Macron to face Le Pen in French presidential run-off

Hollande, who is not standing for re-election, oversaw tight security measures for Sunday’s first round poll to help prevent disruption after Thursday’s deadly attack on the Champs-Elysees.

By mid-morning, about 100 citizens were standing in line at a voting station in Montreal’s Outremont borough, with many saying they waited over an hour to vote. “It is time to liberate the French people”.

At midday, turnout on a bright spring day was up slightly compared with the same time in 2012 – when a total 79.48 percent of the electorate cast ballots – seemingly defying forecasts of a record low participation rate.

The presidential poll is the first ever to be held while France is under a state of emergency, put in place since the November 2015 attacks in Paris left 130 people dead. He has said he would try to coax “banks, talent, researchers, academics” to move to France from the United Kingdom and suggested he would seek to revise the Le Touquet agreement which allows each country to host the other’s border controls.

The top two candidates will run off for the French presidency on May 7.

The outcome will show whether the populist tide that saw Britain vote to leave the European Union and Donald Trump elected president of the United States is still rising, or starting to ebb. Several weapons, including a machine gun and two hand guns in addition to bomb-making materials were found during a police raid in an apartment they had rented in the French city. Le Pen firmly backs Assad and distanced herself from Trump over recent US airstrikes targeting Assad’s regime.

That from independent centrist Emmanuel Macron, as he sealed his place in the second round of France’s presidential election.

The absence in the runoff of candidates from either the mainstream left Socialists or the right-wing Republicans party also marked a seismic shift in French politics.

Unpopular incumbent President Francois Hollande made the unusual move past year of pledging to not stand for re-election.

If the results are confirmed, once all votes are counted, the candidates will face each other in the decisive 7 May runoff.

He’s also receiving support from leaders outside his country.

Markets had also been nervous of the possibility that far-left contender Jean-Luc Melenchon might make the run-off.

Presidential candidates usually vote together with their spouses.

She voted in the department of Sarthe, some 250 kilometers (155 miles) away from the French capital, where she lives with her husband in a 14th-century manor.

Most of the 11 candidates are campaigning against the European Union, blamed for myriad woes.

Le Pen said the second round would be a battle over France’s future.

At Paris’ largest polling station in the 15th arrondissement, locals were queuing before the doors even opened. “It’s one or the other, but not the candidates I would have preferred”, he added.

The result was a full-throated rebuke of France’s traditional mainstream parties and a striking parallel to the forces that led to the election of President Trump.

The vote is the most unpredictable in living memory.

In a race that was too close to call up to the last minute, Macron, a pro-EU ex-banker and former economy minister who founded his own party only a year ago, had 23.9 percent of the votes against 21.4 percent for Le Pen, according to figures from the Interior Ministry with 96 percent of votes counted.

Early voting began Saturday in France’s overseas territories.

The euro jumped against the U.S. dollar after the first round of the French election showed that centrist Emmanuel Macron and nationalist Marine Le Pen were set to reach next month’s run-off.

Macron supporters went wild at the announce of the polling agency projections, cheering, singing “La Marseillaise” anthem, waving French tricolor and European flags and shouting “Macron, president!”.