French Election 2022 Live Updates: Macron Wins Second Term, Beating Le Pen

PARIS—Millions of French headed to the polls for the final round of a presidential election that laid bare deep divisions among voters worried about inflation, the war in Ukraine and the impact of immigration on France’s national identity.

French President Emmanuel Macron and far-right leader Marine Le Pen qualified for Sunday’s run-off after finishing ahead in the first round of voting April 10. The president garnered nearly 27.9% of first-round ballots while Ms. Le Pen finished second with 23.2%.

Whoever wins Sunday will inherit a country that has fractured along economic, generational and geographical lines, with wealthier urban voters gravitating toward Mr. Macron and younger working-class voters in France’s rural areas backing Ms. Le Pen.

Mr. Macron has also given France a central role in countering Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, shepherding the European Union’s sanctions against Moscow, sending weapons to Ukraine and deploying troops to the eastern front of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Ms. Le Pen has condemned Russia’s aggression. However, she has criticized EU moves to wean the bloc off imports of Russian energy to deprive the Kremlin of funds to wage war. Ms. Le Pen has said Europe’s decisions have only raised the cost of living for French households, hammering on a source of growing public discontent that has helped her climb in the polls over the past month.

Ms. Le Pen also wants to withdraw France from the military command of NATO, saying the arrangement undermines the country’s sovereignty by placing French troops under NATO commanders and threatens to drag the country into unwanted conflicts.

The president’s wartime leadership helped him build a double-digit lead in the polls in early March, but Ms. Le Pen managed to close in on Mr. Macron in the weeks leading up to the first round. Over the past two weeks Mr. Macron’s lead has begun to widen again, with polls suggesting he is ahead by a margin of between 11 and 15 percentage points.

Mr. Macron’s lead has continued to grow after he dueled with Ms. Le Pen in the election’s only national debate, which was held on Wednesday.

Mr. Macron seized on her party’s €9.4 million loan in 2014 to a Russian bank to cast her as a puppet of Russian President Vladimir Putin. That loan has been taken over by a Russian military contractor.

Ms. Le Pen countered that she was completely free from Russian influence, adding that her party took the loan because it couldn’t secure one from a French lender.

Still, polls indicate that Ms. Le Pen and her party have never been closer to power. Mr. Macron’s current cushion in the polls pales in comparison with the 32-point victory he notched over Ms. Le Pen in 2017 or the 64-point win that late President Jacques Chirac scored in 2002 over Jean-Marie Le Pen, the father of Ms. Le Pen and the founder of her far-right party.

Since her 2017 loss, Ms. Le Pen has dropped her opposition to the euro, the EU’s single currency, and focused on pocketbook issues, framing her 2022 campaign as a fight against inflation. She also zeroed in on the impact the war in Ukraine was having on France’s economy, particularly the higher fuel prices that affect working-class commuters. She has promised to slash taxes on fuel and other essentials if elected.

Ms. Le Pen rebranded her National Front party as National Rally in an effort to turn the page on its far-right history, a strategy the party calls “de-demonization.” She toned down her rhetoric and opened up about her personal life, musing on her love of cats.

Ms. Le Pen has stuck with a political program, however, that seizes on the anxieties that many voters outside France’s largest cities feel about Islam’s place in French society. France has been targeted with terrorist attacks by assailants who cited cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in French media as their motive.

Ms. Le Pen campaigned on rewriting France’s constitution to give “national preference” to French citizens over immigrants—including documented ones—in seeking jobs, public housing and welfare benefits. She also proposed a ban on the Muslim head scarf in all public places, describing the garb as an instrument of Islamist ideology.

Mr. Macron zeroed in on such proposals in the final stretch of the election, accusing Ms. Le Pen in the national debate of seeking to foment a civil war in a country that has one of Europe’s largest Muslim minorities. To some voters, however, Ms. Le Pen is no longer the bête noire of French politics.

“I have nothing against Marine Le Pen, even if I wear a head scarf,” said Lilia Missoum, a mother of four children in the port city of Le Havre, along the English Channel. She cast her vote for Mr. Macron on Sunday, because she approved of his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, including the subsidized paychecks her husband received during the crisis. Still, she says, Mr. Macron’s “door to immigration is too open.”