French green party candidate Yannick Jadot on Thursday announced he was dropping from the presidential race and would back Socialist party candidate Benoit Hamon in two stage elections in April and May.

"I am withdrawing as a candidate in the presidential election to take part in a great adventure," Jadot said on France 2 television after striking a "marvelous" agreement with with the Socialists earlier in the day.

Opinion polls show Jadot getting one or two percent of the vote, but by throwing his support behind fourth place Hamon the left hopes to consolidate its voter base to advance in the polls. Hamon has unsuccessfully sought to persuade Communist-backed Jean-Luc Melenchon to drop out of the race and support his bid.

Watch video 25:59 Share French election campaign - battle of the outsiders? Send Facebook google+ Whatsapp Tumblr linkedin stumble Digg reddit Newsvine Permalink https://p.dw.com/p/2XHal French election campaign - battle of the outsiders?

Some polls show all three men may have enough supporters to give a leftist alliance a chance to mount a challenge.

Marine Le Pen, the far-right leader of the National Front, is currently ahead in the polls with about a quarter of the vote. But she is forecasted to lose the second round vote on May 7 to centrist former economy minister Emmanuel Macron or Francois Fillon, the conservative candidate for the right-wing Republicans party.

Macron was given a slight boost this week after centrist François Bayrou threw his support behind the centrist candidate. Two new polls released showed Macron neck-and-neck with Fillon at about 20 percent each, while a third showed the former economy minister slightly ahead of Fillon after Bayrou's announcement.

A leftist alliance would make Macron and Fillon path to the presidency more difficult.

All the polls show Le Pen winning the first round election on April 23 but losing in the May 7 runoff against either Macron or Fillon.

cw/rc (AFP, dpa, Reuters) </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> 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> 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> PARIS — Emmanuel Macron’s presidential campaign received a boost Wednesday after the leader of a centrist political party with a small but ardent following said he wouldn’t run in the election and proposed an alliance with the former French economy minister.

François Bayrou, leader of Mouvement Démocrate, said contesting this year’s election would have fractured the vote to the advantage of Marine Le Pen, the leader of far-right National Front party.

“Because the risk is immense, because French people are bewildered and desperate, I’ve decided to offer Emmanuel Macron an alliance,” Bayrou said.

Bayrou’s decision is the latest twist in a closely fought presidential election, fraught with setbacks for front-runners and surges in support for outsiders. With polls showing Ms. Le Pen winning the first round April 23, mainstream candidates are jostling for second place and the chance to go head-to-head with the National Front leader in the May 6 runoff.

An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com. </s> 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> France’s centre-right heavyweights were forced to realign their loyalties on Monday, after “third man” François Fillon claimed a surprise victory in the first round of his party’s presidential primaries.

The gloves are now off between Fillon, 62, who scored 44% of Sunday’s vote, and Alain Juppé, 71, who scored 28%, for the second-round vote next weekend.

Whichever of the two former prime ministers wins will become the candidate of the centre-right opposition party Les Républicains, and is expected to be the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen’s only credible opponent in the presidential election next spring.

In the wake of Fillon’s triumph, former ministers and losing candidates – including former president Nicolas Sarkozy, who once described his one-time prime minister as “Mister Nobody” – declared they would support him in the second round.

Sarkozy crashed out of the primaries with only 20.6% of the vote. Shortly after his defeat he called on supporters to throw their weight behind Fillon.

Among those who responded to the call were former prime minister and presidential candidate Édouard Balladur, and Sarkozy supporters Brice Hortefeux and Rachida Dati, as well as fellow first-round loser Bruno Le Maire.

On the other hand, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morziet, who came fourth in the primary has announced she will support Juppé, as have former prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin and former minister Valérie Pécresse.



The other first-round contenders, Jean-François Copé, former head of the centre-right party, and Jean-Frédéric Poisson of the Christian Democrat party, have yet to declare their second-round allegiance. François Bayrou, the president of the centrist party MoDem, has already called for his supporters to vote for Juppé.

For French pollsters and politicians alike, Fillon’s massive victory came almost out of nowhere. Just a week ago, polls had him rising in popularity but still relegated to third place, behind Juppé and Sarkozy.

But a strong performance in primary debates appears to have meant his programme, described as an “economic and social transformation” to the right of that proposed by the more centrist Juppé, cut through eventually.

Fillon’s key measures include increasing the 35-hour maximum working week to a 39-hour week for public sector workers, gradually raising the retirement age to 65, reducing unemployment benefits, increasing VAT by two points and reducing direct taxes, as well as cutting 500,000 public sector jobs and making €100bn spending cuts to reduce the public debt and balance the country’s books.



