Closing summary
We’re going to wrap this live blog up now. Thanks for staying with us, and here is a summary of this evening’s events:
- Emmanuel Macron, the outgoing president, and Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Rally have finished top of the first round of voting in France’s presidential elections and will now face each other in the second round decider on 24 April.
- Macron scored better than most analysts and polls had predicted, winning 28% of the vote, but Le Pen’s score of more than 23% will give her supporters plenty of hope for the coming fortnight.
- The far-left firebrand Jean-Luch Mélenchon came third on about 21% of the vote, confirming his status as the leader of what is left of France’s left. The far-right polemicist Eric Zemmour was fourth with about 7%.
- The vote confirmed the radical realignment of French politics that began with the centrist Macron’s victory in 2017, with the candidates of both France’s traditional parties of government, the right wing Les Républicains of Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy and the Socialist party of François Mitterand and François Hollande, scoring 5% and 2% respectively.
- All the defeated candidates called on their voters to cast their ballots for Macron in the second round, with the exception of Mélenchon, who asked his voters “not to give a single vote to Mme Le Pen” but stopped short of endorsing the outgoing president, and Zemmour, who called on his supporters to back the far-right candidate.
- An early poll of second round voting intentions put support for Macron at 54% and Le Pen at 46%.
- My colleague Angelique Chrisafis’s full report is here
- And here is Angeliques’s detailed analysis of where Le Pen’s electoral strategy might go from here:
Updated
Early second round poll puts Macron ahead
A snap Ipsos poll of second round voting intentions carried out after polls stations closed on Sunday suggested Emmanuel Macron would win 54% of the popular vote on 24 April and Marine Le Pen 46%. About 12% of respondents said they were still undecided.
The poll suggested Macron would win the support of a majority of Green and centre-right voters, while Le Pen would win the backing of 85% of Eric Zemmour’s electorate. Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s voters were divided more or less evenly between supporting Macron (34%), Le Pen (30%), and abstaining.
