Exit polls put Emmanuel Macron four points ahead of Marine Le Pen in French presidential elections

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The French election is too close to call as an official exit poll put liberal candidate Emmanuel Macron just four per cent in front of the far-right’s Marine Le Pen.

Macron is hoping to be the first sitting president to win re-election since Jacques Chirac beat Marine Le Pen’s father Jean-Marie in 2002. The first round of presidential elections closed at 7pm (6pm BST) in most places and 8pm in some larger cities.

Macron scored 28.1 – 29.7 per cent in the first round and Le Pen 23.3 – 24.7 per cent, with the top two candidates going through to the second round run off on April 24, according to projections by polling firms for French television channels based on a sample of votes.

The performance by Macron appears to be stronger than predicted by opinion polls in the run-up to the vote.

Far-left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon was predicted to come third with 19.8 – 20.8 per cent and extreme-right pundit Eric Zemmour on 6.8 – 7 per cent with candidates of the traditional left and right trailing far behind.

Valerie Pecresse from the right-wing Republicans was on 4.3 – 5 per cent, in a disastrous performance by the party of ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy, the projections showed.

Socialist Party candidate Anne Hidalgo was projected to face electoral doom with a score of just 1.8 – 2.0 per cent.

The final-round duel between Macron and Le Pen is however set to be far tighter than the run-off between them in 2017, when the current president thrashed Le Pen with 66 per cent of the vote.

Up to 48million eligible voters have been choosing between 12 candidates. The two with the most votes will  battle it out in two week’s time in a final election on April 24.   

Each candidate cast their ballots as French voters went to the polls in the presidential elections this morning amid a surge in support for the far-Right candidate.  

Participation stood at 25.5 per cent as of midday, the interior ministry said, the lowest level since 2002, which saw a far-right candidate advance to the second-round run-off.

Analysts have warned that turnout this year could be the lowest since direct popular vote of the president was ratified in 1962, injecting a high level of uncertainty into a race where Macron is seeking re-election.

Former conservative president Nicolas Sarkozy and Parti Socialiste candidate Anne Hidalgo were among the first to head to the polls in Paris today.

Macron was later seen arriving with his wife Brigitte at a polling station in Le Touquet, northern France, while his political nemesis Le Pen cast her ballot in Henin-Beaumont, located in the country’s Hauts-de-France region.

Unless someone gets more than half of the nationwide vote, there will be a second and decisive round on Sunday April 24.   

Macron, a political centrist, for months looked like a shoo-in to become France’s first president in 20 years to win a second term.

But that scenario blurred in the campaign’s closing stages as the pain of inflation and of pump, food and energy prices roared back as dominant election themes for many low-income households. They could drive many voters on Sunday into the arms of Le Pen.

A new YouGov survey this week shows that more than half (56 per cent) of voters aged 18 to 24 would back Le Pen, whose National Rally party has vowed to clampdown on immigration, reassert France’s national identity and fine Muslims who wear headscarves in public.

Le Pen’s campaign has been mired by allegations of racism spread by Macron, and this week hit out at the President’s ‘extremely outrageous’ and ‘very aggressive’ claims.    

If re-elected, Macron would have a five-year mandate to impose his vision of reform which would include a crack at reducing the pension age in defiance of union anger.

He would also seek to consolidate his position as the undisputed number one in Europe after the departure of German chancellor Angela Merkel. 

Analysts question whether Macron would enjoy the same support from a broad anti-far right ‘Republican front’ coalition that helped him win in 2017 and allowed Jacques Chirac to demolish Marine Le Pen’s father Jean-Marie in 2002.

The latest prediction suggests that Macron will win 27 per cent of the vote in the first-round election tomorrow, with Le Pen taking 22 per cent. 

They would then battle for votes in the lead up to April 24. 

Other highly favoured candidates include far-Right politician Éric Zemmour and Left-wing Jean-Luc Mélenchon — particularly for younger voters.

Greens candidate Yannick Jadot, the Republicans’ Valerie Pecresse and the flagging Socialist nominee Anne Hidalgo appear certain to be ejected in the first round. 

Far-right former TV pundit Eric Zemmour made a re-entry into the campaign last year but lost ground, and analysts say he has aided Le Pen by making her appear more moderate.  

Macron has called for a ‘mobilisation’ of his supporters, and said that Brexit proves that Le Pen could win with her far-Right views. 

He also appealed to younger, progressive-leaning voters in his last scheduled interview before Sunday’s first-round presidential vote.

‘When it comes to correcting social inequalities at their root, we have begun the work, but we are very far from having succeeded,’ he told online news outlet Brut in a long interview, pledging also to do more to fight climate change.  

One 25-year-old who has been circulating Le Pen leaflets said that her nationalist ideologies appealed to alienated young people.

‘Our generation has known all kinds of problems. We’ve always seen war on the TV,’ David Quentin told the Telegraph.

‘We’ve always known economic crisis and terrorism, environmental problems. It’s always felt like the end of the world to us. We’ve lost our point of reference, as a country.’ 

But this support for Le Pen may not lead to a victory, as a record-breaking 31 per cent of voters may abstain this year.

Young voters are the most likely to steer clear of the ballot box, feeling a disconnect between themselves and the candidates. 

Mélenchon, the Left’s favourite among the youth vote, has been described as the country’s answer to Jeremy Corbyn. 

His views have prompted a mixed response among younger people.

One 25-year-old intern told the paper ‘the far-Right and the awful candidate just next to it’ were both unappealing.

‘Going to vote would mean putting my faith in a system that I know can’t satisfy my choices, so I’m not very interested in it, Étienne Sellier said. 

The biggest voter population expected to take part on Sunday are older and wealthier people. And they are more likely to support Mr Macron.

‘There is an uncertainty ahead of the first round,’ said French political scientist Pascal Perrineau, pointing to unprecedently high numbers of voters who were still undecided or who changed their minds during the campaign as well as absentee voters.

Analysts fear that the 2002 record of the numbers of French voters boycotting a first round of 28.4 per cent risks being beaten, with the 2017 absentee rate of 22.2 per cent almost sure to be exceeded.

Some 48.7 million voters are registered across France to vote in this election. 

Frederic Dabi, director of the Ifop polling institute, said: ‘We have experienced a strange campaign that was at odds with what we experienced in the past presidential elections.’

All further political activity by candidates was banned on the final day before polls open in mainland France.

French overseas territories began voting earlier to take account of the time difference, starting with the tiny island of Saint Pierre and Miquelon off the coast of Canada whose voters cast ballots from 10am today. 

Territories in the Caribbean followed a few hours later, with Pacific island voters casting their ballots from 6pm and then finally the Indian Ocean territories before polling stations open in mainland France.  

Macron has argued that he is the best person to lead the country during the Ukrainian war, but has been less active on the campaign trail than Le Pen.

This has boosted the far-Right candidate, whose poll ratings have been mostly impacted by the Russian loan her party is repaying and her previous support of Putin’s annexation of Crimea.