Macron ahead in polls as s
Defeated candidates urge supporters to rally behind newcomer to deny Le Pen
Centrist Emmanuel Macron has taken a big step toward the French presidency by winning the first round of voting and qualifying for the May 7 runoff alongside far-right leader Marine Le Pen.
Though Macron, 39, is a comparative political novice who has never held elected office, new opinion polls yesterday had him easily winning the final clash against the 48-year-old Le Pen.
Yesterday’s outcome is a huge defeat for the two centre-right and centreleft groupings that have dominated French politics for 60 years, and also reduces the prospect of an antiestablishment shock on the scale of Britain’s vote last June to quit the European Union and the election of Donald Trump as United States President.
In a victory speech, Macron told supporters of his fledgling En Marche! (Onwards!) movement: “In one year, we have changed the face of French politics.”
He went on to say that he would bring in new faces and talent to transform a stale political system if elected.
Conceding defeat even before figures from the count came in, rival conservative and Socialist candidates urged their supporters now to put their energies into backing Macron and stopping any chance of a second-round victory by Le Pen, whose antiimmigration and anti-Europe policies they said spelled disaster for France.
Two polls yesterday had Macron winning more than 60 per cent of the second-round vote.
In a race that was too close to call up to the last minute, Macron, a proEU ex-banker and former Economy Minister who founded his own party only a year ago, had 23.9 per cent of the votes against 21.4 per cent for Le Pen.
Seconds after the first projections came through, Macron supporters at a Paris conference centre burst into the national anthem, the Marseillaise. Many were under 25, reflecting some of the appeal of a man aiming to become France’s youngest head of state since Napoleon.
With an eye to Le Pen’s avowedly France-first policies, Macron told the crowd: “I want to be the president of patriots in the face of a threat from nationalists.”
If he wins, Macron’s biggest challenges will lie ahead, as he first tries to secure a working parliamentary majority for his young party in June, and then seeks broad popular support for labour reforms that are sure to meet resistance. Addressing the battle ahead, he declared he would seek to break with a system that “has been incapable of responding to the problems of our country for more than 30 years”. “From today I want to build a majority for a government and for a new transformation. It will be made up of new faces and new talent in which every man and woman can have a place,” he said.
Le Pen, who is herself bidding to make history as France’s first female president, follows in the footsteps of her father, who founded the National Front and reached the second round of the presidential election in 2002.
Jean-Marie Le Pen was ultimately crushed when voters rallied around the conservative Jacques Chirac in order to keep out a party whose farright, anti-immigrant views they considered unpalatably xenophobic. His daughter has done much to soften her party's image, and found widespread support among young voters by pitching herself as an anti-establishment defender of French workers and French interests. — Reuters