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> 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. </s> French centrist Emmanuel Macron is on course to come out on top of the first round of France's presidential election next month and go on to win in the May 7 runoff against far right leader Marine Le Pen, an Elabe poll showed on Wednesday.

Macron, a popular independent who served as economy minister under President Francois Hollande, would win 25.5 percent of the vote in the April 23 first round while Le Pen would get 24 percent, according to the poll for BFM TV.

Both of their scores were down 0.5 percentage points from the last time the poll was conducted a week ago, Elabe said.

The poll also showed that conservative Francois Fillon's score rose to 18 percent from 17 percent in what was the first increase since he was engulfed by a scandal over payments to family members for work they may not have done.

That would still not be enough to get him into the May runoff, which Macron was seen winning with 63 percent of the vote to Le Pen's 37 percent.

The poll, which was conducted on March 28-29, also showed far-left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon making further gains, with his first round score reaching 15 percent, up from 13.5 percent a week earlier.

His gains came at the expense of Socialist candidate Benoit Hamon whose share of the vote slipped to only 10 percent from 11.5 percent.

Hamon, a hardline Socialist who wants to legalize cannabis and create a basic monthly state income for all, has struggled to win support from center-left Socialists like former prime minister Manuel Valls who said on Wednesday he would vote for Macron. </s> Francois Fillon gestures toward his supporters after declaring victory in the presidential Republican party's runoff primary at Maison de la Chimie in Paris on November 27, 2016. Photo by Yoan Valat/European Press Agency

Far-right candidate for the 2017 French presidential election Marine Le Pen speaks during a campaign rally in Paris on April 17, 2017. Front-runners Le Pen and Centrist Emmanuel Macron held rival rallies ahead of Sunday’s first round presidential vote. Photo by Maya Vidon-White/UPI | License Photo

Supporters cheer centrist candidate for the 2017 French presidential election Emmanuel Macron during a campaign rally in Paris on April 17, 2017. Overseas voters began to cast their ballots in various French territories on Saturday ahead of the mainland votes on Sunday. Photo by Maya Vidon-White/UPI | License Photo

April 22 (UPI) -- French citizens living overseas began casting their ballots in the first round of the presidential elections a day ahead of the vote in France.

Voters in Saint Pierre and Miquelon, the French archipelago south of the Canadian island of Newfoundland, Guiana in South America and French Polynesia began voting on Saturday.

French islands Reunion and Mayotte were scheduled to begin voting on Sunday two hours and one hour earlier than the mainland respectively.

The overseas votes are set to be collected and sent to France early to prevent overseas voters from being influenced by the results of the mainland due to time differences.

A blackout on opinion polls was also issued in France at midnight on Friday.

Two out of the eleven eligible candidates will be selected to participate in a runoff vote on May 5.

Emmanuel Macron of the centralist En Marche! party, Marine Le Pen of the far-right Nationalist party and Francois Fillon of the center-right Republican party are among the more popular candidates for the presidency.

France promised tight security at the ballots, including tens of thousands of police and other security personnel on duty, as tensions rose and the threat of terrorism became a focal point prior to the election.

A knife-wielding man was arrested after causing a panic in Gare du Nord train station in Paris on Saturday, two days after a man shot a police officer dead and injured two others in Paris.

On April 19, French police also arrested two men on suspicion of planning a violent attack during the election after it was found they had an apartment hideout containing firearms and explosives. </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> Late Sunday afternoon, the latest 2017 French elections polls will close and results will reveal whether centrist Onwards! candidate Emmanuel Macron or far-right National Front candidate Marine Le Pen will be the next president of France.

If pre-election polls are to be believed, Emmanuel will have no difficulty vanquishing Marine in Sunday’s election. In every poll released during the month of May, Macron beat Le Pen by a commanding margin of at least 20 percent of the total vote, usually coming out even further ahead of her. These numbers include one large Ipsos/CEVIPOF/LeMonde poll with 5,331 respondents conducted on Friday, where the centrist candidate actually took 63 percent of the vote to his far-right competitor’s 37 percent, a sizable 26 percentage point margin of victory.

