President Emmanuel Macron will not be able to count on French voters' traditional anti-far right front in the final runoff and will need to step up his campaign if he is to defeat Marine Le Pen, who has successfully softened her image.
Although Macron was projected to win a better-than-expected first round score of 28%, improving on his 2017 result, Macron cannot count on victory: polls forecast a razor-thin margin of victory against Le Pen in the April 24 run-off.
