Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen went in opposite directions on Monday in an attempt to drum up support from new voters they need to win the final round of France’s presidential election in less than a fortnight.
Macron headed north, where he spent several hours talking to crowds at Denain, a former mining town once controlled by socialists but now a far-right stronghold, and promised he would listen to candidates “who failed to qualify” in Sunday’s first round of the election.
Le Pen headed south into northern Burgundy where the Paris commuter belt meets countryside and where she already enjoys support.
Both candidates need to convince the 49% of voters who did not support either of them on Sunday and the 25.1% who did not vote at all if they want to win the second round on 24 April.
Both will be looking to poach some of the 7.7 million-plus voters who supported the radical left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the only leftwing candidate to get anywhere near the second round with 21.95% of the vote on Sunday.
It was announced on Monday that Macron and Le Pen will go head-to-head in a televised debate four days before the vote, during which they will be questioned about their programmes. In 2017, almost 16.5 million viewers watched the pair trade insults in a match that seriously damaged Le Pen after she lost her cool and became aggressive.
In Denain, once part of France’s coalmining heartland that inspired Émile Zola’s novel Germinal but now one of the poorest towns in France, almost 42% voted for Le Pen on Sunday and just under 15% for Macron.
Members of the public repeatedly tackled the president on his highly contentious aim to raise the retirement age from 62 to 65. The last time he tried to push the measure through, it sparked weeks of nationwide strikes. Others in the crowd that mobbed him as he walked around wanted to talk about the rising cost of living and concerns about jobs and health.
Macron needs to unite a hostile electorate from the political extremes to vote for him on 24 April. With many, particularly on the left, feeling politically orphaned by Sunday’s result, getting them to vote at all will be the first hurdle.
Macron, 44, said he was prepared to extend a hand to political rivals who lost in the first round and consider a “new method” but refused to be more specific, saying only that he would be speaking to them. He also said he would “develop” his programme after listening to the “anger and despair” of those who had not voted for him, and particularly young people’s concerns over the environment.
“I want to convince our compatriots who voted for [Le Pen’s] the National Rally or who abstained to join us. To unite them, clearly I have to add to and enrich my project,” Macron said.
“I see the divisions and anger in the country and I hear the voices of those who have voted for the extremes, even those who voted for Madame Le Pen,” he said.
He added: “With the number of people who voted for the extreme right and extreme left, I cannot carry on as if nothing has happened.
“I have heard people express their concern about the political context, including from lots of young people who want decent training and work. But more than anger I am hearing worry.”
He said there was no “republican front” to see off the far right.
Le Pen, 53, had been planning to spend the day in the capital but made a last-minute decision to campaign on the ground, making an unscheduled visit to Thorigny-sur-Oreuse, a village in the Yonne department, to speak to cereal farmers. Here, the far-right candidate appeared to be preaching to the converted, as just under 38% of the 871 people who voted locally chose her, and just under 22% Macron.
Before leaving Paris, Le Pen told journalists she was also in combat mode. “We have [to] continue to fight,” she said. “We will be speaking about agriculture and being self-sufficient in production and inflation. We will be discussing how to revitalise our democracy and explain my manner of governing.
“We will also be talking about protecting the spending power especially for those with modest means and for whom rises in the price of fuel and food are very worrying.”
The president emerged with a lead of several points after the first-round ballot, scoring 27.84% against Le Pen’s 23.15%, according to the final figures from the French interior ministry. More than 3.2 million voters who chose other far-right candidates including Éric Zemmour are likely to transfer their support to Le Pen.
Mélenchon has emerged as a potential kingmaker in third place after he rose to within a few points of Le Pen at just under 22% in a surprising 11th-hour surge. He has advised his supporters not to vote for Le Pen in the second round, but stopped short of advising them to vote for Macron. High abstention in the second round is likely to play in Le Pen’s favour.
Macron, who was accused of “arrogance” in leaving his first-round campaigning to the last minute in the belief the election would be a walkover, will appear on prime-time French television on Monday evening.
Le Pen’s team said Sunday’s result was a “failure” for Macron. “In truth, 70% of French people voted against him,” Jordan Bardella, the acting head of Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) party.
In the early hours of Monday, there was a brief ray of hope for Mélenchon as the updated count suggested he was closing on Le Pen. In the end, his team conceded defeat.
Olivier Faure, the first secretary of the Socialist party, admitted the Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo’s score of under 2% was “an immense disappointment”. “It’s a historic defeat … an unusual score for a party that has run the country,” Faure told France Info. Even in Paris, Hidalgo came seventh, just below Le Pen.
A study by the pollsters Ipsos found Macron, who in 2017 became France’s youngest head of state since Napoleon, had his biggest support come from the oldest voters, aged 70 and over, while Mélenchon was most popular among 24 to 34-year-olds. Le Pen’s greatest support came from 50 to 59-year-old voters.