The campaign has been one of the most tumultuous in French history, with neither the ruling Socialist Party or its traditional opposition, the Republicans, making it to the run-off. In the first round of voting, the Socialist candidate Benoit Hamon was not even able to achieve 7 percent of the results, coming in well behind the four frontrunners — including far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, with whom he had unsuccessfully attempted to form a coalition earlier in the election.

First-round polls preceding the vote were relatively similar to the final French election results. All of them correctly predicted that Macron and Le Pen would prevail, with Republican François Fillon and Mélenchon coming in narrowly behind them. Emmanuel’s final voting tally reflected his average in the polls, 24 percent, while Marine came in more than a full point behind her average in the pre-vote polls.

This detail is significant because of concerns that, like Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, right-wing populism will have a stronger showing in the final results of the French election than polls predict. Yet with only two weeks between the first round of the French presidential elections and the run-off on Sunday, it seems less likely that these numbers will shift — especially considering the fact that it was Le Pen and not Macron that did not reach poll expectations in the first round.

However, just over 48 hours ahead of the election, a trove of emails from Emmanuel’s campaign were released the public. Bound by law, French media are on a gag order about reporting about their contents, which also limits Macron’s ability to respond to them. On Twitter, #MacronLeaks trends while thousands of French voters dig through the batch, though as of yet nothing has been officially confirmed or investigated.

No matter what the emails contain, the two candidates stand at such sharply different ends of the spectrum of French politics that it’s difficult to imagine the leak having a decisive influence on the outcome of the election. Still, it does lead to uncertainty about who will show up at the polls, and, as no polling will have been carried out following the surprise release, the election results will be the first measure of their impact.

Marine hasn’t shied away from comparisons to Donald Trump during the French presidential campaign. She has, in fact, openly praised him, and even decided to stop at Trump Tower for coffee during a visit to New York City. Like the American president, Le Pen has been called Islamophobic by the press for a hard line on immigration. She was taken to court for inciting racial hatred when she compared Muslim immigration to the Nazi occupation of France, reported BBC News.

Also, like her North American counterpart, she favors economic protectionism, similarly waging war on globalism in her speeches. One of her key bases of support are rural French, much like the districts which carried Trump to victory. While refusing to give an endorsement, the U.S. president did recently say that she was the “strongest candidate” in the presidential race.

Unlike Trump, Marine is not running for president in a country with an electoral college system. While she maintained the top level of support for most of the first-round campaign, many French citizens would sooner not vote than for Ms. Le Pen.

She also strongly differs from Trump in political experience. Her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, has been in politics for decades, making it to the second round of France’s presidential elections in 2002 — where he lost by the widest margin in the country’s history to Jacques Chirac.

The presidential candidate leading the polls has also been compared to a U.S. president: Barack Obama. Likewise, he has also welcomed the association. Emmanuel shared a snippet of his call with the former American president on social media last month. Others have compared him with Hillary Clinton, sometimes unfavorably, in the context of his more centrist approach to politics.

If the Russian government is trying to shake up the established order, Macron would be their biggest roadblock. He’s the only candidate who is considered antagonistic to Russia, and he’s also spoken out the most about remaining in NATO and the European Union. One article from Sputnik quoted a source linking him to the “wealthy gay lobby,” a insinuating rumor that followed him throughout his candidacy.

Check back to this article to see if the 2017 French elections polls correctly called a victory in the final results for Emmanuel Macron and a failure for Marine Le Pen. </s> PARIS (AP) — The Latest on the first round of France’s presidential election (all times local):

French centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron and far-right leader Marine Le Pen are advancing to the presidential runoff, after major opponents conceded defeat.

For the first time in modern French history, no mainstream party candidate is advancing, upending the country’s political system.

Voters will choose May 7 between Macron, a former investment banker and ex-economy minister, and Le Pen, who has tried to scrub her National Front party of its history of racism and anti-Semitism.

France’s prime minister has called on voters to support centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron against far-right rival Marine Le Pen in the country’s presidential election.

Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve has called for the defeat of Le Pen’s National Front party, in comments just after polling agencies projected the two advancing to the May 7 presidential runoff.

The announcement came moments after the Socialist candidate Benoit Hamon conceded defeat. If the results hold, it would be the first time in modern French history that no major-party candidate has advanced to the presidential runoff.

