The French presidential election completed its first round on April 10 without an overall winner. A candidate must receive 50% of the popular vote to be declared the winner, but with twelve candidates in the first round, anyone reaching 50% was unlikely.
Thus, the top two candidates, President Emmanuel Macron and far-right leader Marine Le Pen will move on to the second round of voting. It will be a rematch of the 2017 election when Macron first won the presidential seat by defeating Le Pen.
Macron and the centrist Onwards, Republic! Party received 27.8% of the vote. Le Pen and the National Rally party received 23.2%. Jean-Luc Melenchon, considered far-left, was eliminated from the election after finishing third with 22% of the vote. No other candidate had more than 10% of the vote.
The second-round election will take place on April 24 to determine who will lead France into an important period of history. Ukraine may be looking to join the European Union, and France is one of the most influential countries in the EU. President Macron has remained steadfast in his commitment to the EU.
On the other hand, Le Pen followed a hard-line stance during her 2017 election campaign when she pledged to exit the EU if she won the presidency. She has stepped away from that pledge in this cycle, promising to remain in the union, but stating she will seek to limit the power and influence of the geopolitical group. In France, she is widely known as the daughter of the right-wing leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen.
Le Pen was also staunch against immigration in the 2017 cycle and called for a ban on Muslims wearing headscarves in public. She has stayed away from such issues this go-around, choosing to focus instead on issues like the rising cost of living, a significant concern among the French electorate.
In a speech after polls closed, Le Pen vowed to be a president for “all the French” if she wins.
The two candidates also differ when it comes to NATO. Le Pen has stated she intends on stepping back from NATO without saying much about the war in Ukraine.
President Macron called NATO “brain dead” as recently as 2019. However, his outlook toward the Western security alliance changed with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which he believes restarted the need for NATO.
The impact of Russian involvement with Le Pen’s National Rally Party has also been scrutinized. The National Rally political party received a loan from a Russian bank in 2014, with President Vladimir Putin hosting Le Pen in 2017.
Candidate Melenchon told the supporters of his third-place campaign that they should “not give a single vote to Mrs. Le Pen” but did not explicitly endorse Macron.
Voter apathy has caused concern among the candidates. Macron called on more citizens to vote in the second round, as an analysis by pollster Ifop-Fiducial estimates that only 73.3% of the population cast a ballot in Sunday’s first round.
“Nothing is settled, and the debate that we will have in the coming 15 days is decisive for our country and our Europe,” Macron said after polls closed on Sunday. “I don’t want a France which, having left Europe, would have as its only allies the international populists and xenophobes. That is not us. I want a France faithful to humanism, to the spirit of enlightenment,” he said.
Macron has seen his approval ratings drop steadily, especially after the “yellow vests protests.” Millions demonstrated in yellow vests in the streets of France initially against a new fuel tax. The protests began in November 2018 and did not die down until January 2019. The demonstration soon spread to protests for more taxes on the wealthy and a higher minimum wage, among other things.
The protests turned to riots on several occasions when protesters clashed against police, resulting in severe injuries, including loss of limbs due to the non-lethal forces the police used. Politicians around the world criticized Macron for the police response.
In response to the protests, he canceled the new fuel tax in December 2018 and introduced a $10 billion package to increase wages and decrease the tax burden on the poorest people.
Macron also created political opponents with his most notable policy, which mandated that people show proof of vaccination to participate in public life in France. It incited a vocal group of people to oppose his campaign.
If Macron wins, he would be the first French president to win reelection since Jacques Chirac in 2002. Polls suggest that it will be a close battle. Polling by Ifop-Fiducial released on Sunday showed that Macron has just a 51-49 advantage over Le Pen.
