Far-right candidate Marine Le Pen may have missed out on the French presidency, falling 17 pecentage points short of incumbent Emmanuel Macron in a runoff held April 24, 2022. But to characterize her campaign as a total loss would be missing an essential point: with nearly 41.2% of the vote, a far-right contender came closer to securing the French presidency than at any point in the past.
She outperformed the previous two times that her party got through to the final round. In 2017, Le Pen received only 33.9% of the vote. Her father and predecessor as head of the Front National – now rebranded as Rassemblement National, or National Rally – won just 17.8% of the vote in the 2002 runoff.
