Emmanuel Macron is firing up his campaign for re-election, directly taking on far-right rival Marine Le Pen in France’s presidential run-off.
He made his first trip to a Le Pen stronghold at Denain, one of France’s poorest towns in the industrial north.
President Macron won the first round of the election, but opinion polls suggest the second round will be a close race on 24 April.
“Make no mistake: nothing is decided,” he told supporters after the vote.
Both candidates polled better than the first round in 2017, but Le Pen officials were in far more buoyant mood the morning after the result, even though she trailed the president by four points.
Jordan Benalla, president of her National Rally party, was confident Ms Le Pen would find willing support from the 70% of people who voted against Mr Macron.
“They know if he gets back in, it’s going to be five more years of social breakdown, fiscal bloodletting, powerlessness over their sovereignty, violence throughout the country and immigration,” he told French radio.
The president acknowledged he had left campaigning too late. He chose to focus instead on Russia’s war in Ukraine, partly in the belief that his role as a statesman would boost his poll numbers.
Meanwhile, the Le Pen team concentrated on the cost of living crunch affecting much of the French population.
“Clearly we’re not listening enough to the 38 million French people who earn less than €2,000 (£1,680) a month,” said Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin.
With that in mind, Mr Macron headed to the northern towns of Denain, Carvin and Lens where the National Rally candidate came out on top.
Another minister, Clément Beaune, said it was an area that had experienced decades of high deprivation and Marine Le Pen was attracting high levels of support. The aim was to spend the next two weeks highlighting the government’s record in creating jobs and reinvigorating industry, he explained.
“Marine Le Pen is all talk about the cost of living and protecting people in most difficulty,” he said. “But in concrete terms what would she achieve for them – and what would we do?”
Tactical voting
With all of the votes counted, Emmanuel Macron took 27.84% of the vote, Marine Le Pen 23.15% and far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon 21.95%. Between them they attracted close to three-quarters of the vote, as the electorate largely abandoned other candidates they decided had no chance of making the run-off.
Another of the big revelations on the night was that more than half of voters backed the far right and far left.
Mr Mélenchon was not far behind Marine Le Pen and his voters could decide the final round of this election, if they turn out to vote.
“You must not give a single vote to Marine Le Pen,” he warned his supporters, although he pointedly did not back the president instead.
More mainstream candidates did urge voters to support Mr Macron in the run-off, including Valérie Pécresse from the right-wing Republicans and Anne Hidalgo from the Socialists. Both had an awful night, failing to even scrape the 5% of the vote needed to recoup their election costs.
