Macron slower off mark than Le Pen in last French election lap

Far- right leader Marine Le Pen has made a more impressive start than favorite Emmanuel Macron to the last lap of the French presidential election, a poll showed on Thursday.

Macron, tipped in all opinion polls so far to win convincingly against the National Front chief on May 7, has made several potentially costly public relations missteps since they both qualified for the decisive run- off in a vote last Sunday.

The Elabe poll for BFM TV found that one out of two people surveyed considered Le Pen’s campaign had taken off well.

Striking workers jeered Macron, a 39- year- old former economy minister, on Wednesday during a visit to the Whirlpool tumble- drier factory in his hometown of Amiens in northern France after Le Pen unexpectedly turned up there hours earlier and posed for selfie photos with people at the site.

“Some people say that the state cannot do everything but what they mean is that the state can’t do anything at all,” Florian Philippot told Inter radio.