Hacking adds to election confusion
Even before the last-minute attempt at sabotage, the election represented a big step into the political unknown for France — the first time in more than 50 years that neither of the establishment parties will be represented in the final round.
Instead, voters will choose one of two starkly different candidates, who have each pledged to change the system, though in radically different ways.
Ms. Le Pen, a fierce nationalist, wants to take France out of the European Union and restore the franc. Mr. Macron, a centrist who formed his own party, En Marche!, wants to push market and labor reforms to make France more competitive and deepen its ties to the European Union.
“The experienced politicians were rejected, and now we have a new category of candidate,” said Dominique Bussereau, a member of the mainstream right party Les Republicains from southwest France.
Saturday was a surreal day in France. The dramatic timing of the leaks, coming just as French law mandated a 44-hour media blackout before and during today’s critical presidential runoff, jolted the final hours of the race.
Government officials warned that there could be charges filed against those who violated the law. The French media largely observed the blackout, offering little about the content of the hacking, which so far appeared to involve mostly mundane exchanges.
“The experienced politicians were rejected, and now we have a new category of candidate,” said Dominique Bussereau, a member of the mainstream right party Les Republicains from southwest France.
But for all the turmoil, whether either candidate will be able to muster broad legislative or popular support is in doubt — raising the real possibility that an election intended to shake the status quo could still result in stasis. Can either candidate, as an outsider, really be effective as president?
Neither has ever held national elected office. Each lacks any real base of support in Parliament and will be trying to build one from the ground up — and the president of France is powerful only if he or she has a majority in Parliament to help push through his or her party’s program.
That uncertainty may ripple through Europe, which will be watching closely to gauge both the strength of far-right forces in France and the depth of the anti-EU sentiment.
The differences between the candidates are so deep that the winner will surely be seen as a harbinger of Europe’s future. Resentment of EU rules and the failure of the bloc to wrestle with immigration and border controls were major issues in the campaign.
Beyond France, the election will be critical in determining Europe’s openness to the world and the fate of its generous social welfare benefits. It is being especially closely watched in Germany, which holds parliamentary elections in September, as well as in Italy, which could also hold elections this year.
In particular, a close eye will be kept on Ms. Le Pen’s share of the vote, which will serve as a gauge of the current strength of the populist tide that last year ushered Britain’s vote to leave the European Union and Donald Trump to power in the United States.
In the final polls, Mr. Macron was heavily favored to win — by as much as 20 percentage points. Still, the polls come after a long season of staggering electoral upsets around the world and in the face of the lastminute hacking of Mr. Macron’s campaign accounts.
France’s election campaign commission said Saturday “a significant amount of data” — and some fake information — has been leaked on social networks following a hacking attack on centrist Mr. Macron’s presidential campaign.
France’s government cybersecurity agency will investigate the attack, according to a government official who said it appeared to be a “very serious” breach.
Voting started Saturday in France’s overseas territories and in some embassies abroad.
The leaked documents appear largely mundane, and the perpetrators remain unknown.