People in France are voting for a new president, and that could cause even more chaos across Europe.
Macron, the current president, and Marine Le Pen, the far-right candidate, are going to face off in a second election in two weeks after a close first round of votes yesterday. It looked like Macron got 28.1 percent of the votes, while Le Pen got 23.3 percent.
It’s a good result for Macron, who lost his big lead over Le Pen in recent weeks. But it also means that Le Pen is getting closer and closer to winning, which makes her more likely to win. If she were to win the runoff, it could change the way people feel as big as the UK’s vote to leave the EU or Donald Trump’s election as president of the United States in 2016.
Le Pen is very far to the right of the centrist Macron, who called her a “racist” last week. She is very different from Macron. During this election, she has said that people who wear Muslim headscarves in public places are “Islamist uniforms,” and she wants to ban them in public places. She’s also a nationalist who doesn’t like international groups like NATO or the European Union.
During this campaign, on the other hand, Le Pen focused more on issues that were more important to her home country. The prices of fuel and food are rising in France, Europe’s second-largest economy. Le Pen made the race a lot closer by talking about the cost of living.
In fact, Macron didn’t run very many ads at all. Because of the war in Ukraine, he’s been giving most of his attention there. He only held one big rally in the run-up to the vote.
A lot of the people in France aren’t very excited about the election as well. If people don’t vote, it could be the worst turnout for 20 years!
There were runoff elections between Macron and Le Pen five years ago, and Macron won with 67% of the vote and Le Pen with 33%. If this time around, Macron wins again, it will be by a much smaller amount.