(Paris) Emmanuel Macron arrived at the top of the first round of the French presidential election on Sunday according to the first estimates, ahead of the leader of the far right Marine Le Pen by a few points, whom he will face on April 24 in a duel which will announcement tight.
Posted at 10:11 a.m.
Updated at 2:05 p.m.
According to three estimates from different institutes, the outgoing president comes first with results between 28.6 and 29.7%, at the end of a campaign greatly disrupted by the pandemic and the war in Ukraine.
Marine Le Pen comes second, between 23.5 and 24.7% according to estimates by the Opinionway, Ifop and Harris institutes, ahead of the leader of the radical left Jean-Luc Mélenchon who oscillates between 19.8% and 20.5%.
Abstention is particularly high, between 26.2% and 29.1% according to two estimates, marking the growing disdain of the French vis-à-vis their political class. This is more than the 22.2% of 2017, while the record was 28.4% in 2002.
Marine Le Pen, who was defeated by Emmanuel Macron in 2017, has never seemed so close to victory according to polls taken before the election which show her losing by very little, within the margin of error.
But she seems to have a relatively low reserve of votes for the second round in view of the score estimates of the other far-right candidate Éric Zemmour (between 6.8% and 7%).
A victory for M.me Le Pen could have important international consequences, given his positions hostile to European integration and his desire, for example, to leave the integrated command of NATO.
His election would create a double first: first accession to power through the ballot boxes of the far right and first woman president.
The TV debate
A key moment of the two weeks of the new campaign which begins will be April 20 during the traditional televised debate between the two rounds.
In 2017, the phenomenon Emmanuel Macron dynamiting the left and the right from the center, had clearly dominated Marine Le Pen.
In 2022, the daughter of the former and sulphurous tribune Jean-Marie Le Pen, who had been the first to lead the far right in the second round in 2002, seems much better prepared.
She led a field campaign, focused on purchasing power, the main concern of voters, while Emmanuel Macron, monopolized by the war in Ukraine and perhaps too confident by the polls, was little involved. in this first round.
The electoral campaign was unprecedented, as it was completely disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic and by the war.
Confused or tired, many French people abstained or hesitated until the last moment before choosing their candidate among the twelve contenders.
Like Françoise Reynaud, a 55-year-old voter in Marseille (south): “Of the 12, I had selected four last night, and I decided this morning”.
In Pantin, in the Paris region, Blandine Lehout, a 32-year-old actress, explained that she would not vote: “It’s the first time in my life”, “but there I hate them all. We are at a stage where they scare me, ”she explains.
Trivialization of the far right
Abstention will also be one of the main issues in the second round, as well as the carryover of votes.
Some candidates have already announced that they will call to block Mme Le Pen, like the communist Fabien Roussel.
But the strategy of the “Republican Front”, used for decades by the parties of government to try to stop the progress of the far right now seems to be out of breath as the mistrust of voters is great.
In the entourage of Mr. Macron, it is admitted that this reflex, which he had benefited from when he was elected in 2017, is no longer obvious.
Sensing the threat, the candidate president had accelerated his campaign at the end of the week and multiplied the attacks against a “trivialized” extreme right.
The left thus finds itself ejected from the second round for the second time in a row after 2017, which had never happened under the Fifth Republic (since 1958).
The radical left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who came third but far behind, unsuccessfully called for a “useful vote” on his name.
He had announced before the election that he would consult his base before deciding on a possible voting instruction.
The traditional right also recorded an unprecedented bad score, with Valérie Pécresse around 5%.