: Macron Challenged by Far Right as French Vote for President #WorldNEWS PARIS — French voters headed to polling stations nationwide Sunday for the first round of the country’s presidential

Macron Challenged by Far Right as French Vote for President #WorldNEWS
PARIS — French voters headed to polling stations nationwide Sunday for the first round of the country’s presidential election, one that seemed for months like a shoo-in for French President Emmanuel Macron but is now a tossup amid a strong challenge from the far rights Marine Le Pen.
Macron, a centrist, is asking Frances 48 million voters for a second five-year term — but there are 11 other candidates and widespread voter apathy standing in his way. Many French also blame Macron for not doing enough to help them cope with the soaring costs of food, fuel and heating, or say he has ignored domestic concerns amid his focus on the war in Ukraine.
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With war raging on the European Unions eastern border, this French presidential election has significant international implications, including the potential to reshape France’s post-war identity and indicate whether European populism is on the ascendant or in the decline.
France is the 27-member bloc’s second-largest economy after Germany, the only one with a U. N. Security Council veto, and its sole nuclear power. And as Russian President Vladimir Putin keeps up his militarys assault on Ukraine, French power will help shape Europe’s response. Macron is the only leading presidential candidate who fully supports the NATO military alliance.
The top two vote-getters in Sundays election advance to a decisive runoff April 24 — unless one candidate gets more than half of the nationwide vote Sunday, which has never happened in France.
France operates a manual system in which voters are obliged to cast paper ballots in person. People who cant do that can make arrangements ahead of time to authorize someone else to vote for them.
Bundled up against the April chill, voters lined up Sunday at one polling station in southern Paris even before it opened. Once inside, they placed their paper ballots into envelopes and then into a transparent box, many wearing masks or using hand gel as part of COVID-19 measures. In the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis, a small boy waited patiently for his father to complete his secret ballot by hand.
Polls on Sunday close at 7 p. m. (1700 GMT) in most places and an hour later in some larger cities. By noon, just over a quarter of France’s electorate had cast ballots, slightly down from previous elections. Pundits before the vote suggested a low turnout could hurt Macrons chances, but it could also hurt Le Pen too.
Many presidential contenders made early visits to their own polling stations. Valerie Pecresse of the conservative Republican Party cast her vote in Velizy-Villacoublay, southwest of Paris. Le Pen showed up in Henin-Beaumont, a town in struggling northern France, while Macron and his wife voted in Le Touquet, a coastal resort town on the English Channel.

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