental candidates to try to reach the second round.
The main losers were the two great traditional parties of the Fifth Republicthe conservative LR and the socialist PS, who reaped the worst results in their history: Valérie Pécresse (LR) stayed around 5% and the socialist Anne Hidalgo, mayor of Paris, sank to 2%.
Calls to curb the extreme right
Facing the second round, Macron almost immediately received the support of other candidates to stop the far right in the second round: Pécresse, Hidalgo, the environmentalist Yannick Jadot and the communist Fabien Roussel said they would vote for him or directly asked their supporters support the president.
Le Pen would erase France “from the international scene” and “would bring chaos,” warned Pécresse.
“You must not give Le Pen a single vote,” Mélenchon proclaimed to the applause of his followers, although without expressly asking for a vote for Macron.
Le Pen received the support of the also far-right Éric Zemmour, who after a meteoric rise a few months ago stayed around 7%, and also of the sovereignist Nicolas Dupont-Aignant (2.1%), who had already backed him five years ago years.
In 2017, Macron nearly doubled Le Pen in votes (66-34%), but today’s polls of voters point to a much narrower margin in two weeks: Ipsos gives the president the winner by 54-46%, the same margin as OpinionWay, while Ifop narrows the lead further: 51-49%.
In the absence of definitive data, estimates suggest that today’s turnout was around 72.7%, the lowest in a modern presidential first round since the 2002 record (71.6%).