French election 2022

PARIS — France is voting in the first round of a presidential election that polls suggest could be uncomfortably close for President Emmanuel Macron.

Tardy, who leans to the center right, said Macron has managed to build “quite a balanced” political platform. “Five years on, the far right is even stronger.” … She’s lying to people,” Macron told the Parisien newspaper. “Perhaps I could have changed my mind ... and said in the end, well, why not Emmanuel Macron?” said Famibelle, whose parents are both from abroad. “When you’re a candidate who decides to do a short campaign, you have to have a perfect campaign. Polls predict he would now only win by a small margin of 4 to 6 percentage points — a sign of dissatisfaction with his presidency and concern about the rising cost of living. In Amiens, Macron’s hometown that overwhelmingly voted for him five years ago, left-leaning voters were torn on Saturday. This past week, she vowed to issue fines to Muslims who wear headscarves in public. And so, as a wartime leader, Macron initially saw a boost in public support. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, she has distanced herself from Putin and modified her hard-line stance on immigration to make an exception for Ukrainian refugees. But he is expected to face a bigger challenge than when he trounced Le Pen by more than 30 percentage points in the 2017 presidential runoff. All other candidates polled in the single digits.

President Macron's camp is worried that high abstention rates could be used to question the legitimacy of a Macron win.

However, participation so far remains above the record trough of 21.40 percent in 2002. President Macron and Marine Le Pen are the clear front-runners among the 12 candidates, although Macron’s lead has significantly narrowed in recent days. Updated turnout numbers are expected at 5 p.m. local time.

Follow the latest updates as polls predict a tight first round finish between the president, Emmanuel Macron, and Marine Le Pen, from the far-right National ...

But there will be no certainty about what it all means until the first projections when polls close at 8pm - these are not, by the way, exit polls, but estimations based on actual votes cast in a representative selection of polling stations nationwide. Exactly a month ago, on 10 March, Emmanuel Macron - buoyed by a rally-round-the-flag effect following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine - stood at about 30% and Marine Le Pen at about 18%, according to the Guardian’s election tracker. It’s hard to say at this stage who this might benefit. On the other hand, some of the detail in those midday turnout figures could be ringing a few alarm bells in the president’s camp: abstention looks to be higher in the Paris region, which was heavily pro-Macron in the last elections in 2017, whereas turnout in some areas that voted predminantly for Le Pen five years ago seems to be significantly higher. A low turnout is widely believed to be bad news for the far-right leader, because it could be a sign that her supporters, who often fail to show up on voting day in the kind of numbers that the polls predicted, may again be staying away. On average, the latest polls put the two on 26% and 23% respectively, a difference that is equivalent to many polling organisations’ margin of error.

Opinion polls published before a campaign blackout had Mr Macron coming out on top - but showed the far-right leader of National Rally was closing the gap.

Start your Independent Premium subscription today. Ms Le Pen has been honing in on the day-to-day grievances of average voters. The incumbent centrist president entered late into the campaign, with only one major rally that even his supporters found underwhelming. - Ban on wearing Muslim headscarves in all public spaces, a ban on building big mosques and on foreign financing of the Muslim faith - Keep the minimum retirement age at 62 and raise the minimum pension - Progressively raise the retirement age from 62 to 65 and boost the minimum monthly pension

Election posters of French presidential candidates are shown. Paris (CNN) French voters head to the polls Sunday for one of the most consequential presidential ...

Le Pen, for her part, has run a more mainstream campaign this year compared to her last attempt to win the presidency. His record on the Covid-19 pandemic, the other defining crisis of his presidency, isn't clear-cut. But a second round is all but guaranteed -- no French presidential candidate has ever won in the first round under the current system. The President proposed a higher tax on diesel early in his tenure that set off the yellow vest movement, one of France's most prolonged protests in decades. Macron has so far done very little campaigning and refused to debate his opponents. Twelve candidates, including incumbent Emmanuel Macron, are running for the top job.

President Emmanuel Macron is expected to finish first, and may again face the far-right leader Marine Le Pen in the second round. After a muted campaign, ...

