Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen will contest in the French Presidential election runoff on Sunday, 7 May. Macron is a 39-year-old pro-business, pro-European Union centrist, while Le Pen is a 48-year-old anti-EU “French first” far-right nationalist.
They qualified for the runoff as the top two vote-winners, from a field of 11 candidates, in a first-round ballot on 23 April. On Sunday, they start afresh, with only their votes in the second round counted and not including those from the first round. The winner is elected to a five-year term.
Forty-seven million people are eligible to vote in these elections at about 70,000 polling stations around France.
Polling will begin at 6 am GMT or 11:30 am IST on Sunday. It’ll go on for 12 hours. Overseas territories start voting on Saturday.
Partial results and polling agency projections are expected from 6 pm GMT or 11:30 pm IST on Sunday.
To govern effectively, the president will need a parliamentary majority to pass his or her promised laws and measures. All 577 seats in the National Assembly are up for grabs in legislative elections, also held over two rounds, on 11 and 18 June.
What Should You Expect?
The outcome of Sunday's presidential runoff hinges on the millions of voters repelled by both candidates, who must make a choice – whether to hand Macron his expected victory, or stay home and risk handing Le Pen a surprise win. That choice will ripple across Europe's open borders, through global financial markets, across the battlefields of Syria and Ukraine and around the halls of UN diplomacy.
The French are faced with two starkly different choices: a progressive European or an anti-immigration nationalist. A tightly-buttoned former banker or a savvy lawyer who knows how to speak to the struggling working class. A man who wants to unite the French and their European colleagues or a woman who sees this vote as a "choice of civilisations" between France and Islam, and whose inner circle is poisoned by racism.
Macron is the man to beat, especially after he proved his presidential mettle in Wednesday's debate with Le Pen, rising above her low blows and showing voters that he might, after all, ably lead this nuclear-armed nation and stand up to Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin.
Pollsters, bookmakers and financial traders calculate that Le Pen would have to accomplish a miracle to overcome an estimated 20-point poll gap.
But after Britons chose Brexit and Americans chose Trump, no one can be sure what will happen Sunday, when France's 47 million voters cast ballots from the beaches of Tahiti to the farms of Brittany and the cobblestoned streets of Paris.
Obama’s Rooting for Macron
Former US President Barack Obama has also endorsed a candidate in the race for France's presidency on Thursday, taking his first dive back into international politics since leaving the White House in January.
French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron released a video from Obama Thursday morning with the former president touting his candidacy.
"I have admired the campaign that Emmanuel Macron has run," Obama said. "He has stood up for liberal values; he put forward a vision for the important role that France plays in Europe and around the world; and he is committed to a better future for the French people. He appeals to people's hopes, and not their fears."
Hacking Arrest, Fake News in Tense Race
Allegations of fake news and hacking attempts dominated the tense race on Thursday.
Paris prosecutors launched a preliminary investigation into whether fake news is being used to influence the voting.
There has been intense anxiety in France over the possibility that viral misinformation or hackers could influence the presidential vote, as in the US election last year. Those fears have largely failed to materialise.
Then on Thursday, Macron's campaign filed suit against an unknown source "X'' after Le Pen suggested during their only one-on-one debate Wednesday night that the former banker could have an offshore account.
"I hope we won't find out you have an offshore account in the Bahamas," Le Pen said.
She appeared to be referring to two sets of apparent forgeries, published just hours before the televised showdown, that purported to show Macron was somehow involved with a Caribbean bank and a firm based on the island of Nevis.
Macron's camp said the former investment banker was victim of a "cyber-misinformation campaign." Speaking on France Inter radio, Macron blamed Le Pen for spreading "fake news" and said he never held a bank account "in any tax haven whatsoever."
"All this is factually inaccurate," Macron said.
In a subsequent twist, Le Pen's campaign said a far-left hacker was arrested this week and confessed to repeatedly targeting their website. In a statement on Thursday, the campaign gave few details about the seriousness of the interference, which could range from attempts at defacing the website to flooding it with bogus traffic.
Police referred questions to prosecutors, who wouldn't comment.
(This article is a combination of several reports and has been edited for length.)
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