The only surprise about the 1-2 showing of French President Emmanuel Macron and nationalist leader Marine Le Pen in the first round of presidential voting Sunday was the distance between them.
With near-final results in, Macron topped the field with 27.4% to Le Pen's 24.6%. Final polls before the balloting began showed the two contenders running neck-and-neck.
Macron and Le Pen will meet in an April 24 runoff that will determine who lives in the Élysée Palace of the president. A just-completed Ipsos poll showed Macron eking out a victory over his challenger by 51% to 49%.
Facing an obviously tight and hard-fought campaign over the next two weeks, sources in France who spoke to Newsmax agreed the turnout among non-voters in this round and the lone and all-important debate between the opponents will be pivotal to the outcome of the race.
Since 1974, the two runoff candidates for president hold one 2½ hour televised debate that is watched by an estimated 80% of the electorate. Often, quick comebacks by one candidate to another are cited as factors in the resulting election outcome.
In 1974, pressed by Socialist François Mitterrand on his concern for the poor, conservative Valéry Giscard d'Estaing countered: "You do not have a monopoly of the heart."
Historians consider those five words essential to Giscard's wafer-thin victory.
In 2015, as Socialist Ségolène Royal grew irate over the issue of disabled children in a televised encounter with conservative Nicolas Sarkozy, he told her to calm down because "to be president, you have to be calm."
According to the latest reports, 65% of French voters turned out for the initial vote — impressive in most countries, but not so in a country in which non-voting is fined. The turnout, in fact, is 4.4% below that of the 2017 election (in which first-time candidate Macron and Le Pen also emerged as runoff opponents).
A key player in motivating non-voters could easily be leftist contender Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who came in a surprisingly strong third with 20.9%. Melanchon has told his supporters in no uncertain terms not to vote for Le Pen, but has yet to say whether or not they should support Macron.
Mélenchon has called for a new Sixth Republic of France, with citizens voting on proposals in initiative and referendum not unlike states in the U.S. such as California. Taking a page from the leftist government in Ecuador, he backs creation of a constituent assembly for citizens to write new laws.
But the leftist hopeful also wants a French withdrawal from NATO — a stance that appeals to Le Pen enthusiasts — and, while condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he does not want France involved in the resulting war.
Fourth-place finisher (6.9%) Éric Zemmour has endorsed Le Pen in the runoff.
"Marine Le Pen has run a perfect campaign and, ironically was helped by Éric Zemmour, who a couple of months ago was her biggest challenger on the right," Jorgen Ullerup, Paris correspondent for the Danish publication Jyllands-Posten, told us. "She let him deal with Islam and Islamists and focused entirely on the most important theme in the campaign: Le pouvoir d'achat! How ordinary French working people – the forgotten French – can manage to make ends meet at the end of the month, when all the prices are going up."
Ullerup added, "Islam and also security are pretty low now on the list of biggest concerns for French voters, so Zemmour got that all wrong. His very radical solutions to immigration backfired and left Le Pen cleaned up and almost moderate – although she shares many of his opinions."
Laure Mandeville, veteran correspondent for the French publication Le Figaro, agreed.
Le Pen, she told us, "got more amicable more intimate and human in her approach, letting Zemmour do all the talking about immigration and cultural issues. She just played it nice and attuned to the small guy.
"Things are super strange. I think lots of French people are disgusted and in rebellion and desperately looking for someone fresh."
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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