PARIS, April 11 — French President Emmanuel Macron, who qualified for the second round with 27.85 percent of the vote (9,785,578), called on his supporters of La Republica en Marche to participate in a how he called it uniting major politicians’ movements while approaching leaders of the movement Left and Right Build Joint Actions against far-right candidate Marine Le Pen, who garnered 23.15 percent of the vote (8,136,369) for her national faction.
The Interior Ministry finally published this Monday the final results of this first round of presidential elections, in which the candidate of the left, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, was finally eliminated despite his 21.95 percent of the vote (7 714 949) party France Insumisa, and according to Público He has already asked his supporters not to vote for Le Pen in the second round, because in the polls over the past few weeks, more than a quarter of the people who said they would vote for Mélenchon in the first round, expecting that in the event of a duel between her and Macron in the second round, they would choose Le Pen.
Abstention reached 26.31 percent of registered voters, the highest level for a first round of presidential elections after 28.4 percent in 2002. Marine Le Pen came first in 20,036 communes and Emmanuel Macron in 11,861 communes out of a total of 35,080 communes, reported Telesur.
Young voters overwhelmingly voted for Jean-Luc Mélenchon in Sunday’s first round, while retirees backed incumbent President Emmanuel Macron, with Marine Le Pen winning in the 25-49 age group, pollsters say.
According to Telesur, the majority of candidates defeated in the first round called on their voters to support Macron’s continuity: Communist Party candidate Fabien Roussel; the socialist Anne Hidalgo; Yannick Jadot of the Greens and right-wing Republican candidate Valérie Pécresse.
Éric Zemmour, who also presented himself as the executive candidate for the extreme right, was the only one to publicly support Le Pen after suggesting that Macron was a “worse option”.
Immediately after the results of the first round of the presidential election were announced, Emmanuel Macron and his supporters lined up against Marine Le Pen for the second round. A scenario that promises to be as dangerous as it is uncertain. From his headquarters on election night, he urged his troops “to spare no effort over the next fortnight.”
For her part, without deviating from her strategy of proximity or social issues, Marine Le Pen is betting first on the votes of Jean-Luc Mélenchon for the second round, before those of her far-right rival Eric Zemmour: «I tell you the voters of Jean-Luc Mélenchon , be very rebellious, (…) don’t go to save your head [de] Emmanuel Macron, don’t subscribe to either retirement at 65 or social damage in the public sector,” Le Pen party spokesman Sébastien Chenu said on Monday.
In just two weeks, on April 24th, the final result of the French presidential elections will be known.
While Le Pen’s party remains as committed to its anti-immigrant and nationalist views and policies as it was in 2017, the party leader has campaigned on issues affecting French working-class families, who are forced to pay record prices for fuel and limit participation in their party’s local economies, according to a recent report by France24. Le Pen called for cuts in energy taxes, increases in pensions and keeping the current retirement age at 62, in contrast to Macron’s proposal to raise it to 65.