Supporters of French far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen and centrist Emmanuel Macron went wild with cheers as polling agency projections suggested they could advance to the presidential runoff.

“We will win!” Le Pen supporters chanted in her election day headquarters in Henin-Beaumont. They burst into a rendition of the French national anthem, and waved French flags and blue flags with “Marine President” inscribed on them.

Macron supporter Mathilde Julien said that “he represents France’s future, a future within Europe.”

Silence and disappointed sighs rose up instead at the headquarters of conservative Francois Fillon in Paris as projections appeared on TV screens suggesting he is in third place and wouldn’t make it into the runoff.

French Socialist candidate Benoit Hamon has conceded defeat in the first-round presidential vote.

Polling agency projections showed Hamon a distant fifth place after five years of a deeply unpopular Socialist government.

Hamon said as he acknowledged losing the race that “the left is not dead.”

Projections show that far-right leader Marine Le Pen and centrist Emmanuel Macron leading in the first round. If their leads hold, it would be the first time in modern French history that no major-party candidate has advanced. Hamon called on voters to back Macron in the May 7 runoff.

Polling agency projections show far-right leader Marine Le Pen and centrist Emmanuel Macron leading in the first-round French presidential election.

The results could set up a duel between a young candidate with no electoral experience and the woman who remade the image of a party tainted by racism and anti-Semitism.

The race is seen as a litmus test for the spread of populism and could help determine Europe’s future. With most polls just closed, it remained too early to say who advances to the May 7 runoff. Close behind were far-left contender Jean-Luc Melenchon and conservative Francois Fillon.

The projections are based on vote counts in select constituencies, then extrapolated nationwide. If Le Pen and Macron’s leads hold, it would be the first time in modern French history that no major-party candidate has advanced.

Presidential voting in France’s Caribbean territories seems to have lagged behind that on the mainland.

Official figures show that only about 35 percent of the 311,000 eligible voters on the French island of Martinique had voted by 5 p.m. local time Saturday, two hours before polls closed. Final figures were being released with Sunday’s results.

The percentage was even lower elsewhere: Just 34 percent in Guadeloupe and 20 percent in Saint-Martin.

In Martinique, Fort-de-France Mayor Didier Laguerre tells the Martinique 1ere radio station that most voters are probably waiting for a runoff.

Voter turnout in France’s close presidential election is above 69 percent in late afternoon, almost as high as the last presidential vote.

The Interior Ministry announced Sunday that the turnout had reached 69.4 percent, compared to 70.6 percent in the first round of presidential voting in 2012.

After years of economic stagnation and high unemployment, voter disillusionment is exceptionally high this year, prompting expectations of lower-than-usual turnout

Polls have suggested that far-right candidate Marine Le Pen’s voters were especially motivated to cast ballots while supporters of other candidates were less convinced.

Sunny weather in much of France may have played a role. Some pollsters also said an attack on police Thursday may have prodded voters into taking part in the election.

Thousands of people are rallying in Berlin to show their support for the idea of a united Europe and for a pro-European outcome for France’s presidential election.

The weekly demonstrations organized by a grassroots group in Germany and other European countries calling itself Pulse of Europe began at the end of 2016 to counter growing nationalist sentiment and opposition to the European Union.

On Sunday, thousands showed up at the German capital’s Gendarmenmarkt square. They waved the star-spangled blue flags of Europe, held up signs like “Berlin loves France” and sang Europe’s “Ode to Joy” anthem.

Even though the northern French town of Henin-Beaumont is presidential candidate Marine Le Pen’s bastion, that’s no guarantee of votes for the far-right contender.

Voters trickled in Sunday in a steady stream to polling station No. 12, an elementary school where Le-Pen had voted earlier in the day in the first round of France’s presidential election.

Valerie Hosaert, a 48-year-old insurance company worker, says “there are 11 candidates and not one that pleases me … so I’m voting for the least bad.”

Charlotte Villette, 25, added “we don’t have much choice. They’re all losers.”

Yvette Tifou, 67, a retired math teacher, said her choice was “relatively simple” since she is a long-time leftist. She also said Sunday’s presidential vote is more important than past presidential votes in France.

