Amid heightened security, French voters began casting ballots for their next president Sunday in a first-round poll that's seen as a litmus test for the spread of populism around the world and a vote on the future of Europe.

More than 50,000 police and gendarmes were deployed to the 66,000 polling stations for Sunday's election, which comes after Thursday's deadly attack on the Champs-Elysees in which a police officer and a gunman were slain. The presidential poll is the first ever to be held during a state of emergency, put in place since the Paris attacks of November 2015.

Voters are choosing between 11 candidates in the most unpredictable contest in decades.

The vote "is really important, mainly because we really need a change in this country with all the difficulties we are facing and terrorism," said Paris resident Alain Richaud, who was waiting to cast his vote.

Opinion polls point to a tight race among the four leading contenders vying to advance to the May 7 presidential runoff, when the top two candidates will go head to head.

Polls suggest far-right nationalist Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron, an independent centrist and former economy minister, were in the lead. But conservative Francois Fillon, a former prime minister, who was embroiled in a scandal over alleged fake jobs appeared to be closing the gap, as was far-left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon.

France's 10 percent unemployment, its lackluster economy and security were issues that top concerns for the 47 million eligible voters.

The election is widely seen as a vote on the future of the European Union — with most of the candidates railing against its institutions.

Both Le Pen and Melenchon — two candidates from opposite extremes of the political spectrum — could pull France out of the 28-nation bloc and its shared euro currency in a so-called "Frexit."

A French exit could spell the end of the EU.

If either candidate wins a spot in the runoff, it will be seen as a victory for the rising wave of populism reflected by the votes for Donald Trump in the U.S. and Brexit in Britain.

"It's definitely risky, but I have faith in the result even if an extreme candidate qualifies for the second round," said Beatrice Schopflin, who was queuing to vote in Paris.

Macron and Fillon are committed to European unity and would reform labor rules.

The candidates are voting throughout the day.

Meters from the polling station where Le Pen was heading to vote, several feminist activists from the Femen group were arrested after staging a topless protest against the far-right leader, who is the only major female contender in the race. Police intervened and stopped the commotion minutes before the 48-year-old arrived to cast her ballot in the northern town of Henin-Beaumont. No one was hurt.

Macron, meanwhile, was the image of serenity as he posed for selfies with voters after casting his ballot in the coastal town of Le Touquet in northern France alongside his wife, Brigitte Macron.

Fillon voted in Paris, but his wife — who's been handed preliminary charges for her role in the fake jobs scandal that rocked her husband's campaign — voted 250 kilometers (155 miles) away from him near their 14th century manor house in Sarthe.

This year's roller-coaster campaign has seen much controversy, but some voters appear to have become blasé or turned off from politics.

"There have been surprises, there have always been scandals," said Le Touquet resident Pierre-Antoine Guilluy.

Voter Marie-Christine Colrat said: "Listen, too many candidates. And candidates that caused us a lot of problems, I think that's not a good thing for France."

Unpopular incumbent President Francois Hollande, who pledged last year not to stand for re-election, voted in his political fiefdom of Tulle in Correze, southwestern France.

This year's Socialist party presidential candidate Benoit Hamon cast his ballot in Trappes, a Paris suburb. Melenchon also voted in Paris.

Political campaigning was banned from midnight Friday hours ahead of polls opening in France's far-flung overseas territories such as Guadeloupe, French Polynesia and French Guiana, which all voted a day early Saturday.

Associated Press writers Nadine Achoui-Lesage in Paris, Chris den Hond in Le Touquet and Alex Turnbull in Henin-Beaumont contributed to this report. </s> Voting stations opened in France for the second round of the presidential election, with opinion polls indicating Emmanuel Macron was likely to beat Marine Le Pen.

Macron wants to deregulate the economy and deepen European Union integration, in contrast to the anti-EU and anti-immigration National Front candidate Le Pen.

