French politician and president, Emmanuel Jean-Michel Frédéric Macron has won the first round of the French election, after edging far-right rival Marine Le Pen by 4.19% and veteran far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon by 5.65%. As the top two finishers, Macron and Le Pen will advance to a second-round on April 24, a repeat of the 2017 election final from which Macron emerged the winner.
Macron topped Sunday’s first round of the French presidential election with 27.6% of the 97% vote counted, ahead of eleven other candidates; Le Pen’s 23.4%, Jean-Luc Mélenchon's 21.95%, Jean Lassalle's 3.16%, Fabien Roussel's 2.31, Nicolas Dupont-Aignan 2.07%, Anne Hidalgo 1.74%, Philippe Poitou 0.77% and Nathalie Arthaud 0.57%.
After the first round of polls, only Emmanuel Macron, Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon polled more than 10%. Macron recorded higher than his first-round 2017, and clearly gained support in the final hours of the campaign after positioning himself as a pro-European “progressive”, and warning voters against the far-right whom he termed anti-Muslim, nationalist programme, and also seeking to protect France’s place on the international diplomatic stage amid the war in Ukraine.
Le Pen, on the other hand also did better than 5 years ago at the polls, and has continued to gather support after campaigning hard on the cost of living crisis and inflation. Hard-left Mélenchon came in third, thereby cementing his leading position on the left after campaigning on the cost of living and transforming the presidential system.
France's 2022 presidential election will be remembered for the disaster outing that befell the two old parties that used to run France, the Republicans and Socialists. They sank almost without trace, with Socialist Anne Hidalgo falling below 2%. Parties that fail to reach 5% only get €800,000 (£670,000) of their campaign funding covered by the state, and the Republicans will have paid out far more than that.
Following the result of the first round, the majority of Mélenchon's leftwing supporters, Communist Party candidate Fabien Roussel, Socialist Anne Hidalgo, Yannick Jadot of the Greens and right-wing Republicans’ candidate Valerie Pecresse said they would vote for Macron to prevent the far-right leader from coming to power.
Marine Le Pen will also be counting on the support and supporters of Eric Zemmour and Nationalist Nicolas Dupont-Aignan.
