France is poised for a rematch of the 2017 presidential election run-off with centrist Emmanuel Macron and far-right candidate Marine Le Pen once again advancing to the final after first-round voting on Sunday. But the 2022 race has so far been anything but a replay of the contest Macron won five years ago. And the final result when all votes are counted on April 24 is all the more uncertain for it.
Macron topped the first-round contest, winning 27.6 percent of the vote, according to Ipsos/Sopra Steria estimates late Sunday evening, ahead of Le Pen’s 23 percent score. Far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon rode a late surge – and an appeal for leftists to vote tactically – to 22.2 percent, narrowly falling short of a place in the final.