Forecasts proved to be accurate for the presidential election's first round last month and financial markets have risen in response to Macron's widening lead after a bitter television debate earlier in the week. </s> In the shadow of a hacking attack on the leading candidate, French voters on Sunday went to the polls in an election that will decide not only the future of France, but possibly the European Union.

The most bitterly contested and turbulent political campaign France had seen in decades pitted far-right leader Marine Le Pen against the centrist candidate and target of the hack, Emmanuel Macron.

On Sunday morning, the two candidates voted in their home constituencies far from Paris.

Macron and his wife Brigitte were greeted by a crowd of around 500 people as they arrived at their local polling station in the chic seaside resort of Le Touquet in northwest France, where they have a second home. The favorite to win this fiercely contested election, Macron shook hands with locals before casting his own vote.

Le Pen returned to her National Front heartland at Henin-Beaumont in the country’s post-industrial northern rust belt.

Outgoing president Socialist François Hollande voted in his constituency of Tulle in the rural Correze region of central France.

The unknown factor is the number of France’s 47 million voters who plan to abstain or cast a blank or spoiled vote. The conservative Les Republicans candidate François Fillon advised supporters to vote for Macron after his defeat in the first round vote two weeks ago, as did the Socialist Party candidate Benoit Hamon, who finished a humiliating fifth in the first vote. However, the hard-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon of La France Insoumise (Unbowed France), who finished fourth with around 7 million votes refused to give his supporters advice on how to vote Sunday except to urge them “not to give a single vote” to Le Pen.

A final abstention rate of more than 25% will favor Le Pen. Polls have suggested the number of angry and disappointed voters who choose to vote blank or spoil their ballot could reach a record 3 million. Many on the left wing of French politics find Le Pen’s far-right populist and racist rhetoric unpalatable but cannot bring themselves to vote for the neo-liberal Macron, so they feel disenfranchised by this final round vote but still want their voice heard.

Education minister Najat Vallaud-Belkacem reminded voters in an interview with Liberation newspaper that “not voting against the FN, even with the best intentions in the world, means not voting against the FN”.

Le Pen has championed a populist anti-Europe, anti-globalization, anti-immigrant agenda and proposed a “Brexit”-style referendum on bolting from the EU. Her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, founded the far-right National Front in the 1970s.

Macron, a former investment banker with Rothschild’s, is economically liberal, socially progressive, pro-Europe and internationally minded. If he wins, Macron would become, at 39, France’s youngest president.

His rise in French politics has been startling. When outgoing Socialist President Francois Hollande named him finance minister in August 2014, French media headlined articles with a question: “Who is Emmanuel Macron?”

Macron, who ran as an independent, led a field of 11 candidates with 23.8% in the first round of voting April 23. He was followed by Le Pen with 21.6%.

On Friday the last opinion poll by Ipsos showed Macron winning 63% of votes and Le Pen 37%. But that was before the computer hack, and its impact was impossible to predict. The only certainty was that it made an already bitter campaign even more acrimonious.

Just before a Friday midnight deadline that requires candidates to stop campaigning, thousands of Macron campaign documents were leaked — reportedly with fake documents mixed in. His campaign denounced the leak as a “real attempt to disrupt the French presidential election.”

During the so-called election pause, candidates are banned from making any statement or comment until voting closes at 8 p.m. Sunday. That left Macron unable to respond Saturday.

But late Friday, just before the pause took effect, Macron’s En Marche! (Onward!) movement released a statement saying fake papers had been mixed in with real emails, financial records and other campaign documents to “spread doubt and disinformation.”

Le Monde newspaper said the leaked documents were spread quickly by Le Pen supporters. National Front Vice President Florian Philippot, a close advisor to Le Pen, wrote on Facebook: “With MacronLeaks are we learning something investigative journalists have deliberately hushed up?”

Security, meanwhile, was a prime concern of authorities, given France’s recent history with terrorism. Thousands of police officers and security personnel were deployed across the country.

