President Emmanuel Macron and the hard-right leader Marine Le Pen will compete for a second time in a runoff on April 24.
President Emmanuel Macron will face Marine Le Pen, the French far-right leader, in the runoff of France’s presidential elections, according to projections with 88 percent of the vote counted. Mr. Macron led with about 28 percent of the vote to Ms. Le Pen’s 24 percent, after she benefited from a late surge that reflected widespread disaffection over rising prices, security and immigration. With war raging in Ukraine and Western unity likely to be tested as the fighting continues, Ms. Le Pen’s strong performance demonstrated the enduring appeal of nationalist and xenophobic currents in Europe. Extreme parties of the right and left took some 51 percent of the vote, a clear sign of the extent of French anger and frustration. An anti-NATO and more pro-Russia France in the event of an ultimate Le Pen victory would cause deep concern in allied capitals, and could fracture the united trans-Atlantic response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But Mr. Macron, after a lackluster campaign, will go into the second round as the slight favorite, having fared a little better than the latest opinion polls suggested. Some had shown him leading Ms. Le Pen by just two points. The principled French rejection of Ms. Le Pen’s brand of anti-immigrant nationalism has frayed as illiberal politics have spread in both Europe and the United States. She has successfully softened her packaging, if not her fierce conviction that French people must be privileged over foreigners and that the curtain must be drawn on France as a “land of immigration.” Ms. Le Pen’s ties to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia are close, although she has scrambled in recent weeks to play them down. This month, she was quick to congratulate Viktor Orban, Hungary’s nationalist and anti-immigrant leader, on his fourth victory in parliamentary elections. “I will restore France to order in five years,” Ms. Le Pen declared to cheering supporters, appealing to all French people to join her in what she called “a choice of civilization” in which the “legitimate preponderance of French language and culture” would be guaranteed and full “sovereignty reestablished in all domains.” The choice confronting French people on April 24 was between “division, injustice and disorder” on the one hand, and the “rallying of French people around social justice and protection,” she said. Mr. Macron told flag-waving supporters: “I want a France in a strong Europe that maintains its alliances with the big democracies in order to defend itself, not a France that, outside Europe, would have as its only allies the populist and xenophobic International. That is not us.” He added: “Don’t deceive ourselves, nothing is decided, and the debate we will have in the next 15 days is decisive for our country and for Europe.” Last week, in an interview in the daily Le Parisien newspaper, Mr. Macron called Ms. Le Pen “a racist” of “great brutality.” Ms. Le Pen hit back, saying that the president’s remarks were “outrageous and aggressive.” She called favoring French people over foreigners “the only moral, legal and admissible policy.” The gloves will be off as they confront each other over the future of France, at a time when Britain’s exit from the European Union and the end of Angela Merkel’s long chancellorship in Germany have placed a particular onus on French leadership. Mr. Macron wants to transform Europe into a credible military power with “strategic autonomy.” Ms. Le Pen, whose party has received funding from a Russian and, more recently, a Hungarian bank, has other priorities.
