France will vote to elect a new president on April 10 and the final list of candidates consists of 12 candidates, most notably Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen.
The current president, Emmanuel Macron, said last month that he intends to run for a second term. His second-round opponent from 2017, the far-right Marine Le Pen, had already started her election campaign.
Left-wing extremist Jean-Luc Mélenchon is currently in third place in polls.
Valérie Pécresse of the right, who is running for Les Républicains, vies with far-right former TV pundit Eric Zemmour for fourth place.
They are followed in the polls by the Green Party’s Yannick Jadot, the Communist Party’s Fabien Roussel and the socialist candidate and mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo.
Would-be candidates had until March 4 to submit the 500 signatures of elected officials supporting their candidacy, as required by law.
A first round will be held on April 10, and in the event that no candidate is expected to receive a majority of the votes, a second runoff will be held two weeks later, with the two leading candidates from the first round taking part.
Polls suggest the runoff will likely pit Macron against Le Pen in a repeat of the second round in 2017.
First round survey, 7-day average
– Zemmour
— Melenchon
– Jadot
– Hidalgo
Emmanuel Macron
La Republic en Marche
Average of the last 7 days (first round preferences):
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France’s current president rocked the country’s political scene in 2017 when he ran and won without the support of a major party. His hastily formed, centrist République en Marche party also won this year’s general election. Macron, a former economy minister under Socialist President François Hollande, is seen by voters as right-leaning in office.
Marine LePen
Rassemblement National (National Rally)
Average of the last 7 days (first round preferences):
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Le Pen has led a PR campaign to try and cleanse the image of the far-right National Anti-Immigration Front, which she took over from her father in 2011 and renamed the National Rally in 2018. The party’s result in June’s regional elections was lower than predicted after many of its traditional constituents abstained. Le Pen is championing the party’s traditional line of curbing immigration and “keeping France for the French” and the cost of living crisis in her third presidential bid
Jean Luc Melenchon
La France Insoumise (Unbent France)
Average of the last 7 days (first round preferences):
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Mélenchon is a former socialist who has been a candidate for various left-wing groups since leaving the party. He ran in the last two presidential elections, winning more than 10% of the vote each time and more than the Socialist candidate in 2017.
Valerie Pécresse
Les Republicains
Average of the last 7 days (first round preferences):
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Pécresse was budget minister under Nicolas Sarkozy and is currently president of the Ile-de-France region, which includes the French capital and region. Describing herself as “two-thirds Angela Merkel and one-third Margaret Thatcher,” she has focused on crime, immigration and the economy. She is the choice of Les Républicains, which won their primaries on December 4th.
Eric Zemmour
recapture
Average of the last 7 days (first round preferences):
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Zemmour is a far-right television pundit previously convicted of inciting racial hatred and championing controversial views such as the ‘grand replacement’ theory, according to which Muslim immigrants will ‘replace’ the populations of European countries.
Yannik Jadot
Ecologists (Greens)
Average of the last 7 days (first round preferences):
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Jadot is the Green Party candidate. In the 2017 presidential election, he resigned in favor of the socialist Benoît Hamon.
Anne Hidalgo
socialists
Average of the last 7 days (first round preferences):
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Hidalgo is the first female mayor of Paris and is in her second term. She is best known for her campaign to reduce the number of cars in the French capital. As the Socialist Party’s presidential candidate, she has highlighted her working-class and immigrant roots and promised to improve salaries, particularly for teachers.
Even in a fight
The list includes 12 candidates, many of whom typically score no more than 3% in polls. They include the Communist Party’s Fabien Roussel, who outperformed socialist candidate Anne Hidalgo in the polls in the final weeks of the campaign. Also at the start are Jean Lasalle from the Resistons! (Resistance!) Party and Nathalie Arthaud by Lutte Ouvrière (workers’ struggle), a former Ford factory worker, Philippe Poutou, for the anti-capitalist Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste, and the Eurosceptic Nicolas Dupont-Aignan.
What about the expiration?
France’s polling institutes also asked respondents how they would vote in a hypothetical second round. For obvious reasons, they focus on the currently most likely scenario, a repeat of the 2017 Macron-Le Pen vote.
Emmanuel Macron vs. Marine Le Pen
This is the core scenario and therefore the most requested. Macron’s lead over Le Pen is larger in the second-round polls than in the responses to the first-round decisions. In 2017 he inherited over 70% of the votes from the other candidates in the first round.
This article will be updated regularly to ensure it reflects the current situation as best as possible. Any significant corrections made to this or previous versions of the article will continue to be footnoted in accordance with Guardian editorial guidelines.