President Emmanuel Macron will face Marine Le Pen, the French far-right leader, in the runoff of France’s presidential elections, according to projections based on preliminary ballot counts published by French polling agencies on Sunday at the close of voting.
The projections, which may still shift but are generally a good indicator of the outcome, showed Mr. Macron leading with about 28.5 percent of the vote, and Ms. Le Pen in second place with 24.2 percent, after 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.
An anti-NATO and more pro-Russia France in the event of a 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 favorite, having fared a little better than the latest opinion polls suggested. Some showed him leading Ms. Le Pen by just two points.
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 consecutive victory in parliamentary elections.
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 a Hungarian bank, has other priorities.
The runoff, on April 24, will be a repeat of the last election, in 2017, when Mr. Macron, then a relative newcomer to politics intent on shattering old divisions between left and right, trounced Ms. Le Pen with 66.9 percent of the vote to her 33.1 percent.
The final result this time will almost certainly be much closer than five years ago. Polls taken before Sunday’s vote indicated Mr. Macron winning by just 52 percent to 48 percent against Ms. Le Pen in the second round. That could shift in the coming two weeks, when the candidates will debate for the first time in the campaign.
Reflecting France’s drift to the right in recent years, no left-of-center candidate came close to qualifying for the runoff. The Socialist Party, long a pillar of postwar French politics, collapsed to about 2 percent of the vote, leaving Jean-Luc Mélanchon, the far-left anti-NATO candidate with his France Unbowed movement, to take third place with 20 percent. /NYT
