Campaigning in the French presidential election ended on Friday as far-Right candidate Marine Le Pen continued to close the gap on Emmanuel Macron.
The incumbent head of state was slipping in the polls on Friday.
The OpinionWay barometer poll of polls showed Mr Macron on 26 per cent in the 12-candidate first round, compared to 22 per cent for Ms Le Pen.
Mr Macron would then go on to win the second round, but only with 53 per cent of the vote, compared to 47 per cent for Ms Le Pen.
In 2017, Mr Macron beat Ms Le Pen with a resounding 66%, but in recent months he has become increasingly unpopular in France.
He has been accused of spending too much time trying to resolve the war in Ukraine, rather than focusing on the concerns of ordinary French voters.
Mr Macron, who speaks to Russian president Vladimir Putin most days, was accused by Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki of “negotiating with criminals”.
In turn, Mr Macron said: “Those words are both unfounded and scandalous, but they don’t surprise me.
“They are interfering in the presidential campaign. The Polish prime minister belongs to a far-Right party and he supports Marine Le Pen.”
Ms Le Pen’s National Rally party is still paying of a loan worth some £8million to a Russian bank.
She has always been a firm ally of Mr Putin, although she has criticised Russian war crimes in Ukraine.
It comes as Ms Le Pen continues to push a hard-Right agenda, including calling for fines for Muslim women who use headscarves to cover their faces in public.
“People will be given a fine in the same way that they are for illegally not wearing seat belts,” she said.
Ms Le Pen has also pledged to cut immigration by as much as 75 per cent, and to clamp down on new arrivals from bringing their families to France.
Veteran Left wing candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon was also enjoying a rise in his poll figures – he is expected to win around 17 per cent in the first round, and could feasibly pip Ms Le Pen.
Mr Macron, a former banker and financial civil servant who formed his own political movement to challenge for power, hopes to become the first sitting French president to be re-elected for 20 years.
The first round of the presidential election will take place on Sunday, and then the top two candidates will go head-to-head two weeks later, on April 24.
