In the two-round presidential elections in France, President Emmanuel Macron won the first round with 28.5 percent of the votes, in which 12 candidates competed.
The far-right candidate Marine Le Pen followed Macron with 24.4%. The extreme leftist candidate, Jean Luc Melenchon, passed the 20 percent threshold and received 20.3 percent of the vote.
In the first round of Presidential elections in France, where 48.7 million voters were invited to the ballot box, the results of the first ballot box exit were announced. According to the figures released by the Ministry of Interior, 65 percent of the voters went to the polls. In the 2017 elections, this figure was 78.6 percent.
President Macron, who closed the gap with the far-right Marine Le Pen, the candidate of the National Integration Party, by 4 points, came in first with 28.5 percent of the votes.
According to the preliminary results, Marine Le Pen was second with 24.4. Thus, Macron and Le Pen remained in the second round, which will be held on April 24, just like in the 2017 elections.
Radical left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon took third place with 20.3 percent.
All 9 of the 12 candidates competing received less than 10 percent of the vote. Far-right Muslim and anti-immigrant Eric Zemmour 7 percent, centre-right candidate Valerie Pecresse 4.8 percent, Greens candidate Yannick Jadot 4.3 percent, centre-right candidate Jean Lasalle known as the provincial candidate 3.2 percent, French Communist Party’s candidate at 4.3 percent. ‘s candidate, Fabien Roussel, received 2.6 percent, the conservative right candidate Nicolas Dupont-Aignan 2.2 percent, the Socialist candidate, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, 2 percent, and radical left candidates Philippe Poutou and Nathalie Artaud received less than 1 percent.
Eric Zemmour was the champion of the minor candidates with 7 percent. In the election campaign that started with the Covid crisis and continued with the Ukraine war, the center-right candidate who lost the most votes was Valerie Pecresse. Yannick Jadot, the candidate of the Green Party, and Anne Hidalgo, the candidate of the Socialist Party, became the biggest loser of the elections.
Melenchon, who received more than 20 percent of the vote, repeated the words “You should not vote for Ms. Le Pen, not a single vote should be given to Ms. Le Pen” three times and urged her voters not to vote for Le Pen.
Centre-right candidate Valeri Pecresse, socialist candidate Anne Hidalgo and Greens candidate Yannick Jadot also called for Macron to vote in the second round.