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

Interesting take from US polling guru Nate Silver:

Understandably, reactions from around Europe have been ecstatic. Macron, now the overwhelming favourite to become the next French president, is avowedly pro-European, while Le Pen has vowed to take France out of the euro and hold a referendum on French membership of the EU.

Steffen Siebert, German chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman, said it was “good that Emmanuel Macron has been successful with his positions for a strong EU and a social market economy. Good luck for the coming two weeks.”

Martin Schulz, the Social Democrats’ for German chancellor and former European parliament president, also tweeted his congratulations and urged “all French democrats to unite so the nationalist does not become president”.

And Margaritis Schinas, spokesman for European commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker, tweeted his boss’s congratulations too, and wished Macron good luck for the second round:

Here are the opening paragraphs of Angelique Chrisafis’s news story on the night’s events:

The independent centrist Emmanuel Macron has topped the first round of the French presidential election and according to projections will face the far-right Front National’s Marine Le Pen in a standoff marked by anti-establishment anger that knocked France’s traditional political parties out of the race.

Macron, 39, a political novice, now becomes the favourite to be elected as France’s next president. He is the youngest ever French presidential hopeful and has never run for election before.

After the UK’s vote to leave the European Union and the US vote for the political novice Donald Trump as president, the French presidential race is the latest election to shake up establishment politics by kicking out the figures that stood for the status quo.

The historic first-round result marked the rejection of the ruling political class – it was the first time since the postwar period that the traditional left and right ruling parties were both ejected from the race in the first round.

You can read the full story here.

Sylvain Crépon, a sociologist specialising in the Front National, has an astute take on the Macron-Le Pen face-off for Libération:

Of all the candidates Marine Le Pen could have faced in the second round, Emmanuel Macron is the one who is projected to beat her the most convincingly. For all that, he is the candidate that she would most like to confront.

To understand why, we need to return to the FN’s project of reconfiguring French democracy around the question of identity ... It wants the principle divide to be between those attached to national identity (nationalists, patriots, souverainists) and those who seek to destroy it (globalists, cosmopolitans, pro-Europeans).

If Le Pen can replace a supposedly outmoded left-right divide based on economic and social criteria with with this new division, she can present her party as the one true alternative to what she describes as a system of “uncontrolled globalisation”. And that is a system of which Emmanuel Macron is the perfect incarnation.

Macron calls for a large governing majority so he can really set about putting his programme into action:

That’s why I want to construct a majority to govern and to transform, of new talents, in which all will have their place. I will not ask where they come from, but whether they agree with the renewal of our politics, the security of the French people, reforming society and relaunching the European project.

You are the face of this renewal. You are the face of France’s hope. My fellow citizens, there is not more than one France. There is only one, ours, the France of patriots, in a Europe that protects and that we must reform. The task is immense, but I am ready, at your sides. Vive la République, vive la France.

To all those who have accompanied me since April 2016, in founding and bringing En Marche! to life, I would like to say this: in the space of a year, we have changed the face of French political life.

The first-round victor, Emmanuel Macron, has addressed his cheering supporters at the Porte de Versailles in Paris:

Today, the people of France have spoken. As our country confronts an unprecedented moment in its history, it has responded in the best way possible - by voting in huge numbers. It has decided to place me first in this first round.

I want to be the president of all the French people – of patriots in the face of the nationalists’ threat. A president who protects, transforms, and builds, who allows those who want to create, innovate, do business, and work to do so more easily and more quickly. A president who helps those who have less, who are more fragile.

I will work over the coming fortnight so that together we can gather as many people as possible around my candidacy. The strength of this coming together will be decisive for government. The challenge this evening is not to vote against a person, but to decide to break completely with a system that has been incapable of responding to our country’s problems for 30 years.

A word of clarification about the official interior ministry count that is under way and shows Marine Le Pen in the lead.

This is the ongoing actual vote count which in its early stages includes mainly rural constituencies that tend to lean to the right, while results from urban areas that lean left will come in later.

The vote estimates released earlier, which are not opinion polls but partial vote counts from selected representative polling stations and are usually accurate to within a point or so, still stand. They show Macron winning on 23-24%, and Le Pen on 21-23%.

The euro has hit a five-month high, as the early polling figures from France reassure the financial markets, writes Graeme Wearden:

The single currency jumped almost 2% when trading began in Asia, surging over $1.091. It also rallied 1.5% against the British pound to around 85p. Investors had been nervous that Emmanuel Macron might fail to reach the run-off, as he is seen as the candidate best equipped to prevent Marine Le Pen winning the presidency.

Dean Turner of UBS said investors would be relieved that a mainstream candidate made it through to the second round. “As things stand, Macron is on course to be the next French president, so it is likely that we see a recovery in risk appetite toward French and other European markets,” predicted Turner.

He added that markets would “still be alert” to the possibility of a Le Pen victory in the second round. Jeremy Cook of currency exchange firm World First said the euro was dancing high.

“This positivity is mainly as a result that if there was one match up that the anti-EU Le Pen did not want in the 2nd round it is Macron. There has not been a poll that puts her within 15% of Macron in the second round,” Cook explained.

Down in Nice, Oscar Lopez has been speaking to disappointed Fillon and Mélenchon voters who will now switch to Macron, and to a Le Pen supporter:

“I knew it,” said Solange, 70, with a slight sigh, after being told the election results. “I voted for Fillon, and I’m disappointed. But it’s not catastrophic.” She didn’t have a lot of confidence in Macron, though she would vote for him. “He’s too young,” she said. “And he’s still a socialist, no matter what he says.”

She could “never vote for Le Pen,” Solange said. “We don’t need anymore hate in this country. And she would be a catastrophe for the economy. We don’t have a choice but to vote for Macron.”

Sitting outside a fast food restaurant, Montassar Rejob, 27, was similarly set against the Front National. “Le Pen wants to divide the country,” he said. “It’s going to end in civil war.” He had voted Mélenchon, “because he was the only one who had dreams,” but, like Solange, admitted that against Le Pen the choice was simple: “It will be Macron.”

For Laurent, 22, the choice was not so easy - he had voted for Le Pen in the first round. “Look at what happened in Nice, what’s happening in France,” he said, explaining that one of his friends had lost his mother and grandmother in the 2016 Nice attack.

“It’s shocking. Something has to happen, and Le Pen is the only one that will take action.” Still, now that she had made it through to the second round, Laurent was having doubts.

“I’m not sure if maybe she’s a bit too extreme,” he said, admitting that he was against her plans to leave the European Union. “It’s complicated. I’ll have to reread their programs and think about it. Either way, it’s going to be a huge change for France.”

Angelique Chrisafis in Paris writes with a salutary reminder that France has parliamentary elections coming soon that will determine the extent to which the new president can actually govern:

Whoever wins the Macron-Le Pen race, the parliamentary elections that follow in June will be crucial. The majority in the lower house will determine how a new president could govern, and France is likely to require a new form of coalition politics. If elected, Macron – who is fielding MP candidates from his fledgling movement, En Marche! (On the Move) – would have to seek a new kind of parliamentary majority across the centre left-right divide. If Le Pen did win the presidency, she would very probably not win a parliament majority, thwarting her ability to govern. But her party hopes to increase its MPs in the 577-seat house. Currently Le Pen has only two MPs.