Competition intense as France set for second round of election

With French President Emmanuel Macron and far-right candidate Marine Le Pen set to face off in the second round of the election on April 24 to decide who will be the next president, the competition seems fiercer than many had expected.

The first round of voting featured 12 candidates and took place on Sunday. Macron came in first with 27.8 percent of the vote, followed by Le Pen with 23.2 percent. Far-left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon was third with 22 percent.

The results of the first round of voting showed that radical politics in France have strengthened over the past few years. Compared with the first round of the 2017 French presidential election, Macron, a centrist candidate, has seen an increase in votes of 4 percentage points, while conservative candidate Valerie Pecresse won 4.78 percent of votes－a 15 percent decrease from the previous election. This suggests that Macron may have attracted some centrist voters who previously supported other parties, but more centrist voters may have defected to various radical parties.

Le Pen gained 2 percentage points compared with the 2017 election, but populist right-winger Eric Zemmour got 7.3 percent of the vote. If Zemmour hadn't taken away some votes, there is a possibility that Le Pen might have outranked Macron in the first round.

In the second round of voting in the 2017 election, Macron ended up beating Le Pen by winning more than 65 percent of the votes, as he had gained plenty of support from people who voted for other centrists in the first round. But whether Macron will be able to replicate that success this time in the second round remains to be seen.

Currently, the prospect of Macron being reelected is still relatively good. Melenchon has already urged his supporters not to switch to Le Pen. The ideological chasm between the "far-left" and the "far-right" should make it unlikely that Melenchon's supporters would swing to Le Pen.

But it would also be troubling for Macron if those voters were to abstain in the second round while there is a good chance that the supporters of Zemmour would shift to support Le Pen.

Based on French opinion polls published earlier, Macron could beat Le Pen in the second round with only 51 percent of the vote. This suggests that Macron's prospect of winning the election is not entirely certain at the moment.

Trying to attract supporters of other candidates will be the focus of Macron's and Le Pen's campaigns over the next two weeks. Three factors will be important during this process.

The first is the impact of NATO and the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict. Le Pen said that, if elected, she would withdraw France from NATO's integrated command, crack down on illegal immigration and reduce regular immigration to 10,000 people a year.

Melenchon has also advocated France's withdrawal from NATO, citing anti-globalization as the main reason. Although it is unlikely that Melenchon's supporters would shift to support Le Pen just because they dislike NATO, their antipathy will definitely arise if Macron acts too actively in NATO.

The second factor is the deterioration of the French economy. France, a direct victim of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, has borne the brunt of high inflation and low economic growth. The effect brought by the Ukraine crisis has already been wiping out the economic gains made during Macron's five years in office. If the impact of the Russia-Ukraine conflict on the French people's livelihood expands rapidly over the next two weeks, it could have a further negative impact on Macron's popularity.

The third is the acceleration of political radicalization in France that has been obvious over the years. In the first round of the election, Le Pen and Zemmour, both candidates of the far right, and Melenchon, the candidate of the far left, combined to win more than 50 percent of the votes.

This suggests that for many French voters, a radical politician in power has become an acceptable option. This is certainly related to the centralization strategy that radical politicians such as Le Pen have taken in recent years, but the degree of political decline of the French centrists still looks striking.

The only reason for optimism for Macron now is that voters supporting the far left and those supporting the far right are incompatible. To save the centrists from declining, the French government will need to show tangible results in promoting economic growth, improving people's livelihood, enhancing social justice and upholding independence.

The biggest problem at present is that the development of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine is beyond France's control, so whoever comes to power may find it difficult to bring a fresh look to France immediately.

Turnout in the first round of the French presidential election was reported to be only 65 percent, indicating that many French voters have given up the illusion of changing the fate of the country through elections. This momentum of political apathy may have more impact on France's future than the suspense over the outcome of the presidential election in two weeks.

The author is deputy director of the Institute of Russian, Eastern Europe and Central Asian Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.