Emmanuel Macron v Marine Le Pen | Decoding the 2022 French presidential elections
The Hindu
Incumbent French President Emmanuel Macron and far-right leader Marine Le have advanced to the final runoff on April 24.
Incumbent French President Emmanuel Macron will face Rassemblement National (National Rally) leader Marine Le Pen in the second round of the presidential elections being held in the backdrop of the Russia-Ukraine war. The two leaders advanced to the next stage after the first round on April 10. Both are now campaigning to win the decisive runoff on April 24.
Opinion polls suggest President Emmanuel Macron, seeking a second five-year term, remains the front-runner. His nationalist rival Marine Le Pen, however, appears to have significantly narrowed the gap from 2017, when he trounced her in the same presidential runoff.
The French presidential elections follow a two-round system and is held every five years. The candidates who finish first and second in the initial round will go through to a runoff vote on April 24. The winner of the second round will take office on May 13.
Technically, a contender can be declared a winner outright by securing more than 50% of the vote in the first round. However, that has never happened in France.
About 48.7 million French, registered on the electoral rolls, will continue to use the manual system: paper ballots that are cast in person and counted by hand. Voters are to make their choices in a booth, with the curtains closed, and then place their ballot in an envelope that is then put into a transparent ballot box.
2022 is a repeat of sorts of the 2017 elections. In 2017, Mr. Macron trounced Ms. Le Pen by a landslide to become France’s youngest President at 39. His win was then seen as a victory against populist, nationalist politics, coming in the wake of Donald Trump’s election to the White House and Britain’s vote to leave the European Union.
The scenario, however, seems to have changed in the closing stages of the 2022 campaign with issues of inflation, food and energy prices taking centre-stage.
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