French election

Emmanuel Macron will win France's presidential election, pollsters project, fending off a historic challenge from right-wing candidate Marine Le Pen during ...

"You cannot properly defend the interests of France on this subject because your interests are linked to people close to the Russian power" Le Pen's ability to attract new voters since 2017 is the latest indication that the French public are turning to extremist politicians to voice their dissatisfaction with the status quo. This time, however, Macron had to run on a mixed record on domestic issues, like his handling of the yellow vest protests and the Covid-19 pandemic. These projections, which are based on data from voting stations that close at 7 p.m. in the rest of the country, are usually used by the candidates and French media to declare a winner. Still, Le Pen acknowledged the fact that the far right had never performed so well in a presidential election. Macron is projected to take 58.2% of the vote, according to an analysis of voting data by pollsters Ipsos & Sopra Steria conducted for broadcasters France Televisions and Radio, making him the first French leader to be reelected in 20 years.

If Macron's win is confirmed then it would make him the first French president in two decades to win a second term.

If Macron's win is confirmed then it would make him the first French president in two decades to win a second term. But that support dissipated in the days prior to the first round of voting on Apr. 10, as French citizens focused heavily on domestic affairs and soaring inflation. In a two-hour TV debate Wednesday, Macron called out Le Pen's previous ties with Russia and President Vladimir Putin, accusing her of being dependent on Moscow. Turnout on Sunday was 2 percentage points lower than the 2017 election, according to the Interior Ministry. Immediately after the projections, Le Pen spoke to her supporters in Paris and accepted defeat. The 2022 campaign was set against the backdrop of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, a cost of living crisis in France, a surge in support for the far-left among younger generations and suggestions of widespread voter apathy.

France began voting in a presidential runoff election Sunday in a race between between incumbent Emmanuel Macron and far-right politician Marine Le Pen.

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French President Emmanuel Macron won a second term in a closely watched race against right-wing rival Marine Le Pen, who has conceded.

PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday (Apr 24) defeated his rival Marine Le Pen in presidential elections, projections showed, prompting a wave ...

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French President Emmanuel Macron and far-right leader Marine Le Pen faced off in the presidential election's final round.

“I also know that many of our compatriots voted for me today, not to support the ideas that I’m carrying, but to block those of the far right. to make of our country a great ecological nation.” “We will have to be strong but no one will be left by the wayside.” Shortly before wrapping up, Emmanuel Macron argued France must continue to play a leading role in addressing the war in Ukraine in his victory speech tonight. I am the depository of their sense of duty, of their attachment to the Republic, and of their respect for the differences that have been expressed in recent weeks.” “We had the system against us,” said one of them at Le Pen's electoral night, accusing French media of demonizing the right-wing candidate. “There are still lots of divisions, lots of misunderstanding… POLITICO found that the village had become the site of fierce contest between local campaigners vying for control in a region of France long-known as a far-right stronghold. In 2017, Macron won by a larger margin. There are very many of them.” “From now on, I am no longer the candidate of a camp, I am the candidate of all of you,” Macron said. A number of small demonstrations protesting Emmanuel Macon’s re-election have erupted in cities across France tonight.

European markets will breath a collective sigh of relief on Monday as pro-EU centrist Emmanuel Macron looked set to win a second term as France's president, ...

Focus will also shift to France's June parliamentary elections. said Frederic Leroux, a member of Carmignac's investment team. Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Such estimates are normally accurate but may be fine-tuned as official results come in from around the country. First projections after Sunday's run-off election showed Macron securing around 57-58% of the vote. Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen hailed her score in presidential elections on Sunday as a "brilliant victory", despite her projected defeat to ...

"The ideas we represent have reached new heights... "This evening, we launch the great battle for the legislative elections," Le Pen said, saying she felt "hope" and calling on opponents of the president to join with her National Rally (RN) party. Promising to "carry on" her political career, the 53-year-old vowed that she would "never abandon" the French after losing with around 42 percent of the vote to Macron's roughly 58.

PARIS: French far-right leader Marine Le Pen hailed her score in presidential elections on Sunday (Apr 24) as a "brilliant victory", despite her projected ...

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Plus, Putin pivots to a land-grab strategy and Shanghai tightens its strict lockdown.

It was striking. One French voter after another we interviewed ahead of Sunday's presidential election told us: "I'll vote Macron but only to keep Le Pen ...

