Macron, Le Pen head to French presidential runoff
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Loading... - Michael Fortin
- 11 Apr 2022
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President Emmanuel Macron, a political liberal, and ultrarightist Marine Le Pen will vie for the French presidency in a runoff vote, just as they did five years ago, after garnering the two largest vote shares in the first electoral round on Sunday, according to government data from 97 percent of the ballots counted.
Macron obtained 27.6 percent of the votes while Le Pen received 23.4 percent, according to Interior Ministry figures early Monday, with this being the best-ever performance for the far right in any first presidential round.
The president thus improved on his first-round achievement five years ago, when he received 24.01 percent of the ballots, but Le Pen also managed to achieve better results than she did in the 2017 balloting, when she received 21.3 percent.
The results show a slight improvement for Macron compared with the last voter surveys before the poll, which also indicate that he will prevail in the runoff – scheduled for Apr. 24 – but by a smaller margin than in 2017, when he garnered almost double the votes that Le Pen managed to acquire.
Leftist Jean-Luc Melenchon, trying to win the presidency for the third time, took 21.9 percent of the votes, a bit more than in 2017.
Ultrarightist Eric Zemmour came in fourth place with about 7 percent of the votes, and moderate rightist candidate Valerie Pecresse turned in the worst result in her party’s history, with 4.7 percent of the votes.
Something similar appeared to be the case for ecologist Yannick Jadot, who took 4.5 percent of the votes.
Ruralist candidate Jean Lassalle received about 3.1 percent, communist Fabien Roussel about 2.3 percent, while socialist Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo got 1.7 percent, with Nicolas Dupont-Aignan at 2.07, according to the data.
The two Trotskyist candidates, Philippe Poutou and Nathalie Arthaud, did not manage to garner even 1 percent support.
Voter turnout, according to non-definitive figures, was about 72.7 percent, the lowest for a modern first presidential round since the record low of 71.6 percent set in 2002.
Macron said Sunday that he was extending his hand to all voters, stating that he was ready to “invent something new to unite diverse convictions and sensibilities” with an eye toward winning the runoff. Read More…
