Welcome to Mediapart’s coverage in English of the first-round voting this Sunday in the French presidential elections.
We present a brief guide to how the two-round elections work, which will remain at the bottom of this page, followed by the latest results and reactions as they come in through the evening. The latest posts are published at the top of the page. To find them, please regularly refresh this page. All indicated times are local (ECT).
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The French interior ministry announced on Monday afternoon the definitive first-round scores (share of votes cast) of candidates. They are:
- Emmanuel Macron: 27.84%
- Marine Le Pen: 23.15%
- Jean-Luc Mélenchon: 21.95%
- Eric Zemmour: 7.07%
- Valérie Pécresse: 4.78%
- Yannick Jadot: 4.63%
- Jean Lassalle: 3.13%
- Fabien Roussel: 2.28%
- Nicolas Dupont-Aignan: 2.06%
- Anne Hidalgo: 1.75%,
- Philippe Poutou: 0.77%
- Nathalie Artaud: 0.56%
A total of 26.31% of registered voters abstained (making a turnout rate of 73.69%), the highest percentage in a first-round vote since 2002, and which represented almost 13 million people (out of a total of 48.74 million registered voters).
Close to 544,000 people who went to the polls on Sunday left a blank vote in the urns, while another 237,000 left a spoilt ballot paper.
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What has unfolded (last election night post):
According to the last estimations on Sunday, the final second-round duel to decide who is handed the next five-year term as president of France will be between the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen and the incumbent centre-right president Emmanuel Macron.
Late on Sunday evening, while the tight gap between Le Pen and third-placed radical-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon was given at just 0.8% and possibly closing, the director of pollster Ipsos, Brice Teinturier, dismissed Mélenchon’s chances “at the current time” of being given second place in the definitive interior ministry results on Monday.
The estimated results have however established an absolute certainty: the two former major forces in French politics – the conservative movement in the Gaullist tradition, as represented by the Républicains party, and its historic rival, the Parti Socialiste – have been further shattered by tonight’s results, and the consequences for their futures will be, to say the least, significant.
Not only did Macron, in 2017, appoint as ministers high-profile, turncoat members of both parties, but more have rallied to him ahead of this year’s elections.
Meanwhile, in the event that it is to be a Macron-Le Pen duel in the final round on April 24th, Ipsos forecasts Macron garnering 54% of votes cast, against 46% for Le Pen.
In 2017, the two also faced off in the final round. It was of course won by Macron, with 66.1% of votes cast against 33.9% for Le Pen. He was then a newly arrived maverick on the political scene, a never previously elected centrist and a recently resigned economy and finance minister under socialist president François Hollande. But the prospects for this year’s repeat of their duel are very different.
No longer the new, young face in French politics (Macron was 39-years-old when elected in 2017) who represented himself as an innovating wind of change to the traditional, moribund conservative and socialist parties, Macron now has a legacy as president to defend, including the perception by many as being an ally of the wealthy, arrogant and detached from the problems and concerns of those worse-off in French society.
Le Pen, whose disastrous 2017 campaign foundered not only on a cross-political vote for Macron to keep the far-right out of power, but also on her lack of grasp of economic issues, including a populist ‘Frexit’ drive to leave the EU, has since carefully built a more serious image. She has presented herself as a defender of social injustice, hoping to broaden her attractivity to the broad Right by toning down her longstanding anti-Muslim, anti-immigration rhetoric, which was surpassed in that domain by the excessive, even by Le Pen's standards, hate speech of her far-right rival Eric Zemour.
While the next two weeks allows for unexpected upsets, the second-round Macron-Le Pen contest on April 24th will probably be tighter than the Ipsos predictions, which are based on the mathematical transfer of votes to either candidate from those who lost on Sunday.
Leftwing voters are tired of helping, and largely ensuring, the election of rightwing candidates simply to block the road of the far-right, as was the case in the second-round vote in 2002 (when Le Pen’s father Jean-Marie faced off with the conservative Jacques Chirac) and in 2017. While several leftwing candidates on Sunday (Anne Hidalgo, Yannick Jadot and Fabien Roussel) similarly called on supporters to vote for Macron on April 24th, and others, more reservedly, simply called for no vote to be given to Le Pen, it is quite possible that many, deeply unhappy with Macron, will either abstain or opt for a “blank” vote.
That is the same possible scenario for supporters of the conservative Les Républicains party, whose defeated candidate Valérie Pécresse announced she will reluctantly be voting for Macron to keep out Le Pen. Importantly, it is likely that members of the hard-right in the conservative camp will vote for Le Pen.
