London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Thursday, Oct 09, 2025

French elections: Macron targets Le Pen as run-off campaign begins

Emmanuel Macron is firing up his campaign for re-election, directly taking on far-right rival Marine Le Pen in France's presidential run-off. The French president fires up his re-election campaign visiting a stronghold of his far-right rival.

He made his first trip to a Le Pen stronghold at Denain, one of France's poorest towns in the industrial north.

President Macron won the first round of the election, but opinion polls suggest the second round will be a close race on 24 April.

"Make no mistake: nothing is decided," he told supporters after the vote.

Both candidates polled better than the first round in 2017, but Le Pen officials were in far more buoyant mood the morning after the result, even though she trailed the president by four points.

Jordan Benalla, president of her National Rally party, was confident Ms Le Pen would find willing support from the 70% of people who voted against Mr Macron.

"They know if he gets back in, it's going to be five more years of social breakdown, fiscal bloodletting, powerlessness over their sovereignty, violence throughout the country and immigration," he told French radio.

French President and liberal party La Republique en Marche (LREM) candidate for re-election Emmanuel Macron (2R) greets supporters as he arrives next to Denain's mayor Anne-Lise Dufour-Tonini (L)

The president acknowledged he had left campaigning too late. He chose to focus instead on Russia's war in Ukraine, partly in the belief that his role as a statesman would boost his poll numbers.

Meanwhile, the Le Pen team concentrated on the cost of living crunch affecting much of the French population.

"Clearly we're not listening enough to the 38 million French people who earn less than €2,000 (£1,680) a month," said Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin.

With that in mind, Mr Macron headed to the northern towns of Denain, Carvin and Lens where the National Rally candidate came out on top.

Another minister, Clément Beaune, said it was an area that had experienced decades of high deprivation and Marine Le Pen was attracting high levels of support. The aim was to spend the next two weeks highlighting the government's record in creating jobs and reinvigorating industry, he explained.

"Marine Le Pen is all talk about the cost of living and protecting people in most difficulty," he said. "But in concrete terms what would she achieve for them - and what would we do?"


Tactical voting


With all of the votes counted, Emmanuel Macron took 27.84% of the vote, Marine Le Pen 23.15% and far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon 21.95%. Between them they attracted close to three-quarters of the vote, as the electorate largely abandoned other candidates they decided had no chance of making the run-off.

Another of the big revelations on the night was that more than half of voters backed the far right and far left.

Mr Mélenchon was not far behind Marine Le Pen and his voters could decide the final round of this election, if they turn out to vote.

"You must not give a single vote to Marine Le Pen," he warned his supporters, although he pointedly did not back the president instead.

More mainstream candidates did urge voters to support Mr Macron in the run-off, including Valérie Pécresse from the right-wing Republicans and Anne Hidalgo from the Socialists. Both had an awful night, failing to even scrape the 5% of the vote needed to recoup their election costs.

For Ms Pécresse, this has become a financial as well as a political disaster.

Appealing for donations from supporters, she revealed that her campaign finances were in a "critical state" and that she had used €5m (£4.2m) of her own money.

Meanwhile, the Le Pen camp can count on up to a third of the national vote. She will attract the votes of Eric Zemmour, whose more hardline nationalism won him fourth place with 7%. Nationalist Nicolas Dupont-Aignan has also backed her.

Mr Macron's team is planning a series of big rallies and major TV appearances, although the big set-piece event is likely to be the TV debate on 20 April.

Ifop pollster François Dabi said his company's 51%-49% estimate for the run-off was the closest they had ever predicted. An Elabe poll put the gap at 52%-48% and an Ipsos poll suggested it was wider still.

Addressing his supporters, Mr Macron looked a relieved man and he promised to work harder than in the first part of the campaign.

"When the extreme right in all its forms represents so much of our country," he said, "we cannot feel that things are going well."


It was already clear from Mr Macron's speech that in the days ahead he planned to target Ms Le Pen's close links with the Kremlin. Although she has condemned Vladimir Putin's war, she visited him before the previous election in 2017 and her party took out a Russian loan.

Ms Le Pen said it was time for a "great changeover", with a fundamental choice on 24 April of two opposite views: "Either division and disorder, or a union of the French people around guaranteed social justice."

She has promised to cut taxes and waive income tax for under-30s. There has been less emphasis on nationalism, but she wants a referendum on restricting immigration, radical change to the EU and a ban on the Islamic hijab in public areas.

One in four voters aged 18-24 backed the president and he was most popular among over-65s, while Marine Le Pen performed best among 35-64 year-olds.



Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
France: Less Than a Month After His Appointment, the New French Prime Minister Resigns
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stated that Hungary will not adopt the euro because the European Union is falling apart.
Sarah Mullally Becomes First Woman Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury
Mayor in western Germany in intensive care after stabbing
Australian government pays Deloitte nearly half a million dollars for a report built on fabricated quotes, fake citations, and AI-generated nonsense.
US Prosecutors Gained Legal Approval to Hack Telegram Servers
Macron Faces Intensifying Pressure to Resign or Trigger New Elections Amid France’s Political Turmoil
Standard Chartered Names Roberto Hoornweg as Sole Head of Corporate & Investment Banking
UK Asylum Housing Firm Faces Backlash Over £187 Million Profits and Poor Living Conditions
UK Police Crack Major Gang in Smuggling of up to 40,000 Stolen Phones to China
BYD’s UK Sales Soar Nearly Nine-Fold, Making Britain Its Biggest Market Outside China
Trump Proposes Farm Bailout from Tariff Revenues Amid Backlash from Other Industries
FIFA Accuses Malaysia of Forging Citizenship Documents, Suspends Seven Footballers
Latvia to Bar Tourist and Occasional Buses to Russia and Belarus Until 2026
A Dollar Coin Featuring Trump’s Portrait Expected to Be Issued Next Year
Australia Orders X to Block Murder Videos, Citing Online Safety and Public Exposure
Three Scientists Awarded Nobel Prize in Medicine for Discovery of Immune Self-Tolerance Mechanism
OpenAI and AMD Forge Landmark AI-Chip Alliance with Equity Option
Munich Airport Reopens After Second Drone Shutdown
France Names New Government Amid Political Crisis
Trump Stands Firm in Shutdown Showdown and Declares War on Drug Cartels — Turning Crisis into Opportunity
Surge of U.S. Billionaires Transforms London’s Peninsula Apartments into Ultra-Luxury Stronghold
Pro Europe and Anti-War Babiš Poised to Return to Power After Czech Parliamentary Vote
Jeff Bezos Calls AI Surge a ‘Good’ Bubble, Urges Focus on Lasting Innovation
Japan’s Ruling Party Chooses Sanae Takaichi, Clearing Path to First Female Prime Minister
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sentenced to Fifty Months in Prison Following Prostitution Conviction
Taylor Swift’s ‘Showgirl’ Launch Extends Billion-Dollar Empire
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
Supreme Court Extends Freeze on Nearly $5 Billion in U.S. Foreign Aid at Trump’s Request
Archaeologists Recover Statues and Temples from 2,000-Year-Old Sunken City off Alexandria
China Deploys 2,000 Workers to Spain to Build Major EV Battery Factory, Raising European Dependence
Speed Takes Over: How Drive-Through Coffee Chains Are Rewriting U.S. Coffee Culture
U.S. Demands Brussels Scrutinize Digital Rules to Prevent Bias Against American Tech
Ringo Starr Champions Enduring Beatles Legacy While Debuting Las Vegas Art Show
Private Equity’s Fundraising Surge Triggers Concern of European Market Shake-Out
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
×