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Post by Admin on Apr 9, 2022 18:00:59 GMT
French election: Far-right Le Pen closes in on Macron - BBC Newsnight 77,997 views Apr 9, 2022 President Macron's lead in the polls has shrunk as Sunday's first-round of voting approaches.
Voters in France go to the polls on Sunday in the first round of the presidential election.
Emmanuel Macron is aiming to win a second term, but polls suggest a Marine Le Pen victory is within the margin of error.
Another far-right candidate Eric Zemmour is said to have given Le Pen a boost.
Le Pen has won over some traditional right-wing voters who once saw her as too extreme, and her party tainted with the toxic attitudes of its past.
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Post by Admin on Apr 9, 2022 19:02:15 GMT
The White House has begun to harbor fears that Vladimir Putin could soon notch his biggest victory of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — in Paris. There is growing concern within President Joe Biden’s administration about the narrowing polls in the French presidential election that show a tight race between incumbent Emmanuel Macron and far-right challenger Marine Le Pen. A possible victory by Le Pen, a Putin sympathizer, could destabilize the Western coalition against Moscow, upending France’s role as a leading European power and potentially giving other NATO leaders cold feet about staying in the alliance, according to three senior administration officials not authorized to publicly discuss private conversations. Senior U.S. officials have warily watched across the Atlantic for any signs of possible Russian interference in the first round of the elections, which will take place Sunday. Polls suggest that Macron and Le Pen would likely then advance to a showdown on April 24 — and that the potential two-person race would be close. Le Pen, in her third attempt at the presidency, has surged over the past couple of weeks, as she has toned down some of her notoriously incendiary rhetoric to focus on cost-of-living issues. Millions in France are struggling to make ends meet after a 35 percent surge in gas prices over the past year. Her resume deeply worries the White House. Though Le Pen styles herself a benign populist, her campaign platform on immigration and Islam are still radical, with plans to ban the veil from all public places and stop foreigners from enjoying the same rights as French citizens. Her surname, in certain circles, is synonymous with racism and xenophobia — she now fronts the far-right, anti-immigration party her father founded. And she has been an unabashed admirer of Putin, whom she met in Moscow in 2017. Though she has somewhat distanced herself from the Russian president since the invasion of Ukraine, she has spoken sympathetically of Putin’s rationale for war and rejected some of the Western coalition’s hard-line measures against Russia. “Do we want to die? Economically, we would die!” she asked in a recent television debate, when asked if France should cut off oil and gas imports from Russia. “We have to think of our people.” A Le Pen victory, once unthinkable, would present the European Union with its biggest crisis since Brexit, potentially triggering a slow death rattle for the constellation of countries and completely upending a continent. And in the short term, it would deeply shake the pro-Ukraine coalition that extends from Warsaw to Washington.
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Post by Admin on Apr 10, 2022 18:39:19 GMT
Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen appear to be the leading candidates in the first round of the French presidential elections, an analysis of early results shows, setting up a rematch of the 2017 contest. Macron appears poised to take 28.6% of the votes, putting him in first place, according to an analysis conducted by pollster IFOP-Fiducial for French broadcasters TF1 and LCI. Le Pen is on track to come second with 23.9%. Twelve candidates were running for the top job. If none of them receives more than 50% of the ballots, the top two candidates will face each other in a runoff on April 24. But a second round is all but guaranteed -- no French presidential candidate has ever won in the first round under the current system. The contest was marked by voter apathy, with 25% of all eligible voters abstaining, according to IFOP-Fiducial. That makes the turnout the lowest for a first round in 20 years. Macron is seeking to become the first French president to win reelection since Jacques Chirac in 2002. While polls have given him a consistent edge over the field, the race tightened significantly in the past month. Surveys ahead of the race showed that a second round of Macron vs. Le Pen was the most likely outcome. Macron handily beat Le Pen five years ago, but experts have said that a second contest between the two would be much tighter than the 2017 race.
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Post by Admin on Apr 10, 2022 21:48:23 GMT
Far-Right Marine Le Pen to face Emmanuel Macron in French Presidential run-off - BBC News 2,134 views Apr 11, 2022 Emmanuel Macron will face the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen in the deciding second round of the French presidential election.
Exit polls from the first round indicate that President Macron won around 28% of the vote, with Marine Le Pen taking around 23% of the vote. That’s the best result she’s had at this stage in any of her presidential campaigns.
Opinion polls suggest the second round vote could be very close, with one survey suggesting Mr Macron coujld have a lead of just 1% over his rival, well within the margin of error.
Mishal Husain presents BBC News at Ten reporting by Lucy Williamson in Paris.
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Post by Admin on Apr 11, 2022 20:23:21 GMT
French elections: Macron and Le Pen kick off presidency run-off campaigns 2,103 views Apr 12, 2022 President Macron is nothing if not a fighter.
Encouraged by the result of the first round of elections he took his campaign to the industrial heartland of his rival Marine Le Pen today, desperately seeking working class votes which he needs to win the second round of the election in two weeks.
He will have heard one accusation above all others - that he is out of touch with ordinary France.
In the end, the future of France hinges on one question: what is greater here - fear of Le Pen, the hard right-wing nationalist or hatred of Macron, the incumbent.
Traditional parties like the Socialists or Republicans that once ruled France have almost disappeared, leaving President Macron alone and lonely in the centre facing a barrage of extremes.
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