Authorities vow to investigate hacking attack in French presidential campaign as voting begins Sunday

France's Macron and Le Pen slug it out in no-holds-barred debate before Sunday's presidential election </s> France begins voting in second round of parliamentary election

Voting stations opened in France on Sunday for the second round of parliamentary elections, with opinion polls indicating President Emmanuel Macron's centrist Republic on the Move party likely to win a massive majority in the lower house, Reuters reported.

Turnout could fall to a record low, in a sign of voter fatigue after seven months of roller-coaster campaigning and voting, and of disillusionment with politics that could complicate Macron's reform drive. </s> The campaign for the first round of the French presidential election has closed under the shadow of jihadist violence and with widespread misgivings about the outcome of the vote on Sunday.

The issues confronting France had taken a back seat to financial scandals and the flawed character of the candidates, but terrorism suddenly became the main issue when Karim Cheurfi, a 39-year-old Frenchman with four convictions for violent crime, murdered a policeman and wounded three other people on the Champs-Éysées on Thursday night, 72 hours before polling stations were to open. Cheurfi was shot dead.

The government has mobilised 50,000 police and gendarmes and 7,000 soldiers to protect polling stations, which will be equipped with mobile telephones pre-programmed with emergency police numbers.

Four of 11 candidates stand a chance of reaching the May 7th run-off in the race to succeed François Hollande as president: the centrist Emmanuel Macron, the extreme right-wing leader Marine Le Pen, the conservative François Fillon and the far left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Opinion polls indicate that each commands support estimated at between 19 and 24 per cent.

French police, large numbers of whom support Ms Le Pen’s Front National (FN), demonstrated in several towns and cities yesterday over the shooting of their colleague. They demanded to know why a man who had repeatedly attacked police, and who had threatened in recent months to kill police in retaliation for the deaths of Muslims in Syria, was at large.

Before the attack, close to 30 per cent of voters told pollsters they would abstain in the first round of the election. Voting was portrayed by commentators on Friday as the most effective way to defeat jihadism.

There was broad speculation that the attack could affect voters’ choices. “In a campaign without a theme, strongly marked by the desire to break with a denigrated political system ... all of a sudden the bonus no longer goes to adventure, but to force, to protection,” said Françoise Fressoz of Le Monde.

Mr Macron, at 39 the youngest and most inexperienced candidate, could be at a disadvantage, in spite of his narrow lead in the opinion polls. He stressed that he was ready to govern, and that the role of a president was to “protect the French”.

Ms Le Pen, running a close second in the polls, accused conservative and socialist governments of the last decade of having “done everything for us to lose” what she called a “pitiless, relentless war” waged against France by “Islamist terrorism”.

US president Donald Trump told the Associated Press that the attack would help Ms Le Pen, who has praised him.

If he wins, Mr Fillon promised to make the “war” with what he calls “Islamic totalitarianism” the top priority of his term in office.

Bernard Cazeneuve, the socialist prime minister, accused Ms Le Pen and Mr Fillon of exploiting the tragedy for electoral gain.

The fact that France could send Ms Le Pen and Mr Mélenchon to the run-off, forcing voters to choose between extreme right and extreme left, has spooked financial markets. “There is worried waiting for the French election results,” Christine Lagarde, a former French economy minister and the director of the International Monetary Fund, told Le Monde.

Ms Le Pen and Mr Mélenchon included plans for leaving the euro zone and Europe in their programmes, though they softened their positions somewhat in recent days, in the face of opinion polls showing that close to three-quarters of the French want to remain in the euro.

Ms Le Pen and Mr Mélenchon lent a revolutionary tone to the campaign by railing against a privileged “caste” which they promised to overthrow. They portrayed Mr Fillon, a former prime minister, and Mr Macron, a former economy minister, as representatives of the elite. All four styled themselves as outsiders and enemies of an entrenched “system” that they vowed to end. </s> Le Pen will face Emmanuel Macron in the May runoff.

France’s far right National Front sent shock waves through Europe tonight after leader Marine Le Pen made it into the second round of nation’s presidential elections, according to exit polls.

