Paris Bureau Chief, The Economist. Author of Revolution Française: Emmanuel Macron and the Quest to Reinvent a Nation (Bloomsbury 2018) https://t.co/wobZMXbZ8M
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The left-wing alliance, New Popular Front (LFI, Socialists, Greens, Communists), had a good night too, coming second with 28.1%, according to @IpsosFrance. It could become the second-biggest parliamentary bloc after second-round voting 2/
Macron: “All options are possible. In order to have peace in Ukraine, we cannot be weak”
It’s too simple to say this uprising is only because the French don’t want to retire later, although that's true. The real anger, which the govt seems to have underestimated, is at the way it was done, using article 49.3, and the sense this embodies Macron's governing style 2/
The French economy recovered to pre-pandemic levels in Q2 2022. This is not the case in Germany or the UK
The Queen was 51 years old when Emmanuel Macron was born. On her platinum jubilee this year, he sent a message describing her as the “golden thread” that binds 🇫🇷 and 🇬🇧 together, and gave her a thoroughbred horse from the French Republican Guard 
The clock in the carriage shows 1:55am this morning. Macron went straight from Moldova to board the train with Scholz and Draghi at the Polish-Ukrainian border. Why this timing? The Elysée says it’s the EU summit next week and Ukraine’s hopes for a ´strong symbolic gesture’
Main surprises 1: 🇫🇷 foreign minister is @AmbColonna, now ambassador to UK. An experienced pro-European career diplomat she was Chirac’s spokesperson during 2003 invasion of Iraq, then Europe minister, but is Macron-compatible--and will have no illusions about the Johnson govt
This is a historic result. Macron is the first sitting French president to have been re-elected for 20 years. He also now becomes the only president under the Fifth Republic to have been returned to office by direct universal suffrage while holding a parliamentary majority
The upward trend in the Le Pen vote shows that 🇫🇷 is no better sheltered from populist forces than anywhere else. Her father scored 18% in 2002. She scored 34% in 2017. Any score today in the 40% range will confirm the deep discontent in fractured France 
The main risk, however, is turn-out. Macron will win only if enough of those especially on the left who did not pick him in the first round, and are instinctively hostile to him, go and vote for him anyway, even if only to keep Le Pen out
Le Pen fluffed the opening moments by starting to speak before the debate jingle played. Hard to fault her for enthusiasm. But still
Macron remains the strong favourite. Our model gives him a 90% probability of victory. But that figure has been sliding back since he announced his plan to raise the retirement age from 62 to 65. It is always worth recalling that low-probability events do happen 