All of which, and not discounting the uncertain effects of dramatic developments in the war in Ukraine, points to a hard-fought battle in the second round, with no foregone conclusion. That nail-biting prospect will undoubtedly see a very tense fortnight ahead.
But while all eyes are currently turned to the presidential elections, the ensuing legislative elections in June are just as important. If Macron wins the presidential vote he will have to govern with a new parliament, which over the past five-year presidential term has been dominated by his LREM party. It is a fair bet that that vast majority will be significantly weakened, if not overturned, and in the case that Macron is re-elected, his second term in office is likely to be even stormier than the first.
2.15am: The final estimations by pollsters Ipsos-Sopra Steria of votes cast for the 12 candidates, while awaiting the official, definitive figures to be published later on Monday by the French interior ministry, are as follows:
Emmanuel Macron: 27.6%
Marine Le Pen: 23%
Jean-Luc Mélenchon: 22.2%
Éric Zemmour: 7.2%
Valérie Pécresse: 4.8%
Yannick Jadot: 4.7%
Fabien Roussel: 2.3%
Nicolas Dupont-Aignan: 2.1%
Anne Hidalgo: 1.7%
Philippe Poutou: 0.79%
Nathalie Arthaud: 0.6%
(See bottom of page who the candidates represent).
2am (Monday): The final estimations of the vote (see last post below), show a tightening of the score of third-placed radical-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon and second-placed far right candidate Marine Le Pen. Mélenchon was, finally, given a 22.2% share of the vote – just 0.8% behind Le Pen, which among some of his supporters has raised hopes that he may yet, when official and definitive figures are announced later on Monday, have pipped Le Pen into second place.
That would be a dramatic turn of events, but the Ipsos-Sopra Steria pollsters have said that, while they cannot rule out that possibility, it is most unlikely. The percentage point difference in the estimations of the scores of Mélenchon and Le Pen represent around 300,000 voters.
01.25am: Since we took that pause, the final estimated results between the two highest scoring candidates of the first round, Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen, have changed. In these early hours of Monday, Macron is credited with a 27.6% share of votes cast, and Marine Le Pen with 23%.
These estimations, by established by pollsters Ipsos-Sopra Steria, commissioned by public broadcaster France Télévisions, Radio France, France24 and Radio France Internationale, among others, are not exit polls but are an assessment of votes from a cross-section of voting centres. They will not now be modified, and only the official figures from France’s interior ministry, available Monday, will provide the definitive result.
11.30pm: We're taking a pause here, and will be back at around 1am for a wrap on the latest, ever more accurate estimations of results and an appraisal of what will be at stake for the second round.
11.16pm: It is not just leftwing parties who have been calling for voters to unite in the second round and keep Marine Le Pen out of the Élysée. In a statement this evening France's leading trade union, the CFDT, called on the electorate to vote for Macron to beat the “Rassemblement National candidate” Le Pen. It said: “Despite a stated desire to de-demonise its image, the Rassemblement National hasn't really changed. Its political manifesto - centred on discrimination between citizens, a retreat into [national identity] and a rejection of others, including by changing the Constitution, its international links with autocrats, its determination to undermine Europe - is a danger to democracy.”
However it added pointedly: “This appeal does not represent approval of the sitting president's record nor support for his policies.”
10.55pm: As we reported earlier, the roundly defeated conservative candidate Valérie Pécresse announced this evening that she will vote for Emmanuel Macron in the second round. But the man who came second to her in the primary elections of their Les Républicains party, hardliner Eric Ciotti, announced tonight that, “personally, I will not vote for Emmanuel Macron” in the second round.
But Ciotti is so far tonight something of an exception in comments made by high-profile members of his party, who have nearly all said they will vote for Macron, including Michel Barnier, the former European Union Brexit negotiator, who also ran unsuccessfully in the Les Républicains primaries. He said he will "without hesitation" back Macron in the ballot box.
The maverick candidate Jean Lassalle, who has no clear political affiliation, and who is estimated to have garnered a more than expected 3% of votes today, has said he will give no advice to his supporters on who to vote for in the second round. That is of relative importance given the possibility of a tight second-round result.
Meanwhile, French daily Le Figaro reported tonight on the reactions of the disappointed supporters of far-right candidate Eric Zemmour, who opinion polls once credited as running neck-and-neck with his direct rival Marine Le Pen, but who garnered around 7% today. Among the quotes from the crowd at his campaign HQ in Paris were those who believed there had been trickery at the ballot box. “I don’t believe it,” said one militant. “That we didn’t reach the second round I can accept. But such a [low] score, I don’t believe it. There was trickery.”