While all eyes have been focused on the swift rise of Ms. Le Pen, the far-right candidate, Mr. Mélenchon, 70, the leader of the far-left France Unbowed party, has witnessed a comeback in recent weeks. All with a view, Mr. Macron said, “to securing a cease-fire and then the total withdrawal of troops.” “The way he advertised himself in 2017 has very little to do with what has been done,” he added. Mr. Zelensky, to judge by a recent interview in The Economist, has been underwhelmed. He has pledged to stop immigration, even rejecting refugees from the war in Ukraine, and also proposed expelling immigrants as part of “remigration.” He failed to reposition himself, especially against his far-right rival, Marine Le Pen, and at under 10 percent in most polls, he is unlikely to make it past the first round on Sunday. The first months of the campaign were marked by polarized rhetoric on immigration and security — a characteristic that many residents in Melun deplored. France’s presidents — who have formidable powers at their disposal and set much of the country’s agenda — are elected directly by the people to five-year terms in a two-round voting system. At a time when revived nationalism had produced Brexit and the Trump presidency, he bet on a strong commitment to the European Union — and swept aside his opponents with an incisive panache. “I’m in favor of selective immigration, instead of the current situation where we have immigrants who are seeking to take advantage of the French system,” said Karl, who works in real estate. Many French people feel left out from the economic growth that Mr. Macron has delivered and are anxious about the violence in their neighborhoods. President Biden has repeatedly said the world is at an “inflection point” in the confrontation between autocracy and democracy.

Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen appear to be the leading candidates in the first round of the French presidential elections, an analysis of early results ...

Surveys ahead of the race showed that a second round of Macron vs. While his ambitious plan to bolster the European Union's autonomy and geopolitical heft won him respect abroad and at home, he remains a divisive figure when it comes to domestic policies. Far-right political commentator turned presidential candidate Eric Zemmour, who enjoyed a seat among the top three candidates until March according to IFOP polling, came in at 7%. While Macron appears on track to win the first round, he is a polarizing figure whose approval rating has lagged during his first term. Macron is seeking to become the first French president to win reelection since Jacques Chirac in 2002. Twelve candidates were running for the top job.

The pair finished in first and second place in Sunday's first-round vote, and Mr Macron travelled to a poorer area of northern France on Monday which gave its ...

The French need to prevent this.” Hard-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon was third, missing out on the two-candidate runoff, with close to 22 per cent. Start your Independent Premium subscription today. New polling puts Emmanuel Macron on course to win the second round of the presidential election with 55 per cent of the vote. - Strengthening external borders of the European passport-free area and creating a new force to better control national borders The result for Ms Le Pen is the best result a presidential candidate for National Rally has ever received in the first round. Hello and welcome to our live coverage of the French presidential election a day after the public cast their ballots in a first round vote that put Emmanuel Macron out in front, with Marine Le Pen following close behind. With nearly all of the votes now counted, Emmanuel Macron has just over 27 per cent and Marine Le Pen has just under 24 per cent. Emmanuel Macron will take his campaign to win extra votes to the industrial heartlands of northern France on Monday. For his part, Mr Macron accused the leader of the far-right National Rally party of being a “demagogue”, who told people what they wished to hear. Responding to the first round results, Gérard Araud, a former French diplomat who is now a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council, said his country’s political life was now “more than ever a field of ruins”. French presidential candidates Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen have attacked each other at the start of their run-off campaigns, after coming first and second respectively in the initial vote.

Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen face tense runoff after first round of voting in presidential race.

The far-right leader’s relentless focus on the cost of living crisis was smart and spoke to many voters’ core concerns. Roughly 53% of registered French voters who cast their ballots on Sunday voted for an anti-establishment candidate, on the right or the left. On the right, Valérie Pécresse scored just 4.7%; the deep divide between moderates and hardliners in her party, still a force at local level, could now see it implode. Largely absent from the race until now, Macron will be far more active during the second round, with campaign visits planned to northern and eastern France on Monday and Tuesday before a big rally in Marseille on Saturday. The highlight of Le Pen’s first week will be a rally in Avignon on Thursday. Perhaps the most striking of the multiple divides between the two rivals’ voters was this one, pinpointed by pollsters Ipsos: 43% of voters who said they were “very satisfied” with their life voted for Macron, compared to 21% for Le Pen, while 46% of those who said they were “not at all satisfied” voted Le Pen and just 4% Macron. He also benefited from a last-minute surge from left-leaning voters initially tempted by parties such as the Greens and the Communists but who concluded, too late in the day, that despite some of his more extreme policies Mélenchon was the only leftwing candidate with a chance of making it to the second round.

Macron won on Sunday by a reasonable margin but far-right candidates increased their share of the vote from 2017 levels.