Juppé, who served as prime minister under President Jacques Chirac, has also pledged to do away with the 35-hour week in both public and private sectors, to increase the number of police and gendarmes to counter the terrorist threat, to create full employment by 2022, to make cuts in unemployment benefits and to reduce taxes, particularly for businesses, as well as cutting public spending.

Jean-Christophe Cambadélis, of the ruling Socialist party, which will hold its own primaries in the new year – most likely without the desperately unpopular François Hollande – said: “The right has chosen a candidate who is well to the right, he’s the ultra candidate: ultra-conservative, ultra-liberal, ultra-anti-gay marriage, ultra-antisocial, he ticks all the boxes. It’s the ultra-right and it’s also a straight bridge with the Front National in terms of identity and the idea of the family.”

Although Sarkozy’s final speech on Sunday advised followers to vote for Fillon, an avowed Thatcherite, there is little love lost between the two veterans of French politics. 



In 2007, the newly elected president, Sarkozy, appointed Fillon to the PM’s post as a gesture of gratitude for a successful campaign, which the veteran politician had run. Those close to Sarkozy expected him to fire Fillon shortly afterwards.



The dismissal never came. Not because Sarkozy had changed his mind, but because Fillon’s popularity rose with the voting public, enabling him to doggedly cling to his post. The president then spent his five years in office humiliating his colleague, referring to him publicly as an underling there to carry out presidential orders and nicknaming him “Mister Nobody”.



On Sunday, Fillon served his revenge cold. “Fillon has signed Sarkozy’s political death warrant: this historical boomerang, a double surprise of the right and centre’s primary, will go down in history …” wrote Cécile Cornudet in Les Echos.

“On paper, François Fillon had no chance of finishing ahead in the first round Sunday … but the voters’ wishing to play with the predictions went in his favour,” she added. “History has shown us that nobody is ever dead in politics, and has added a nuance in this curious period where surprise has become the rule and when one can rise in the polls and reverse the table in less than three weeks.”



The French press agreed it was the ultimate humiliation for the former president who was declared the victim of a wave of “anti-Sarkozism”. Libération described it as “the Fillon miracle”.

“Behind the right’s primary was hidden a referendum over the return to business for Nicolas Sarkozy, but also a stupefying majority in favour of François Fillon,” it wrote.

Le Monde’s editorial said the second round would be a battle between the “Thatcher right and the Chirac right”. Fillon, it wrote, represented the “traditional right, solid, serious, provincial and Catholic, notable and well brought-up”. On the other side, it described Juppé as a successor to the former president Jacques Chirac, under whom he served as prime minister – unlikely to cause a social revolution after provoking three weeks of mass demonstrations over his proposed social security reforms in 1995. “He is the upholder of a more moderate, more careful and, he says, more realistic right,” it said. </s> Chesnot/Getty Images(PARIS) — French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen announced Monday that she is temporarily stepping down from her party’s leadership as she battles for the presidency. She will face off against Emmanuel Macron during the second round of the election on May 7.

“I’m taking a leave of absence as president of @FN_officiel [the Front National]; I’m now simply a candidate in the presidential election,” Le Pen tweeted from her official account.

Le Pen and Macron bested nine other candidates to advance past the first round of voting on Sunday. They will now spend two weeks fighting for votes ahead of the second and final round.

Her decision to step down from the leadership of the National Front party appears to be an attempt to broaden her appeal as she and Macron battle to gain the support of voters who backed losing candidates in the first round of voting.

Since the results of the first round of voting became clear, Macron has enjoyed a number of high-profile endorsements, including from French President François Hollande and Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve.

The National Front’s image has been tarnished by the reputation of her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who led the party until his daughter took it over in 2011.

The elder Le Pen was widely rebuked for calling Nazi gas chambers “a detail of history.”

Marine Le Pen has denounced these remarks and worked to broaden her party’s appeal.

The two opposing French candidates received tacit support from two opposing U.S. politicians in the lead up to the first round vote.

President Donald Trump, while not offering a formal endorsement, said in an interview that Le Pen was “the strongest on what’s been going on in France.”

Former President Barack Obama, meanwhile, phoned Macron to wish him well ahead of the vote. Obama’s spokesman said it was not an official endorsement. </s> Before dawn broke over Paris, Emmanuel Macron was inspecting meat carcasses on hooks at a wholesale market. Rising early to talk about the “value of hard work” while watching butchers skinning calves’ heads is a classic campaign stop in any French presidential election. But this stop seemed more urgent than usual.



