Marine Le Pen almost certainly will not become president of France next month. But, simply by reaching the election’s second round, she has transformed the face and psyche of France for a long time to come.
Macron and Le Pen: Finalists in a historic French election
Open Europe’s Aarti Shankar analyses the fallout from the first round of the French presidential elections.
The first part of one of the most topsy-turvy presidential elections in modern French history will come to a head on Sunday. That’s when voters in France head to the polls for the first round of voting. The top two finishers will proceed to a runoff election unless the top vote-getter receives more than 50 percent of the vote, in which case he or she wins outright. But if the polls are to be believed, that’s not going to happen. Instead, candidates representing the far right, far left, center and center-right all have a shot at securing one of the two spots in the runoff on May 7.
The first round of the 2017 French presidential election will be held next Sunday, on April 23. The French election is seen as one of Europe’s three pivotal elections this year that will determine the continent’s future. Europe has already dodged one bullet, when the flagrantly racist Geert Wilders didn’t win the Dutch elections. However, automated accounts are currently bombarding French voters on social media with fake news and misinformation, so Europe isn’t out of the woods yet.
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