French President Emmanuel Macron has a small lead going into the second round of the country’s presidential election, but the combined support for two far-right candidates outweighed his votes, exit polls showed Sunday. Macron led the count with 28.5 percent of the first-round vote, according to projections, while Marine Le Pen held onto second place with 24.2 percent. Combined with fellow far-righter Éric Zemmour’s 7 percent, the results indicated France’s far-right movement has strong support. Macron is nevertheless still predicted to win when he faces Le Pen in a run-off. Le Pen, whose nationalist rhetoric over inflation and immigration has attracted strong support, benefited from a late surge which she said came from voters tired of choosing between “the incarnation of social justice around the centuries-old idea of the nation and the people,” according to The Guardian. Macron and Le Pen faced each other in a run-off in 2017.
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