One of Zemmour’s campaign staff told the daily: “The three [candidates] leading the bill total 70 percent of the votes. Among the Right, there was so much fear of seeing Mélenchon in the second round that [people] voted for Marine Le Pen to avoid the catastrophe. Zemmour was swept aside by that concern.”
10.29pm: More from Macron's speech earlier. In it, he directly attacked the manifesto put forward by his second round rival Marine Le Pen, who has focused much of her campaign so far on the cost of living, a key area of concern for the French public.
“The only credible plan on the cost of living is ours,” the current president declared. “The only plan for workers, for all those who are on the brink of employment, is ours. The only plan for France and Europe is ours. I believe in all of us, whatever our origins, our lands, whatever our opinions and beliefs.”
He continued: “I want a France which provides progress for each person, for our elders, for our children, for our families, for single mothers, for the less well-off, not a France that goes backwards for everyone – that's not us.”
10.20pm: An interesting finding from a parallel survey of the voting patterns today by Ipsos-Sopra Steria and published by radio station France Info. It reports that votes cast by the 18-34 age group were in majority (34%) for the radical-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, and also among 25-34-year-olds (34%). In both those groups, Marine le Pen was found to be ahead of Emmanuel Macron, and she was, Ipsos-Sopra Steria estimated, the candidate who garnered the most votes among the 35-49 age group (with 28%) and also the 50-59 tranche. Macron took most votes from the 60-69 age group (with 30%) and the over 70s (41%).
10.16pm: Current president Emmanuel Macron received a rapturous reception at his campaign headquarters as he looked forward to his second round battle with Marine Le Pen. And immediately the sitting president made it clear that he was after the Left's votes for that crucial second round, thanking the defeated candidates socialist Anne Hidalgo, the Greens' Yannick Jadot and communist Fabien Roussel, as well as the rightwing Valérie Pécresse, for announcing their support for him in the second round.
Macron said he was ready to “hold out his hand to all those who want to work for France”. He continued: “I'm ready to invent something new to unite different political views, to construct a great movement with them.”
And the current president warned what was at stake in the next two weeks. “Let us not deceive ourselves, nothing's won yet. The debate that we will have in the next two weeks is decisive for our country and for Europe. Do we want a France that's independent because it is strong in terms of the economy, environment, agriculture and culture? Do we want a France where because of the environment the heating bills will come down and everyone will have an electric car? Do we want a France that continues to believe in science, reason, ability, as we have done in recent years?” he asked.
Emmanuel Macron continued: “I want a France that stands resolutely against Islamist separatism but not a France that stops Muslims and Jews from eating according to the precepts of their religion. I want a France that's part of a strong Europe, not a France that leaves Europe and which would have as its allies abroad just populists and xenophobes.”
9.57pm: More from that speech tonight by Valérie Pécresse: “All my combat was built against the extremes of the Right like those of the Left. The project of Marine Le Pen would lead the country into discord, to powerlessness and bankruptcy. Her historic closeness to Vladimir Putin discredits her from defending the interests of our country. Her election would lead to the erasure of France from the European and international scenes.”
“Therefore, and despite the profound divergence that I have insisted upon throughout the campaign, I will in all conscience vote for Emmanuel Macron to prevent the arrival in power of Marine Le Pen.”
9.55pm: Although most of the political attention was, understandably, focused on the second round of the presidential election on April 24th, some on the Left are already looking ahead to the Parliamentary elections that take place in June. Olivier Faure, first secretary of the Parti Socialiste, whose candidate Anne Hidalgo fared disastrously in the presidential election with a predicted score of around 2%, called for a “pact” on the Left at those Parliamentary polls.
Calling on Greens and others on the Left he said: “To repeat our errors would be a mistake, let's choose to unite.” Faure, who called for a “pact for social justice and the environment”, said he wanted to create a “centre of resistance to [Macron's] liberal reforms”.
9.45pm: The conservative Valérie Pécresse, whose estimated score of around 5% of votes cast is a disaster for her Les Républicains party – although not quite as great a disaster as for the Socialist Party with whom the conservatives had for decades, until 2017, been the main political forces in France – tonight gave a contrite speech at her campaign headquarters in Paris. “I had to do battle on two fronts,” she said. “That of the outgoing president and that of [political] extremes. Despite the passion that drives me, the quality of our project, I did not succeed in this atrophied campaign, to liberate myself from this stranglehold and to convince you […] it is a personal and collective deception.”