Their champions, like one teacher I met leaving a polling station in tears on Sunday, are sceptical - to put it mildly and politely - that the next five years of Macron's presidency will be any different. At least compared to his presidential rival. His promised social justice and environmental reforms fell by the wayside. It's notable, looking at their tweets - from the European Commission president, to the Spanish and Portuguese prime ministers and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz - that each and every one of them not only congratulated Macron, but trumpeted the confidence vote in Europe they interpret in his victory too. He'd be socially just, he said, while kick-starting the economy. In his victory speech, held in front of the backdrop of the French flag and the Eiffel Tower, an unusually humble-sounding Macron admitted that his was a divided country, and that he'd do his best to heal those divisions.

Russian President Vladimir Putin among leaders to send congratulatory messages to Macron after his re-election.

Congratulations Emmanuel Macron on your re-election as President. Another great expression of liberal democracy in action in uncertain times. I look forward to our continued close cooperation — including on supporting Ukraine, defending democracy, and countering climate change. “I wish him further success for the sake of the [French] people. France is our oldest ally and a key partner in addressing global challenges. Congratulations to@EmmanuelMacronon your re-election as President of France. France is one of our closest and most important allies. Europe wins,” Sanchez wrote.

Political analysts believe the continued rise of the far-right will cause Emmanuel Macron significant headaches over the coming years.

Eric Zemmour, also an anti-immigration and far-right politician, was one of the many new names in the French political scene in the runup to this year's election. Jean-Marie Le Pen received 17.8% of the votes that year. She and her party, National Rally, will now face a renewed challenge from Eric Zemmour and her own niece, Marion Maréchal," Rahman said in the same note. Having taken the reins of the party from her father in 2011, then called National Front, she ran for top office in 2012, 2017 and now 2022. Instead, Le Pen chose to talk about soaring inflation and the weaker purchasing power of French citizens. Centrist Macron obtained 58.54% of the votes on Sunday, whereas his nationalist and far-right rival Le Pen got 41.46%. Back in 2017, when the two politicians also disputed the second round of the French presidential vote, Macron won with 66.1% versus Le Pen's 33.9%.

The French vote on Sunday in an election that will decide whether pro-European Union, centrist President Emmanuel Macron keeps his job or is unseated by ...

Le Pen, who has also been criticised by Macron for her past admiration of Russian President Vladimir Putin, rejects accusations of racism. But she added that many of her clients would vote for the far-right candidate because they dislike Macron. Shockwaves would be felt across Europe and beyond. "She is close to the people. "Emmanuel Macron is considered arrogant by more than one in two voters and Marine Le Pen remains scary for half of them." She has also zeroed in on Macron's abrasive leadership style, which she says shows an elitist contempt for ordinary people.

PARIS — Polls have opened in a French presidential election runoff that is being closely followed around the globe for its potential to redefine France's ...

“April 24 is a referendum on the future of France,” Macron told BFM television in a final interview on Friday evening, comparing the stakes — and potential risks of abstentionism — to the 2016 U.S. election and the Brexit vote. Le Pen renamed the party from National Front to National Rally in 2018. It would replace a fervent defender of the E.U. with a longtime critic of the bloc. When Macron faced off against Le Pen five years ago, he beat her by a margin of more 30 percentage points. And, since the surprise success of the Brexit referendum in 2016, few in Europe are willing to count out the unexpected. There’s not nearly the same level of enthusiasm for him as when he first ran in 2017, launching his own centrist political movement and becoming France’s youngest president.

Emmanuel Macron easily defeated the far-right leader Marine Le Pen in the 2017 battle for president, but the race this time around is expected to be much ...

Ms. Le Pen, who wants to bar women from wearing them in public, called them “a uniform imposed by Islamists” that undermined French values of secularism and gender equality. The vote is being closely watched in part because a Le Pen victory, although improbable, appears possible. While she suffered through some difficult moments in the debate, appearing lost on the subject of the ballooning debt France incurred in battling Covid-19, she generally held her own. 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. Voters in France are deciding between the same two candidates as the last presidential election: Emmanuel Macron, the president and a polished centrist, and Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Rally party. They openly courted voters on the left after Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a fiery leftist candidate, got 21.95 percent of the vote in the first round. She also tried to woo some supporters of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leftist leader who finished just behind her in the first round, by continuing to promote economic policies that she said would help the working class. In 2017, Mr. Macron won handily with nearly two-thirds of the vote. France’s presidents have formidable powers at their disposal, set much of the country’s agenda and are elected directly by the people to five-year terms in a two-round voting system. On Sunday, a bruising gloves-off battle between Ms. Le Pen and Mr. Macron will come to a head as the French choose their president for a five-year term. It has split into three blocs: the hard-line left, an amorphous center gathered around Mr. Macron and the extreme right of Marine Le Pen. She regularly conflates Islam with violence in a country with the largest Muslim population in Western Europe.

