When is the runoff and when will we know the results?

Competitor: Marin Le Pen

Although defeated in the runoff in 2017, Marine Le Pen is still the second most popular candidate after Macron. She will hope to do something better for him this time.

Le Pen, a former lawyer, took her national rally party in a very different direction from that of her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen. She renamed the party the National Front and sought to turn it into a populist party.

This year, she focused her campaign on the cost of living crisis and avoided more controversial immigration issues.

Sociological experts predict much tougher competition this year than Le Pen’s significant defeat in 2017, when she won just 34% of the vote.

Defeated candidates

The results of the first round revealed in great detail the decline of traditional political parties in France. The Socialists and Republicans, formerly the two dominant parties, failed to impress.

Republican Valeri Pekres remained in fifth place with less than 5 percent of the vote. Eric Zemor was fourth with just over 7 percent as his campaign failed in recent weeks leading to the first round.

Meanwhile, Jean-Luc Melenchon nearly secured a place in the runoff after winning 21.95 percent of the vote. The big question for the second round will be where his supporters will decide to put their allegiance: Macron or Le Pen?