The hard-line anti-immigration candidate stormed into the final ballot to face centrist independent Emmanuel Macron.

Le Pen, 48 came second in the national poll behind Macron with 22 per cent of the vote in the tense election which saw 11 candidates vying for the role, according to Belgian broadcaster RTBF.

Tonight Le Pen and her supporters were celebrating in the northern town of Henin-Beaumont, 120 miles north of Paris.

The far right leader had security authorities on high alert, with rioting expected across the country in protest due to her election success.

More than 50,000 police and gendarmes were deployed to the 66,000 polling stations for Sunday’s election, which comes after Thursday’s deadly attack on the Champs-Elysees in which a police officer and a gunman were slain.

French intelligence have warned of there would be “public disturbances in the case of the presence of parties in the second round that are extremist,” according to Le Parisien newspaper.

Le Pen has vowed to offer French voters a referendum to leave the EU and wants to leave the Euro, known as Frexit. </s> Terrorism abroad. Immigrants massacring French citizens at home. Increased anxiety about France’s role in the world. Establishment parties that seem indifferent and corrupt. And a far-right candidate who promises to fix all of it.

It may sound like I’m describing the 2017 French election, but I’m actually talking about 2002.

In the current race, polls are tight, with the far-right populist National Front candidate Marine Le Pen, who has capitalized on concerns about terrorism and immigration, jockeying for first place with former Socialist cabinet minister Emmanuel Macron, while the far-left Jean-Luc Mélenchon pulls even with the center-right Republican François Fillon, who has been disgraced by scandal.

France’s presidential elections involve two rounds of voting, with the top two finishers from the first round facing off in a runoff contest a few weeks later. Since none of the candidates is currently polling anywhere near 50 percent of the vote, Macron and Le Pen are both hovering between 22 and 24 percent, a runoff is all but guaranteed.

Polls currently suggest a Le Pen versus Macron matchup in the runoff, but a strong last-minute surge by Mélenchon between now and Sunday could put him in the running instead.

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In those days, the National Front was widely viewed as a xenophobic fringe party and was headed by its current candidate’s father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who was charged with Holocaust denial numerous times over the course of his political career.

In 2002, however, Le Pen was facing a perfect storm. People were afraid after the 9/11 attacks remade the world overnight and an immigrant massacred eight people in the town of Nanterre, and the leftist vote was split among a number of parties. When the ballots were counted, Le Pen had won second place, narrowly defeating Socialist candidate and incumbent Prime Minister Lionel Jospin.

His success, however, was short-lived.

Incumbent Republican President Jacques Chirac declared that Le Pen’s advancement to the second round threatened “the very idea that we have of mankind, his rights and his dignity.” The moderate right and the entire left instantly fell in line behind him. Chirac stopped campaigning, refused to debate Le Pen, and won the runoff with 82 percent of the vote.

So if Marine Le Pen makes it to the second round, what’s to stop the same thing from happening again?

First, today’s National Front is not the National Front of 2002. Since taking over from her father, Marine Le Pen has worked hard to shed the party’s xenophobic image, and even expelled the elder Le Pen from the party.

Second, the French people don’t have an incumbent to fall back on this time, as current president François Hollande isn’t even running. Neither candidate from the major parties, the Republicans and the Socialists, has a chance of reaching the runoff. This means that the only options available are three untested parties that have never held power before. Without a comfortably familiar alternative to the radical National Front, votes might not coalesce as neatly around Le Pen’s runoff opponent as they did in 2002.

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Third, almost 40 percent of French voters remain undecided, and pollsters say that up to 35 percent may stay home on election day, up from an average of around 20 percent. As one French news site put voters’ feelings, “Le Pen is too extreme… Macron is too young… Fillon cannot be trusted… [flailing socialist candidate] Hamon is the establishment, and… Mélenchon [is] too risky.”