In Montreal, thousands of French citizens have waited in lines that snaked at one point to eight blocks long to cast their votes in France’s presidential election.

Polls opened Saturday morning in Canada’s main French speaking city, home to Quebec’s highest population of French nationals. French citizens lined up to vote at Montreal’s only polling station at Stanislas College in Outremont.

The vote in mainland France is happening Sunday, but polling stations in France’s far-flung overseas territories and in embassies around the world opened on Saturday to allow enough time to collate the vote results altogether.

Outgoing French President Francois Hollande has said the best message of this election would be “to show democracy is stronger than anything” by going out to vote.

Hollande, who is not standing for re-election, oversaw tight security measures for Sunday’s first round poll to help prevent disruption after Thursday’s deadly attack on the Champs-Elysees.

His government mobilized over 50,000 police and gendarmes to protect polling stations.

Voting in his political fiefdom of Tulle in Correze, southwestern France, Hollande said that “we are in such a time, and sadly it’s nothing new and not about to end now, when we must mobilize a lot of means.”

He called the measures a “guarantee to the French people this fundamental right of choosing their future.”

France’s Interior Ministry says the voter turnout so far in the first round of the presidential election is about the same as it was in 2012, when turnout was high.

At midday Sunday, the ministry said that 28.54 percent of eligible voters had cast their ballot, compared with 28.29 percent in 2012.

Commentators have said a low voter turnout would benefit far-right candidate Marine Le Pen, whose voters are seen to have more enthusiasm and are more certain to vote in a low turnout election than supporters of some other candidates.

A voting station in eastern France has reopened after being evacuated because of a suspicious vehicle parked nearby.

Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet told The Associated Press that the voting station in Besancon was evacuated while explosives experts examined the car, but they deemed there to be no risk.

He said no other incidents have been reported in Sunday’s first-round presidential election.

Tens of thousands of security forces are guarding voting stations across France after an attack in Paris on Thursday revived security concerns. France remains under a state of emergency after deadly Islamic extremist attacks in recent years.

The top two winners on Sunday will advance to a May 7 runoff.

Topless demonstrators from the Femen activist group have caused a commotion as they staged a stunt against Marine Le Pen outside a polling station where the far-right presidential candidate was heading to vote.

Around six topless Femen activists were detained Sunday morning after jumping out of an SUV limo wearing masks of Le Pen and United States President Donald Trump.

Police and security forces quickly forced them into police vans, confiscating their signs.

Le Pen voted at the station shortly after without further disruption.

The election is taking place amid heightened security. The government has mobilized more than 50,000 police and gendarmes to protect polling stations.

Centrist presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron, one of the front-runners in France’s unpredictable election, has voted in the coastal town of Le Touquet in northern France alongside his wife Brigitte Macron.

The former Socialist economy minister and former banker was relaxed and posed for selfies with voters.

Macron, 39, traveled to Le Touquet this weekend where he has a holiday home for time off the campaign trail.

Other candidates also cast their ballot Sunday morning, including Socialist Benoit Hamon and far-leftist Philippe Poutou.

A total of 11 contenders are vying to advance to the presidential runoff on May 7.

President Francois Hollande has cast his vote in the first round of the French election in his political fiefdom of Tulle in Correze, southwestern France.

The incumbent Socialist president made the unusual move last year of pledging to not stand for re-election.

The Socialist candidate is 49-year-old Benoit Hamon, who is not among the presidential front runners.

Hollande was the most unpopular French leader in the country’s modern history.

The wife of conservative presidential candidate and former French Prime Minister Francois Fillon has cast her ballot near their country home — conspicuously not alongside her husband, due to vote miles away in Paris.

Presidential candidates usually vote together with their spouses.

Welsh-born Penelope Fillon, 61, was handed preliminary charges for her role in a fake jobs scandal — dubbed “Penelopegate” — that had threatened to derail her husband’s campaign.

She voted in the department of Sarthe, some 250 kilometers (155 miles) away from the French capital, where she lives with her husband in a 14th-century manor.

Candidates in France’s presidential election have started to cast their votes.

Hardline right-winger Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, who rails against Europe, was the first of the 11 presidential candidates to vote Sunday morning in his constituency in the leafy Paris suburbs.

