Polls show tight 4-way race in 1st round of French presidential vote
Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen favoured but far from certain to advance to 2nd round
The French head to the polls on Sunday in an election campaign that is too close to call and could send any two of the top four contenders into next month's second round vote — with potentially significant implications for Canada.
Those four contenders include candidates from the far left and far right, one currently under investigation for the misuse of public funds and a political neophyte.
French presidential elections are done in two stages. If no candidate receives a majority of the vote in the first round, the top two candidates head to a run-off. Every direct presidential election since the founding of France's Fifth Republic system in 1958 has required a second round.
The polls suggest it will be a necessity again this year.
Macron, Le Pen favourites to advance
The leading candidate in the polls is Emmanuel Macron, a former economic minister in the outgoing Socialist government who has never run for political office before. He launched his own party (En Marche!) and is running on a centrist platform. He's pro-European Union and supports Canada's free trade agreement with the European Union (CETA).
Macron has averaged 24 per cent support in the latest polls by seven French pollsters — down slightly from his peak in March but well placed to move to the second round.
Following closely behind is Marine Le Pen with an average of 22.3 per cent support. Le Pen is the leader of the National Front, a far-right nationalist party founded by her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen. She has tried to soften the party's image in recent years from its racist and anti-Semitic past.
Le Pen is against CETA, would take France out of the eurozone, potentially hold a referendum on France's place in the EU and reduce France's participation in NATO.
Macron and Le Pen are the favourites to move ahead to the second round, a run-off that Macron is expected to win easily. He has led Le Pen in hypothetical second round polls by 27 points.
That would be the widest margin of victory in the history of the Fifth Republic — with the one exception of the 2002 presidential election, when Jean-Marie Le Pen squeaked into the second round and was crushed by Jacques Chirac. He won by a margin of 82 to 18 per cent, as the French electorate mobilized to reject the National Front's xenophobic politics.
But there is a significant possibility that Macron or Le Pen (or potentially both) won't make it to the second round.
Can't rule out Fillon and Mélenchon
Trailing in third place is François Fillon, the candidate of the conservative Republicans, a party that (before a name change) had been the vehicle of former president Nicolas Sarkozy. Fillon is averaging 19.5 per cent support.
Fillon had initially been the favourite to move to the second round along with Le Pen. But his candidacy was felled by allegations he misused public funds, paying his family members a salary for non-existent jobs at the French National Assembly. He is now under investigation.
The weakness of Fillon and Benoît Hamon — running for the Socialist Party of the deeply unpopular president, François Hollande, who opted not to run for re-election — has combined to help boost Macron from long shot to contender.
But the lack of a strong Socialist candidate (Hamon is now polling at only 7.6 per cent) has also paved the way for Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Backed by, among others, the French Communists, Mélenchon is now running fourth at 18.8 per cent.
Mélenchon is anti-EU, against CETA and would pull France out of NATO. And like Le Pen and Fillon, he wants France to have closer relations with Russia and would remove sanctions against the country that were imposed following its annexation of Crimea.
Which two is too close to call
The margin of 5.3 points between first and fourth place would be the tightest in the history of the Fifth Republic and could result in an upset on Sunday.
Polls in the first round of the past three presidential elections have missed by an average of 1.8 points for the top four candidates. That sort of error could result in any one of Le Pen, Fillon or Mélenchon moving on to the second round against Macron.
Only a slightly larger error (smaller even than some of the misses in 2002 and 2007) could knock Macron out of the second round. Though it's not the most likely outcome, a second round pitting the far right's Le Pen against the far left's Mélenchon is a possibility.
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The repercussions for Canada of such a matchup — with their positions on CETA, NATO and the instability they could potentially cause within the European Union and in the West's relationship with Russia — would be serious.
Nevertheless, Macron remains the heavy favourite to win a second round vote. In addition to his big lead over Le Pen in hypothetical second round polls, he is also 18 points ahead of Mélenchon and 31 points up on Fillon.
Upsetting French politics
In a second round that doesn't feature Macron, Mélenchon would likely beat Le Pen or Fillon, while Fillon would be expected to defeat Le Pen.
The polls suggest Le Pen would come up short against any of the other three front-runners by significant margins. But a second round upset cannot be ruled out entirely, particularly if she goes head-to-head with the tainted Fillon or the equally polarizing Mélenchon. After all, if Le Pen doesn't meet Macron in the second round, the accuracy of the polls will be put into question.
But even if Macron wins, France's politics will be rocked by the election of a president who doesn't come from one of the two parties that have historically held power.
That is if things go as expected. In country after country recently, the electorate hasn't been in the mood to live up to expectations.
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