The independent centrist, who is running in his first election, had been seen as a frontrunner but faces a gruelling final few days before the first-round presidential vote this Sunday.

Styling himself as a pro-Europe progressive, he went from dark-horse outsider to favourite three months ago. But as polls narrow and a third of the electorate remains undecided, the race has become increasingly uncertain.

Macron’s supporters concede that the last few days of campaigning will be tough and unpredictable. Although polls have shown he could win a second round runoff on 7 May, Macron first has to make it to the final round – and that is not by any means guaranteed.

“The new president,” said one butcher as he posed for a selfie with Macron at the market. “He hasn’t won yet!” came the cry from the scrum of media recording the moment.

“You have to vote first,” Macron reminded him gently.

Macron, who served as the Socialist François Hollande’s economy minister before promising to “revolutionise” French politics by running for president, has been falling in the polls in recent weeks. The same is true for the other frontrunner, the far-right Front National’s Marine Le Pen, who had been roughly level with Macron at the front of the pack.

It is normal for presidential frontrunners to dip in the polls in the final weeks of a French election campaign, but Macron and Le Pen’s slump has been accompanied by a concerted rise by the hard-left Jean-Luc Mélenchon and the scandal-hit rightwing candidate François Fillon. The latter appears able to claw back voters who had turned their backs after allegations that he gave taxpayer-funded fake jobs to his wife and children.

Four candidates sit within the polls’ margin of error and the abstention rate could be higher than usual. There is no certainty about which two candidates will make it to the final round.

Last week, when Macron was photographed with his wife smiling down from a chairlift at a mountain resort in the south-west, it risked sending a message of haughty aloofness. He has decided to spend the remaining campaign days mixing in crowds, albeit carefully chosen, like the market workers who approve his promise to cut red tape and charges for employers.

Macron’s vast Paris stadium rally on Monday, which attracted 20,000 people, was intended in part as a rallying call to the thousands of volunteers for his En Marche! (On the Move) movement, who will be holding scores of small local campaign meetings this week.

In a dig at Le Pen, Macron said voters had the choice of “hope and courage over resignation”. Polls show Macron mostly attracts people who feel optimistic about their future, despite the overwhelming sense of pessimism and anger in a country troubled by decades of mass unemployment and the ever-present threat of a terrorist attack.

But even at the euphoric rally in the capital, campaigners were aware of the daunting task. Dominique Dusart, 57, who heads En Marche! in Yonne, south of Paris, admitted some were worried his support could decline. “We’re a bit worried by Mélenchon’s breakthrough,” she told the Agence France-Presse news agency. “It has been a bit of a slap in the face because we weren’t expecting it.”

Macron’s electorate has always had a higher proportion of wavering voters than other leading candidates. His challenge this week is to highlight the novelties in his policy platform, and perhaps come up with new headline-grabbing measures.

In an election campaign that has focused more on candidates’ personalities than any single topic, Macron’s “neither left nor right” manifesto has not seen any single measure boldly standing out. Canvassers pointed to his promise to cut local housing tax for 80% of people, or his plans to overhaul the system of unemployment benefits, or his loosening of rules and charges for businesses.

At a trestle table of Macron manifestos and a stand of balloons at a market in central Paris this weekend, an En Marche! campaigner tried to convince voters. Some asked about the dip in the polls. “Not long ago, everyone said it was impossible for Emmanuel Macron to get this far but we proved them wrong, and now we’re so close to the finish,” the canvasser urged one voter in his 40s who was undecided between voting Macron or returning to his “natural party” and choosing Fillon on the right. “I’m still not sure what Emmanuel Macron really stands for,” the voter said.

“We’ve gone in a few days from ‘we can win’ to ‘we can lose’,” one MP in Macron’s circle was quoted telling Le Monde last week. “There’s a lot of tension. Macron displays a calm image of serenity, but I’m not sure that’s the case – he’s knotted up inside.”

Macron is not alone in facing an uncertain first round vote on this Sunday. “After the highs of a fortnight ago, you can sense Emmanuel Macron’s campaign is fragile, but perhaps not at the point where it’s going to shatter,” said Philippe Braud, an analyst at the Cevipof institute at the Sciences Po university in Paris.

Marie Imbert, a 27-year-old fan wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with “Macron President”, told Agence France-Presse at the Paris rally on Monday that the narrowing polls were a warning against complacency in one of the most unpredictable elections in decades.

“It’s having a mobilising effect. It means we’ll have to be on the ground working until midnight on Friday night,” she said.
New polls show François Fillon and Jean-Luc Mélenchon neck and neck behind the frontrunners Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen ahead of the upcoming first round of the election.