• Support MPN
Logo Logo
  • Investigations
  • Analysis
  • Cartoons
  • Podcasts
  • Videos
  • Language
    • 中文
    • русский
    • Español
    • Français
    • اَلْعَرَبِيَّةُ
  • Support MPN
  • Watch | Gaza Fights Back
French voters shut out the country's political mainstream from the presidency for the first time in the country's modern history, and on Monday found themselves being courted across the spectrum for the runoff election.

French Election Pits Far-Right Firebrand Against Investment Banker In Historic Runoff

Follow Us

  • Rokfin
  • Telegram
  • Rumble
  • Odysee
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • YouTube

France will see the far-right, xenophobic Front National candidate Marine Le Pen face off against Emmanuel Macron, an investment banker who hasn’t held public office, in a runoff vote on May 7, as the first round of an unusual presidential election concluded with Sunday’s vote.

Students immediately took to the streets in protest against Le Pen’s success in the first round, the Associated Press reported Sunday.

Macron received about 24 percent of the vote, while Le Pen received about 22 percent, according to the French government’s initial vote estimates as reported by the Guardian.

A montage of French national newspaper front pages reporting on the winners of the first round of the French presidential election, centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron and far-right candidate Marine Le Pen, are displayed in Paris, France, Monday, April 24, 2017. (AP/Laurent Rebours)

“It is worth underlining that this is the first time in modern French history that neither of the mainstream center-right or center-left parties of government that have governed France since the second world war have qualified for the second round of a presidential election,” observes the Guardian.

Progressive candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who saw a last-minute surge in the polls, received about 19.5 percent of the vote, as did the Republican party candidate François Fillon.

Le Pen has campaigned on a divisive anti-immigrant and xenophobic platform and was accused of exploiting last week’s shooting of a Paris police officer in an effort to garner votes.

The May 7 runoff vote will feature two candidates with extremely different visions for France, economically as well as socially. Reuters reports that “Macron favors gradual deregulation measures that will be welcomed by global financial markets, while Le Pen wants to ditch the euro currency and possibly pull out of the EU.”

“Whatever the outcome on May 7, it will mean a redrawing of France’s political landscape, which has been dominated for 60 years by mainstream groupings from the center-left and center-right, both of whose candidates faded,” Reuters notes.


This work by --- is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.This work by Common Dreams is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 International License.

 

Comments
April 24th, 2017
Nadia Prupis

What’s Hot

The Pentagon Is Using a Fabricated Chinese Threat to Build Genetically Engineered Soldiers

Why Washington is Worried About Burkina Faso’s Young Revolutionary Leader

Nayib Bukele: The Dark Side of the “World’s Coolest Dictator”

Meet The Think Tanks Behind MAGA’s New Free Speech Crackdown

From the United States to Europe, Criticizing Israel Is Becoming a Crime

  • Contact Us
  • Archives
  • About Us
  • Privacy Policy
© 2025 MintPress News