French urged to vote in presidential election as win for Macron ‘not guaranteed’

War in Ukraine and the pandemic make France's presidential election hard to call, professor warns

A leading French political scientist has warned voters not to consider the presidential election a foregone conclusion, because anything can happen before the first round on 10 April.

Dominique Reynie, head of the influential Fondapol thinktank, suggested it was dangerous for voters to not bother turning out just because opinion polls envisage a win for Emmanuel Macron. The combination of Covid and the war in Ukraine had made the election unpredictable, he said, admitting that even experts in analysing voting patterns could not reliably call the result.