Polls a turning point for France and EU

The French presidential run-off will see self-proclaimed centrist Emmanuel Macron compete with far-right leader Marine Le Pen in less than one week. The first-round election result on April 23 came as a shock to many French voters, because for the first time in more than half a century no candidate from an established party made it to the second round.

Macron led the poll with 23.8 percent of the votes while Le Pen won 21.5 percent. Neither Francois Fillon, a conservative and former prime minister, nor leftist leader Jean-Luc Melenchon could win more than 20 percent of the votes. Senior politicians, including Fillon, the defeated Republican candidate, were quick to voice their support for Macron in the run-off on May 7.

The highly charged campaign and the absence of "mainstream" candidates signal an unprecedented change in French politics. It was almost unlikely that any of the 11 French presidential candidates would secure 50 percent of the votes in the first round. But in what has rarely been seen, Macron won against his three closest rivals by only a small margin in the first round, and the traditional left- and right-wing candidates lost to a self-proclaimed centrist whose party was founded just a year ago and a far-right leader who is dead set against globalization.