Fourth, while nearly every voter on the French political spectrum in 2002, aside from actual FN members, was closer to Chirac than to Jean-Marie Le Pen, this may not be the case with the alternative to Marine. If the communist-sympathizing Mélenchon makes it to the runoff, it’s likely much of the moderate left will stay home.

Against Macron, Le Pen’s chances of victory are far slimmer. One poll earlier this month suggested that she would lose 61 percent to 39 percent in such a matchup. But the left might not turn out to vote for Macron either, and even 39 percent would be a marked step up from Le Pen’s father’s performance in 2002.

It is likely that Emmanuel Macron will be the next president of France, but if Trump and Brexit have taught us anything, it’s that nothing is ever certain. The stakes here are very high — a victory for the Euroskeptic Le Pen would likely be the final nail in the coffin of the European Union. </s> Paris: French voters go to the polls on Sunday in the first round of parliamentary elections with President Emmanuel Macron's party appearing well-placed to gain a commanding majority.

Macron has enjoyed a smooth start in the five weeks since he beat far-right candidate Marine Le Pen to become France's youngest-ever president, naming a cabinet that crosses left-right lines and making a big impression at international summits.

His centrist Republique en Marche (Republic on the Move, REM) party, which he only founded in April 2016 as a platform for his presidential bid, now needs a clear majority in the National Assembly for him to push through the reforms he has promised.

A host of opinion polls show Macron's party could take around 30 per cent of the vote today, putting it in pole position to secure an absolute majority in the second round a week later.

That could translate to as many as 400 seats in the 577-seat chamber. REM has already had a boost after its candidates came first in 10 of the 11 French overseas constituencies that voted before the mainland.

If no candidate wins over 50 per cent in the first round, the two top-placed go into the second round - as well as any candidate who won the votes of over 12.5 percent of the electorate.

Polling stations open at 8 am (local time) and close in the largest cities at 8 pm (local time).

More than 50,000 police will be on patrol in a country still under a state of emergency following a wave of attacks that have killed more than 230 people since 2015.

In the latest incident, which took place on Tuesday, a 40-year-old self-radicalised Algerian was shot and wounded after attacking a policeman with a hammer outside Paris' Notre Dame cathedral.

French voters have traditionally rallied behind their new leader in the legislative elections that follow the presidential ballot.

Macron's predecessors Francois Hollande in 2012, Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007 and Jacques Chirac in 2002 all won outright majorities. Unlike Macron, however, they all came from long-established parties.

REM reflects the president's desire for a new brand of politics. Initially dismissed by Macron's opponents as a movement of young activists without any real roots, it will field 530 candidates on Sunday.

In a bid to renew the political scene, many have never stood for office before, such as Marie Sara, a rare female bullfighter, who is taking on a senior member of Le Pen's National Front in southern France, Gilbert Collard.

Macron has banned all REM candidates from employing family members if elected and they must not perform consultancy work while being lawmakers.

The edicts follow the scandal that sunk the presidential chances of Francois Fillon, candidate for the right-wing Republicans party, who is facing criminal charges for paying his wife Penelope more than 900,000 euros (USD 1.0 million) as his parliamentary assistant. </s> PARIS — The killing of a policeman by a suspected Islamist militant pushed national security to the top of the French political agenda on Friday, two days before the presidential election.

With the first round of voting in the two-stage election taking place on Sunday, far-right nationalist candidate Marine Le Pen promised tougher immigration and border controls to beat “Islamist terrorism” if elected.

Centrist Emmanuel Macron, who narrowly leads a tight race ahead of Le Pen, said the solutions were not as simple as she suggested, and that there was “no such thing as zero risk.”

Anyone who said otherwise was irresponsible, said Macron, a former economy minister in the government that Le Pen has repeatedly criticized for its security record.

There are four leading candidates in a race that is still too close to call. Sunday’s voting will be followed by a runoff on May 7 between the top two candidates.

The first poll conducted entirely after Thursday’s attack suggested Le Pen had gained some ground on Macron.