Far-left candidate Nathalie Arthaud cast her ballot soon after in the Paris suburb of Pantin.

In Paris, voters were lining up early at polling stations.

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.

“It’s definitely risky, but I have faith in the result even if an extreme candidate qualifies for the second round,” said Beatrice Schopflin.

French voters have begun casting ballots for the presidential election in a tense first-round poll that’s seen as a test for the spread of populism around the world.

Over 60,000 polling stations opened Sunday at 0600 GMT for some 47 million eligible voters, who will choose between 11 candidates. It’s the most unpredictable election in generations.

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, appeared to be closing the gap, as was far-left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon. </s> The National Front’s far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen is trying to pick off supporters of François Fillon — the center-right Republican candidate who came up short in the first round of the French elections — in hopes of of pulling off an upset and defeating her opponent, centrist Emmanuel Macron, in this weekend’s runoff. But her strategy to peel away Fillon fans has run into quite the hiccup: She’s now been accused of plagiarizing whole excerpts from a recent Fillon speech.

Fillon gave his speech on April 15, shortly before the first round of the elections. Le Pen delivered her version in Paris on May 1. The similarities are pretty striking. Le Pen mentions France’s “three maritime borders,” a phrase lifted almost exactly from Fillon’s earlier speech. Le Pen also recited a quote from World War I French prime minister Georges Clemenceau; Fillon used the identical phrase in his address. They both mentioned “waiting lists” to learn French in international places such as Shanghai, Tokyo, Mexico, Rabat, and Rome. A pro-Fillon organization created this side-by-side comparison:

Le Pen’s supporters have already spun her plagiarism as something of an ode to Fillon, and a sign that Le Pen has much in common with the conservative (and Establishment) candidate. One National Front official called it a “wink” to Fillon’s backers. The National Front’s secretary general, Nicolas Bay, called it a “small loan.”

“It shows that Marine Le Pen is not sectarian,” Bay explained, “and that when one of her opponents, in this case from the first round, speaks well about France, she can borrow his comments.”

Another report had suggested that French writer and politician Paul-Marie Coûteaux had given notes to both Fillon and Le Pen, and this accounted for the similarities. However, Coûteaux later admitted that he had given Fillon notes for that April 15 speech, but had not done so for Le Pen — though both echoed themes in his 1997 book Europe’s Road to War. As a Le Pen supporter, he added, that he wasn’t “displeased” she had recycled his words.

All that’s missing is a My Little Pony excuse, but it’s still unclear whether these other explanations and reverse psychology will get by voters. Le Pen is trailing Macron by between 15 and 20 points in the polls ahead of Sunday’s vote. She has tried to put some distance between herself and the far-right, anti-immigrant platform of the National Front by stepping down as party leader to focus on her presidential campaign. Le Pen had also hoped to attract some far-left supporters of another anti-Establishment candidate, Jean-Luc Melenchon. But Melenchon, who came in fourth place in the runoff, told his backers a vote for Le Pen and the National Front would “be pushing the country toward a general blaze.” So instead Le Pen is — and this may sound familiar — banking on disaffected Melenchon voters abstaining or throwing away their votes rather than supporting Macron.

But Le Pen would still need to attract those Fillon voters to have a chance. Fillon was once the likely winner of the French presidency, until his campaign was sidelined by a public-corruption scandal. He took a tough line on the European Union and immigration while skirting Le Pen’s more hard-line stances. But, as a former spokesman for Fillon told reporters, Fillon’s voters likely won’t be fooled by Le Pen. “They won’t be bought because one copies parts of their candidate’s speech,” he said. </s> Marine Le Pen, French National Front political party leader and candidate for the French 2017 presidential election, attends a campaign rally in Marseille, France, April 19, 2017. — Reuters pic

MARSEILLE, April 20 — French far-right candidate Marine Le Pen yesterday accused her rivals of turning a blind eye to Islamic terrorism at her last major rally before the first round of a nailbiting race for president.

Addressing nearly 5,000 flag-waving supporters in the southern city of Marseille, where two Frenchmen were arrested Tuesday on suspicion of planning an attack on the election, the National Front (FN) leader said: “I have been denouncing this terrible poison of Islamic terrorism since I launched my campaign ... and none of my rivals are willing to debate the subject.

