Emmanuel Macron Possibly The First French President To Be Re-Elected

President Emmanuel Macron is in a strong position to win re-election in France’s presidential run-off on Sunday, but his lead over far-right competitor Marine Le Pen is dependent on one huge unknown: the number of voters who stay at home.

If he wins the run-off vote on Sunday, Macron will become the first French president to win a second term in 20 years.

All of the recent polls show that the 44-year-old pro-European moderate is going to win, but the gap between him and his nationalist opponent varies from 6 to 15%, depending on the poll.

In this second and final round, polls predict a potentially record-high number of people who either vote blank or stay at home and do not vote at all.

The first-round vote on April 10 eliminated ten additional presidential hopefuls. What those who backed the losing candidates do on Sunday will have a big impact on who becomes France’s next leader.

This is a difficult question, especially for leftist voters who oppose Macron but do not want Le Pen in power. They play a big part in Macron’s chances of getting re-elected, which is why he has made a lot of pleas to leftist voters in the last few days.

Emmanuel Macron cautioned this week on France 5 television that some Americans and Britons thought there was no purpose in voting before Trump’s election and before Brexit but afterward regretted it the next day.

He advised unsure French voters to avoid the unthinkable and make their own decisions.

In the last few days before Sunday’s election, both candidates got into fights. They even had a one-on-one televised debate on Wednesday.

Macron contended that Le Pen’s party’s borrowing from a Czech-Russian bank in 2014 rendered her unfit to deal with Moscow during its invasion of Ukraine. He also claimed that her intentions to make it illegal for Muslim women in France to wear headscarves in public would lead to a “civil war” in the country with the world’s largest Muslim population.

Macron declared Friday on France Inter radio that it’s far-right, When someone explains to you that Islam equals Islamism equals terrorism equals a problem.

In his victory speech in 2017, Macron stated that he would do everything he could during his five-year tenure to ensure that the French would no longer have any reason to vote for extremists.

That challenge has not been met five years later. After a long time of trying to make herself seem less extreme, Le Pen has finally found her place on the French political scene.

This time, Le Pen’s campaign aimed to appeal to voters who are struggling with rising food and energy prices as a result of Russia’s war in Ukraine. If elected as France’s first female president, the 53-year-old contender said lowering the cost of living would be a primary priority.

At her last rally in the northern town of Arras, she slammed Macron’s “disastrous” presidency.

According to the Associated Press, political analyst Marc Lazar, chairman of Sciences Po’s History Center, believes Macron will win again. He claimed that Le Pen lacked credibility.

There is a major problem if Macron is re-elected, he added. A large percentage of French people voting for Macron are doing so not because they like this policy, but because they oppose Marine Le Pen.

He believes Macron will face a high level of mistrust in the country as a result of this.

Macron has promised to transform the French economy to make it more self-sufficient while also safeguarding social benefits. He also stated that he would continue to strive for a stronger Europe.

The yellow vest protests against socioeconomic injustice, the COVID-19 outbreak, and the war in Ukraine disrupted his first administration. It compelled Macron to postpone a significant pension reform, which he promised to reintroduce soon after reelection and which would gradually raise France’s minimum retirement age from 62 to 65. He claims that’s the only way to keep retirement benefits flowing.

The French presidential election is being closely followed throughout the world.

In an opinion piece published in numerous European newspapers on Thursday, the center-left presidents of Germany, Spain, and Portugal urged French voters to support them over their nationalist competitors. They warned against populists and the extreme right who saw Putin as an ideological and political model, reproducing his chauvinist beliefs.

According to Lazar, a Le Pen triumph would be catastrophic not only for France but also for the European Union and international ties, particularly with the United States. Le Pen wants a distant relationship with the United States.

In any case, the winner on Sunday will have a new challenge in governing France: In June, a parliamentary election will determine who holds a majority of seats in the National Assembly of France.

Already, the competition appears to be difficult.