While he was still seen winning the first round with 24.5 percent, his score slipped half a percentage point while Le Pen’s rose by one to 23 percent.

Conservative Francois Fillon, a former prime minister, and the far left’s Jean-Luc Melenchon were both down half a percentage point on 19 percent in the Odoxa poll for the newspaper Le Point.

The attack on the Champs-Elysees boulevard in the very heart of the capital added a new source of unpredictability to an election that will decide the management of France’s 2.2 trillion euro economy, which vies with Britain for the rank of fifth-largest in the world.

U.S. President Donald Trump told The Associated Press on Friday he thought the attack will “probably help” Le Pen because she is the candidate who is “strongest on borders, and she’s the strongest on what’s been going on in France.”

Trump told the AP in an interview he was not explicitly endorsing Le Pen but that he believes the attack will affect how French people vote on Sunday.

The outcome could also have a bearing on France’s place in the world and in a European Union still reeling from Britain’s decision to leave. While Macron is ardently pro-EU, Le Pen wants to quit its single currency and potentially hold a referendum on leaving the bloc.

All the candidates are seeking to woo the huge number of undecideds — some 31 percent of those likely to vote, according to an Ipsos poll on Friday.

Fillon also seized on the attack, which was claimed by the militant group Islamic State, saying the fight against “Islamist totalitarianism” should be the priority of the next president. “It’s us or them,” he said.

The Champs-Elysees shooting is the latest in a series of attacks by Islamist militants on France since 2015, in which more than 200 people have been killed. A truck plowed into a Bastille Day crowd in Nice last year, killing more than 80, while coordinated attacks on the Bataclan concert hall and other sites in Paris claimed about 130 lives in November 2015. There have also been attacks on a satirical weekly and a kosher store.

However, previous attacks that have taken place shortly before elections, including the November 2015 attacks in Paris ahead of regional polls, and a shooting in a Jewish school before the 2012 presidential election, did not appear to boost the scores of those espousing tougher national security.

An assault on a soldier in February at Paris’ Louvre museum by a man wielding a machete also had no obvious impact on this year’s opinion polls, which have consistently said that voters see unemployment and the trustworthiness of politicians as bigger issues.

One policeman was shot dead and two others were wounded in Thursday night’s attack.

Investigators are trying to assess whether the gunman had accomplices, anti-terrorism prosecutor Francois Molins told a news conference, adding that the shooter had never shown any signs of radicalization despite a long police history.

After an emergency meeting of security officials, Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said security forces, including elite units, were on alert to back up the 50,000 police earmarked to ensure safety during the election.

“The government is fully mobilized. Nothing must be allowed to impede the fundamental democratic process of our country,” Cazeneuve told reporters. “It falls to us not to give in to fear and intimidation and manipulation, which would play into the hands of the enemy.”

Controls on immigration and national security are cornerstones of Le Pen’s National Front agenda, and on Friday she said she would reinstate border checks and expel foreigners who are on intelligence services’ watch lists.

“I’ve heard Madame Le Pen saying again recently that, with her in charge, certain attacks would have been avoided,” he told RTL Radio. “There’s no such thing as zero risk. Anyone who pretends (otherwise) is both irresponsible and deceitful.”

In an Elabe poll conducted on Wednesday and Thursday, and published on Friday, both Fillon and Melenchon were seen narrowing Macron and Le Pen’s lead.

Should both Macron and Le Pen make it to the second round, he was likely to win the runoff by 65 percent to 35, according to the survey for BFM TV and L’Express magazine.

Fillon, who has slowly clawed back some ground lost after a fake jobs scandal, saw his score in the first round rise half a percentage point to 20 percent.

Melenchon, who would hike taxes on the rich and spend 100 billion euros ($107 billion) of borrowed money on vast housebuilding and renewable energy projects, gained 1.5 points to 19.5 percent as he built further on the momentum he has generated with strong performances in television debates.
Voters in France go to the polls to elect a new president; Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron qualify for the second round.