“They wanted to stay quiet about this problem, to suppress it, to keep it at a distance like one sweeps dust under the carpet,” she said.

“The silence of the other candidates comes from shame, the shame of being a member or even having led a government which did nothing to lower the threat and even created the conditions for this scourge to develop,” she told the rally, which was held under tight security.

Police fired teargas and arrested four people after around 500 people demonstrated against Le Pen and tried to march towards the rally.

Some of them threw projectiles and firecrackers.

“Terrorist acts have multiplied throughout Europe during the campaign,” she said. “Here in Marseille two fanatics were arrested before they committed odious crimes.”

Le Pen, 48, has spent years trying to grow support for the FN by campaigning on bread-and-butter issues, but in the final days of the race she has returned to its stock themes of immigration and national identity.

In a BFM television interview yesterday she repeated that she would slash immigration, make it harder to get French nationality and crack down on suspected Islamists.

Polls show Le Pen, 39-year-old centrist Emmanuel Macron, conservative former prime minister Francois Fillon and hard left firebrand Jean-Luc Melenchon locked in a tight four-way race ahead of Sunday’s first round of voting.

A new survey published yesterday showed Macron leading on 23 per cent to Le Pen’s 22.5 per cent — both of them down slightly.

Fillon had improved to 19.5 per cent while Melenchon had reached 19 per cent, narrowing the gap with the frontrunners.

The top two will advance to a run-off vote on May 7.

Jean-Yves Camus, an academic and expert on the FN, told AFP that Le Pen had returned to the “fundamentals, and particularly immigration” in the final run-in.

“It’s back to basics,” he said.

“The FN top brass has decided to go full throttle for far-right voters.”

Struggling Socialist candidate Benoit Hamon, whom polls place fifth, attempted to turn around his campaign at a rally in Paris.

Hamon urged voters to “wake up, because you alone can avoid a nightmare for France.”

After a string of Islamist-inspired assaults in France, security to the centre of the campaign following the arrests of two men seen in a video pledging allegiance to the Islamic State jihadist group.

A cache of weapons and explosives was found in the apartment of the suspects named as Clement Baur, 23, and Mahiedine Merabet, 29.

Macron yesterday told a rally that he was the only candidate capable “of ensuring the security” of his countrymen and pledged to “track down all those who have attacked our country or are planning to do so and prevent them from doing harm.”

Le Pen has claimed that her proposals such as expelling any foreigner convicted of a crime or suspected of being radicalised would have helped prevent some of the attacks since 2015 which have claimed more than 200 lives.

Left-leaning Le Monde newspaper has dismissed the claim as “absurd” given that most of the attackers were French, many without criminal records.

“You don’t seek votes on the backs of dead people. It’s a sort of moral red line,” the newspaper said.

French voters have so far been more concerned about unemployment and their spending power than terrorism or security, polls show, though analysts warn this would change quickly in the event of bloodshed.

Some analysts have also depicted the French election as a sort of referendum on the European Union, with Le Pen proposing to a referendum on France’s membership of the 28-country club and scrap the euro common currency.

On Tuesday night, she insisted that the TF1 television channel remove the blue-and-yellow European flag from behind her before an interview.

But Melenchon, her eurosceptic hard left opponent, sought to soften his position on Tuesday night, stating that he did not seek to end the European Union or the euro despite criticising the “ultra-liberal” trading bloc for years.

“Don’t believe what they tell you, ‘He wants to leave Europe, the euro’... let’s be serious,” he told supporters.

The Communist-backed candidate has pledged to renegotiate some of the founding treaties of the bloc, however, which would cast serious doubt on the viability of the postwar project of integrating the continent.

Polls show that a majority of French people still support the EU and the euro.

The election has been one of the most unpredictable in decades and takes place against the backdrop of Britain’s shock decision to leave the EU and Donald Trump’s presidential victory in the United States. — AFP
The first polls since April 20's attack indicate a slight bump for Marine Le Pen over Jean-Luc Mélenchon and François Fillon, though they still show her losing to Emmanuel Macron in the first and second rounds of the election.