World – French election: Marine Le Pen wins through to final showdown against Emmanuel Macron, early results suggest

Marine Le Pen is expected to make it through to the second round run-off of the French presidential election, results suggest.

With 89.7 per cent of the more than 40 million votes counted, the figures put the leader of the far-right Front National (FN) on 21.9 per cent, where she is expected to face centrist Emmanuel Macron  who is set to win the first round. Mr Macron currently has 23.7 per cent of the vote.

Early projections from opinion pollsters on the results had shown Mr Macron ahead of Ms Le Pen – with the independent candidate expected to scoop between 23 and 24 per cent of the total vote, with Ms Le Pen getting between 21 and 23 per cent of the vote.

The vote is expected to mark the end of a political era since the two major  parties – the Socialist party and the centre-right Les Republicains – which have traditionally been the pillars of France’s political arena, are expected to be eliminated in the first round of the election.

Conservative Francois Fillon is on 19.9 per cent and far-left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon is on 19.2 per cent. projections suggested Mr Melenchon and Mr Fillon will both claim around 19.5 per cent of the votes, with Socialist candidate Benoit Hamon set to pick-up an historically-low 6.2 per cent.

Source: The independent