France’s leading far-right politician will challenge current leader Emmanuel Macron in the second round of the presidential elections, according to initial voting.
The French system sees a number of candidates vie for two spots in a final head-to-head, with voters returning to the polls on April 24 to decide the winner.
Marine Le Pen, head of the National Rally party, is expected to score around 23.6% of the first-round vote to President Macron’s 28.5% according to projections by Ipsos-Sopra Steria.
The projections are based on votes cast in a sample of polling stations around the country, and are usually highly accurate.
Le Pen has pledged to ban all Muslim women from wearing veils in public and her EU policies have been described as ‘Frexit by stealth’, promising to slash France’s payments to Brussels and ignore EU laws she doesn’t like.
There is plenty of scope for her to win if enough voters who favoured the eliminated candidates in the first round pick her in the second round, or simply stay at home.
But French pundits widely see the projections as a strong indicator that Macron will pull ahead and be re-elected.
The hard-left candidate, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, came third with 20.1% of the first-round vote, according to the projections.
He is followed in fourth place by another far-right candidate, Eric Zémmour, who is projected to score 7.0%.
The two traditional parties of the centre both scored what is believed to be their worst result of mainstream parties in decades.
Conservative candidate Valérie Pécresse’s received 4.8%, while Socialist Party candidate Anne Hidalgo received 2.0%.
Meanwhile, the candidate for the Greens, Yannick Jadot, scored 4.3%.
Zémmour, a writer with no election experience, is believed to have taken a chunk of the anti-immigration, anti-Islam vote from veteran politician Le Pen, by positioning himself as an outsider.
While his backers are likely to support Ms Le Pen, most other leading losing candidates have effectively backed Mr Macron.
Ms Pécresse and Mr Jadot have explicitly urged their supporters to vote for the current president, while Mr Mélenchon, who commands the loyalty of a large chunk of France’s left, told them: ‘We know who we will never vote for. Don’t give your votes for Madame Le Pen.
‘We must not give a single vote for Madame Le Pen. I think this message is now heard.’
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