While most countries rely on exit polls to declare elections winners, at the risk of jumping the gun, pollsters in France base their estimates on actual ...

It almost happened after the first round this year as a surge in support for third-man Jean-Luc Mélenchon in urban constituencies saw pollsters rush to adjust their projections after 8pm, bringing him very close to Le Pen’s score. “This means we have to wait for the first polling stations to close at 7pm, whereas exit polls can be worked on throughout the day.” In polling stations sampled by Ipsos and its peers, an official calls the pollster after every 100 ballots counted to report the results. “We also use exit polls in France, for instance to evaluate each candidate’s level of support by age group or profession,” he says. But in what has become a familiar ritual, social media networks will start buzzing hours earlier with rumours of Belgian or Swiss polls claiming to predict the outcome of the election. Unlike in most other democracies, where those projections are based on exit polls, French pollsters base their estimates on ballots that have actually been counted.

French voters to choose between centrist incumbent Emmanuel Macron and far-right politician Marine Le Pen.

“It’s a stark choice the French face today. They now suggest a Macron victory around the 56-44 percent range. They are seen as Macron’s strong point who did not spare an attack on Le Pen’s close ties to Russia during the presidential debate on April 20.

French President Emmanuel Macron will again face his far-right rival, Marine Le Pen, in a runoff election for France's presidency on Sunday.

Le Pen previously spoke out in favor of Russia's 2014 annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula. For some, the former banker-turned-president is the lesser of two evils and a vote for Macron is considered a vote against Le Pen. Still, no one is ruling out the possibility of a triumph for Le Pen. However, she has been likened to former U.S. President Donald Trump with her hard-line policies on Islam and immigration. "She comes across as less extremist than before." Sunday's runoff is a rematch of the 2017 presidential election, in which Macron beat Le Pen by a landslide. Le Pen, 53, has sought to soften her rhetoric and image as the leader of the far-right French political party National Rally. She is no longer directly calling for France to leave the European Union and abandon the euro currency.

PARIS–Millions of French were headed to the polls Sunday for the final round of a presidential election that has laid bare deep divisions among voters ...

To some voters, however, Ms. Le Pen is no longer the bête noire of French politics. She also proposed a ban on the Muslim head scarf in all public places, describing the garb as an instrument of Islamist ideology. Since her 2017 loss, Ms. Le Pen has dropped her opposition to the euro, the EU’s single currency, and focused on pocketbook issues, framing her 2022 campaign as a fight against inflation. France has been targeted with terrorist attacks by assailants who cited cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in French media as their motive. Still, polls indicate that Ms. Le Pen and her party have never been closer to power. Still, she says, Mr. Macron’s “door to immigration is too open.” Ms. Le Pen has said Europe’s decisions have only raised the cost of living for French households, hammering on a source of growing public discontent that has helped her climb in the polls over the past month. She also zeroed in on the impact the war in Ukraine was having on France’s economy, particularly the higher fuel prices that affect working-class commuters. Over the past two weeks Mr. Macron’s lead has begun to widen again, with polls suggesting he is ahead by a margin of between 11 and 15 percentage points. Ms. Le Pen has condemned Russia’s aggression. Mr. Macron zeroed in on such proposals in the final stretch of the election, accusing Ms. Le Pen in the national debate of seeking to foment a civil war in a country that has one of Europe’s largest Muslim minorities. Ms. Le Pen has stuck with a political program, however, that seizes on the anxieties that many voters outside France’s largest cities feel about Islam’s place in French society.

Voter turnout in the second round of the French presidential election on Sunday was 26.41% by midday (1000 GMT), interior ministry data showed.

Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Analysts say a low turnout adds to uncertainty surrounding the final result. Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com

Five years after its last presidential election, France today opens its polling booths with the same two candidates on the ballot paper. Emmanuel Macron, the ...

And the other one will be rueing a missed chance, and wondering if their political career has come to an end. Ms Le Pen and Mr Macron are experienced, time-worn politicians, but their views on what to do with the presidency are very different. By the time Sunday ticks into Monday, one of them will have been given a five-year mandate to run this wealthy, powerful and influential country. In all those areas, there have been notable differences between Mr Macron and Ms Le Pen. Beyond that, new information will be released periodically, updating the overall result. A great deal of attention will be placed on the turnout this time around, with plenty of speculation that voters will stay away because they don't particularly like either candidate.