France—Final results of the first round

Outgoing President Emmanuel Macron is the winner of the first round of the presidential election, having secured 27.85% of the votes, according to the final results announced by the Interior Ministry.

Next is the leader of the far right, Marine Le Pen, with 23.15% and the candidate of the radical left, Jean-Luc Melanson, with 21.95%,

Abstention reached 26.31% , the highest level for a first-round vote since 28.4% recorded in 2002.

The two gladiators immediately called for rallying. Macron thanked those of the unfortunate candidates who called on their voters to guarantee that the far right would be defeated. Ms Le Pen called on «all those who did not vote» for the outgoing centrist liberal president to «join» her.

Macron said he was ready to create a new structure to bring together, regardless of «differences», what he called a «broad political movement of unity and action».

«Macron is president!» shouted, waving French and European flags, a thousand or so enthusiastic supporters last night, relieved by the president's performance, counting «and one, and two, and five more years».

The radical left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon came third, with a share of around 20%, not much lower than that of Ms Le Pen, according to polling companies.

Ahead of the second round, the first polls, last night, show Mr Macron prevailing, either marginally (51-49% according to IFOP-Fiducial) or clearly (54-46% according to Ipsos), but in any case, much less triumphantly than in 2017, when he received over 66% of the votes.

«What will be decided on April 24 is a choice for society and culture», «two visions» for the «future» of the country are being pitted against each other, said Ms Le Pen, pledging to «restore France's national sovereignty» and «restore order».

«Let's not get carried away, nothing has been decided,» Macron warned, «the dialogue we will have in the next 15 days will be decisive for our country and for Europe.».

The gladiators have two major challenges ahead of them. The first is abstention, which approached 30%. The second is attracting the undecided vote, at a time when many French people view Mr Macron's policies, for some of them the «president of the rich», with distrust as indignation.

The French left, without exception, opposed the candidate of the far right, with Mr Melanson leading the way. «Not a single vote must go to Marine Le Pen,» he repeated three times to his supporters. Communists, socialists and environmentalists made the same appeal, as did the candidate of the traditional right, Valerie Pécres (4.8%), although according to her ’Emmanuel Macron has played with fire«.

Theoretically, the candidates for whom votes can be considered a tank for Mrs Le Pen are two, the most important being Eric Jemour (around 7%). The far-right candidate, who for some analysts made Jean-Marie Le Pen's daughter «more electable», called on his supporters yesterday «to vote for Marine Le Pen». The second is the nationalist Nicolas Dupont-Henan (around 2%), who made the same appeal to his supporters.

However, the extent to which the appeals of the other candidates who were left out of the race to their voters to block the path of Ms.Le Pen remain to be seen, given the personality of Mr.Macron, who does not exactly evoke sympathy among supporters of the left. For Sandrine Rousseau of the Greens, the president would do well to «go through the voters of the left and the environmentalists one by one.» Political scientist Pascal Perignon exaggerates: Mrs Le Pen seems capable of reaching much further than in 2017, so Mr Macron «must mobilise to attract votes from Jean-Luc Mélenchon's supporters», he told the ARTE television network.

The victory of Marine Le Pen would have a major international impact - it has been likened to Brexit, or Donald Trump's 2016 victory in the US - given her positions, her declared hostility towards European integration or her intention to withdraw France from the military arm of NATO, for example. It would be a double first: it would mark the first victory of a far-right candidate at the polls and the first time a woman had won the presidency. Louis Aliot of the Rassemblement national (RN), her party, enthusiastically said «a new electoral process is beginning».

The key moment of the next fortnight is predicted to be the traditional televised debate between the two candidates on 20 April.

In 2017, Mr Macron was sweeping the French political scene and his opponent (66.1% in the second round), but this year the daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen - the first far-right candidate to make it to the second round of France's presidential election in 2002 - seemed better prepared. She focused her campaign on the purchasing power and living standards of the French - the main concern of the electorate, according to the polls - while Mr Macron, largely devoted to diplomacy in the midst of the war in Ukraine, did not seem to give the first round the weight it deserved. His comfortable lead, which was as much as 10 points in some polls just a month before the election, shrunk dramatically.

For Adrian Thierry, a 23-year-old supporter of Emmanuel Macron, Marine Le Pen went all over France in her campaign and proved that she «knows how to talk to people about their tangible problems. In the next two weeks, he (President Macron) will need to turn more of his attention to what is happening in France, to take a break from diplomacy.».

The only certainty is that yesterday's vote confirmed the collapse of the two traditional parties in power in France, with Mrs Pecres of the Republicans not even exceeding 5% and Anne Indalgo, the Socialist candidate of former President François Hollande, recording an even more disappointing performance, staying below 2% (at 1.7%).