9.40pm: Stanislas Guerini, an MP and head of President Macron's party La République en Marche (LREM), set out what he described as the stark differences between the president and Marine Le Pen in the second round.
“This evening a new campaign starts and a clash of manifestos. On the one hand a programme for progress, of unity, of one country, pro-Europe, and on the other a programme of submission towards Vladimir Putin, of separation from the European Union,” he said.
9.30pm: Addressing her supporters this evening, a triumphant Marine Le Pen declared: “The French people give me the honour of being qualified for the second round. I see the hope that rises in the forces for the country’s recovery. All those who today did not vote for Emmanuel macron are called upon to come to join our rally.”
“On your vote depends the place that one wants to give to money in our society […] or the possibility of reaching retirement in good health.”
“I will ensure national independence, I will control immigration and re-establish security for all.”
Le Pen’s campaign has latterly centred on the question of standards of living and purchasing power, in an attempt to differentiate herself from the more extreme rhetoric of her far-right rival Eric Zemmour, vehemently anti-Islam. But her comments tonight show she will now certainly try to capitalize on Zemmour’s advice to his supporters tonight to vote Le Pen in the second round by returning to her previously regular anti-Islam, law and order theme.
9.25pm: The Macron camp is clearly already looking for votes from the Left in the second round in two weeks and will have been buoyed by all the defeated leftwing candidates who were quick to appeal to voters to defeat Marine Le Pen on April 24th. The minister in charge of citizenship, Marlène Schiappa, said she respected those who had voted for other candidates in the first round. “That's democracy. It's now down to us to convince those who voted for [radical-left] Jean-Luc Mélenchon, [communist] Fabien Roussel and others,” she told France 2 public broadcaster.
9.11pm: In addition to Jean-Luc Mélenchon, other candidates on the Left rapidly called for the far-right Marine Le Pen to be beaten in the second round. The defeated Communist Party candidate Fabien Roussel said that “the far-right has never been so strong” and added: “These are serious times.” Describing Le Pen's manifesto as “racist and xenophobic” he urged voters to “beat” the RN candidate. Meanwhile Trotskyist NPA party spokesman Philippe Poutou said that “no vote should go to the far-right”. But he stopped short of calling on the electorate to turn out for Macron in the second round. “Because he's a pyromaniac firefighter whose policies are one of the causes of the RN's rise,” he explained.
9pm: Turnout today is this evening estimated at around 71.6% of registered voters – thus an abstention rate of more than one-in-four. In 2017, the abstention rate in the first round reached 22.2%, the highest since 2002.
Commentators, wrongly as it turns out, had forecast that a high abstention rate would be notably detrimental for Le Pen. See Mediapart's analysis of the abstention 'imponderable' in French elections here.
8.56pm: Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the candidate for the radical-left La France Insoumise, who was by far the leading candidate on the Left in the first round, left his supporters in no doubt about what they should do in the second round between Le Pen and Macron. “You must not vote for Madame Le Pen,” he declared to a gathering of his supporters in Paris. “You must not give a single vote to Madame Le Pen.”
He continued: “The scene that you have in front of you is what the institutions wanted, one that ends up with you being asked to choose between two evils. I understand your anger. Don't let this lead you to make mistakes what would be absolutely irreparable. As long as life goes on, the struggle continues,” the veteran politician said.
8.55pm: Marine Le Pen’s score, now re-estimated at 23.6%, up from the earlier estimate of 23.3%, is the highest her far-right party, once called the Front National, has ever reached in a presidential election first round. In 2017, her first-round score, which also saw her qualified for the second and final round against Macron, was 21.3%.
8.50pm: The Green candidate Yannick Jadot, who looks set to get below 5% of the vote, was quick to appeal for his voters to back the sitting president in the second round. “I call on voters to come together to stop the far-right by casting a vote for Emmanuel Macron on April 24th. No one should minimise the fundamental threat that the far-right represents.” But referring to President Macron he said: “Our vote should not be seen as backing for his responsibility in dividing the country.” Jadot said he deeply regretted the fact that the environment would not be present as a major issue in the second round of voting. “It must not be absent in the presidency that follows,” he warned.
8.45pm: Valérie Pécresse, Anne Hidalgo, Yannick Jadot and Fabien Roussel have all called on supporters to vote for Macron in the April 24th second round to bar Marine Le Pen from gaining the keys to the Elysée Palace.
