Incumbent Emmanuel Macron is projected to win the French presidential run-off election, besting right-wing challenger Marine Le Pen.
PARIS (AP) — #France election: Polling agencies project centrist President Macron will win 2nd term, defeating far-right rival Le Pen.
— Matt Lee (@APDiploWriter) April 24, 2022
Projections made as the polls closed had the centrist Macron gaining 58.2 percent of the vote while Le Pen captured 41.8 percent.
Macron and Le Pen were set to enter a run-off election after neither candidate met the threshold for a decisive first-round victory.
Macron had received 28.6 percent of the vote while Le Pen drew 23.6 percent in that first election, according to pollster Ifop-Fiducial for French broadcasters TF1 and LCI.
If the pollster predictions prove true, Macron would assume office for a second term, becoming the first French president in two decades to do so.
While Macron is poised to secure another term, his popularity has waned amid a European economic crisis exacerbated by Russia’s disruption of energy markets and other domestic problems which Le Pen has tapped into. He confronts an increasingly divided country and an uphill battle to keep his party’s majority in the French parliament. Macron’s approval rating fell to 41 percent in April, down from 42 percent in March, according to an Ifop poll conducted for the Journal du Dimanche.
While Macron nearly achieved a landslide win five years ago, becoming France’s youngest president at 39, that margin is likely to shrink significantly to around 57-58.5 percent to Le Pen’s 41.5-43 percent of the vote.
On the campaign trial, Macron had warned that his opponent would lead France into isolationism and xenophobia. Le Pen had embraced a more populist platform somewhat akin to the America First concept espoused by former president Trump.
“I don’t want a France which, having left Europe, would have as its only allies the international populists and xenophobes. That is not us. I want a France faithful to humanism, to the spirit of enlightenment,” Macron said after the first round election failed to produce a winner earlier this month.
Macron had alienated some parts of the population for his strict Covid-19 mitigation regime in France, including restrictions like the vaccine passport, which barred unvaccinated residents from many recreational establishments.
After its experience with the pandemic and even more many years prior, France has appeared to be lurching right politically, some pundits and pollsters have observed.