Macron and Le Pen go to second round in French election – as it happened

23 Apr 201712.45 EDT

Carmen Fishwick

Guardian readers in France have been answering our request for their views on the election, and why they chose to vote for a particular candidate.

Here are some who have opted for the centrist Emmanuel Macron; we will feature the views of other candidates’ supporters through the evening:

Pascal, 62, Paris: “Macron is young, smart and is not tightly tied to the organisations of big political parties. He seems able to achieve a good balance between pragmatism and fidelity to principles from the traditional left.”

René, 48, Versailles, police officer: “It’s more a default choice. I don’t want an extremist in charge, nor a corrupt Fillon. I hope that Macron will take some measures to make the country go forward instead of living in fear.”

Jacques-Henri, 54, Paris, restaurateur: “It’s high time to move on, with new faces and a new attitude. Macron is the only true pro-European candidate. He wants to change our country with people notwithstanding where they come from. He expects results and facts.”

Guillaume, 36, Dordogne, web designer: “I am not convinced he’ll be a great president, but I am convinced the other three would be a disaster. Mélenchon and Le Pen both crave the death of the EU and are blind to the damage it would do to France and the wider world.”

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France’s 2017 presidential election has been one of the tightest and least predictable in generations. After the final set of opinion polls on Friday, of four candidates leading the first round any two could conceivably make it to the runoff.

What’s more, up to 25% of voters were estimated to be undecided on the eve of the vote. No one, in short, should be under any illusions: anything could yet happen.

In Paris, meanwhile, some voters lamented the difficulty of the decision – while others said what mattered most was the candidates’ personality …

In Nice, scene of the truck attack that left 86 people dead last July, security was at the front of many minds, reports Oscar Lopez – particularly following Thursday’s killing of a policeman on the Champs Elysées, an attack claimed by Islamic State.

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“It’s not normal, all those army guys patrolling the streets,” said Richard, 63, who did not want to give his last name. “It’s scary. The Islamists need to be stopped.”

Richard, who is Armenian, had come from church to vote. “There was nobody there,” he says. “People have lost their beliefs. Islam gives them something to believe in.”

When it came to the campaign, he says it was “Awful. All blah blah blah.” He had, however, chosen a candidate. “I’m voting right, but not Fillon,” he says – then, after a brief pause, “I’m voting for a lady.”

For Nelly Laforge, 60, it was the conservative Fillon’s stance on national security that had won her vote. “We’ve survived many attacks,” she says. “It’s scary. I have to go to Paris on Monday and I’m worried about being on public transport.”

She was also concerned that, after the attacks in Paris on Thursday, even more people would turn to Le Pen. The fake job scandal that engulfed Fillon did not bother her.

“All politicians have done the same thing,” she says. “He has experience. He’s presidential.” Still, if Fillon doesn’t make it past the first round, she said she’d be willing to support Macron: “People are tired of left-right politics.”

Time to spare as the clock ticks down to 8pm CET, the earliest we can expect any meaningful early results? (Even then, they will not be definitive – and the contest could simply be too close to call until later …)

If you want an insight into what drives some of Marine Le Pen’s voters, I thoroughly recommend my colleague Angelique Chrisafis’s revealing voyage into the heart of rural Burgundy, once a heartland of the left and now home to a lot of angry people …

One of those polling institutes – Ifop – has, however, published an estimate of what it thinks the final turnout will be. It’s high, but not an absolute record:

A high turnout, of course, may not be an indication of anything in particular in this highly unusual election: in 2002, a record 28% abstention rate was widely seen as helping Jean-Marie Le Pen. This time, a low abstention rate could be partly down to the determination of his daughter’s voters.

Belgian media have published what they say is an initial first-round exit poll putting the independent centrist Macron ahead of the Front National leader Le Pen. No one is clear where this poll could have come from and French media are advising it should be treated with extreme caution.

The nine main polling institutes active in France during the campaign – BVA, Elabe, Harris Interactive, Ifop, Ipsos, Kantar, Odoxa, OpinionWay and Viavoice – all undertook not to carry out any exit polls on voting day.

The French polling commission had this to say on the matter on its website:

As a result, any reference on the day of the vote to any such poll can only be the fruit of rumours or manipulations and should be accorded no credit whatsoever.

The French interior minister has just announced the turnout at 5pm French time. At 69.42%, it was slightly down on the previous election in 2012 but considerably up on 2002, when a high abstention rate was thought to have contributed to the shock first-round breakthrough by Jean-Marie Le Pen, Marine’s father.

Many observers believe turnout could again be critical in this election, as could the large number of undecided voters – up to 25% were estimated to be not sure how they would cast their ballot on the eve of the poll.

Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the first round of voting in France’s presidential election – a crucial but unpredictable contest whose outcome could have far-reaching consequences for both a deeply divided country and the beleaguered European Union.

Polls opened at 8am CET on Sunday and will close at 7pm or, in some urban areas, 8pm. Usually accurate initial results, based on an actual count of votes in several hundred representative polling stations around the country, will be known soon after.

But this is an exceptionally tight race. Any two of the four leading candidates – independent centrist Emmanuel Macron, far-right, anti-EU leader Marine Le Pen, scandal-hit conservative François Fillon and far-left veteran Jean-Luc Mélenchon – could go through to the second round run-off on 7 May.

We will be keeping you up to date with all the latest developments as France’s 47 million voters begin the process of choosing their next president. You can read a brief guide to the candidates here, and a more comprehensive all-you-need-to-know here.

Our French correspondents Angelique Chrisafis and Kim Willsher will be bringing you news and insights from the ground throughout the evening. Follow them on Twitter at @achrisafis and @kimwillsher1.

You can contact me with comments, questions or tips at @jonhenley or by email at jon.henley@theguardian.com – although I can’t promise to have time to read or respond to all. Here we go, then – it could be an exciting ride.