8.40pm: Along with Pécresse, the other major disaster for the once dominant political parties is the score of the Socialist Party candidate Anne Hidalgo, who garnered just 2.1% of the vote, which plunges it into further crisis. One surprise in the pecking order is the maverick Jean Lassalle, who came in 7th place with 3.3%, followed by Communist Party candidate Fabien Roussel on 2.7%, the hard-right Nicolas Dupont-Aignan on 2.3%. The two rival Trotskyist candidates, Nathalie Arthaud and Philippe Poutou came in, respectively, at 0.8% and 0.7%.
All those who garnered less than 5% of votes cast are unentitled to a public refund of their campaign spending, which will be particularly a blow for Jadot.
8.35pm: The Rassemblement National MP Sébastien Chenu said he was pleased with Marine Le Pen's predicted vote in the first round. “She improved her score [compared with 2017] despite the presence of a candidate who wanted to tread on our toes,” he said on BFMTV in reference to the other far-right candidate Éric Zemmour. “She highlighted a new divide, she was the one who set the agenda on the campaign themes such as the cost of living,” said the MP, who added that Marine Le Pen had gone out to meet the French people “while Emmanuel Macron had wanted to deprive the French people of a campaign”.
8.25pm: The Ipsos-Sopra Steria estimation gives the other far-right candidate Éric Zemmour in fourth place with a 7.2% share of the votes cast, in front of the conservative Valérie Pécresse on 5% - the lowest ever score by a candidate of the principal conservative movement under the Fifth Republic – while the Green party candidate Yannick Jadot garnered just 4.4% of the vote.
8.20pm: To no great surprise, the defeated far-right candidate Éric Zemmour's camp says he will call on his supporters to vote for his rival Marine Le Pen in the second round. Le Pen's niece Marion Maréchal, who had backed Zemmour in the first round, told TF1 television: “I can confirm that today Éric Zemmour will call for people to vote for Marine Le Pen.”
8.12pm: Christophe Castaner, president of the La République En Marche (LREM) group in the National Assembly and a close ally of Emmanuel Macron, said he was “satisfied” with the predicted first round vote for the president. “The vote is higher than in 2017. But we remain cautious,' he told BFMTV news channel.
He said that on April 24th a very simple question would arise. “Who do the French people want as the head of their Armed Forces? The head of French diplomacy?”
8.05pm: Emmanuel Macron will face far-right candidate Marine Le Pen in the second and final round of the presidential elections, first estimations indicate after the last polling booths closed at 8pm. An Ipsos-Sopra Steria estimation for France Télévisions, Radio France, Le Point, Le Monde, and France 24 placed Macron in the lead with a 28.1% share of votes cast, and Le Pen second with 23.3%
In third place, according to that estimate, is radical-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, with 20.1%.
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French presidential elections: a brief guide
France’s presidential elections are held every five years, and are followed by legislative elections, which this year will be held in June.
Voting in the presidential elections is held over two rounds, which this year are, respectively, on April 10th and 24th. There are around 49 million registered voters, although turnout is expected to be well below that figure.
The first round will decide which are the two highest-placed candidates who will then move on to a second and final round duel to decide who will be the next president, and she or he will take office on May 13th.
Analysts forecast a high abstention rate, and that could make an already tight race far more uncertain. Polling begins at 8am and finishes at 8pm in major cities and at 7pm everywhere else.
In today’s first round, 12 candidates are standing (eight men and four women), including the present incumbent, Emmanuel Macron, who is seeking a second five-year term in office. The others range from the far-left to the far-right, alongside mainstream candidates from the Left and Right.
Out of those 12, there are six recognised frontrunners. These are, in the order of support registered by most opinion surveys, the centrist Emmanuel Macron, far-right Rassemblement National party (the former Front National) leader Marine Le Pen, radical-left La France Insoumise (LFI) party leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the conservative Les Républicains party candidate Valérie Pécresse, Green party (EELV) candidate Yannick Jadot and the far-right polemicist and former media pundit Éric Zemmour.
The others, trailing well behind in opinion polls, are Fabien Roussel, general secretary of the Communist Party, Anne Hidalgo, Socialist Party candidate (and who is also mayor of Paris), Trotskyist NPA party spokesman Philippe Poutou, hard-right former Le Pen ally Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, Nathalie Arthaud of the Trotskyist Lutte Ouvrière party, and the maverick Jean Lassalle, a self-declared defender of rural communities, who argues for institutional reform by referendum.