The top candidates in France’s volatile presidential election went head-to-head in a televised debate yesterday as polls show centrist Emmanuel Macron and far right leader Marine Le Pen pulling away from the pack five weeks before the first round.
Macron, Le Pen and the three other leading candidates took part in a nearly three-hour debate on the main private channel that started at 9pm (2000 GMT, 11pm Qatar time) yesterday and expected to be watched by millions.
The televised debate, the first held before the first round of a French presidential election, may be crucial in helping viewers make up their minds.
Opinion polls show almost 40% of voters are not completely sure who to back in the election, being held over two rounds on April 23 and May 7 against a backdrop of high unemployment and sluggish growth.
Markets, surprised by Britain’s Brexit vote last June, are nervous about the possibility of a victory by National Front leader Le Pen, who pledges to take France out of the euro and hold a referendum on EU membership.
Polls show Macron and Le Pen establishing a clear lead in terms of voting intentions in the first round, while conservative candidate Francois Fillon, the one-time front-runner who has been damaged by a financial scandal, has slipped back.
For the first time since the campaign began, an Elabe poll yesterday found Macron nudging ahead of Le Pen in the first round, registering 25.5% to Le Pen’s 25%, while Fillon was seen at 17.5%, down 1.5% from two weeks ago.
Only the top two candidates go through to the run-off, where Elabe tipped Macron to easily beat Le Pen by 63% to 37%, while cautioning that many voters did not want to say how they would vote in the second round.
The latest daily Opinionway poll showed Le Pen scoring 27% in the first round, in front of Macron on 23% and Fillon on 18%.
It found Macron comfortably winning a run-off.
An attack at Paris Orly airport on Saturday, when a man known to police as a radicalised Muslim was shot dead after trying to grab a soldier’s rifle, has put security back in the spotlight after a series of Islamic attacks shook France.
That could play into the hands of right-wing candidates Le Pen and Fillon, who advocate tougher security measures.
The premium that investors demand to hold French instead of German debt rose to its highest in almost two weeks yesterday, reflecting unease among investors before the debate.
“We think the importance of this debate should not be underestimated. Only 60% of voters polled by Ifop say they have made up their mind,” said Mizuho rates strategist Antoine Bouvet.
Pollster Ifop’s data show that more than 80% of Le Pen’s supporters say that they would definitely vote for her in the first round.
By contrast, less than 49% of Macron’s backers were certain that they would vote for him.
The other two candidates in the TV debate were the ruling Socialist Party’s candidate Benoit Hamon and Jean-Luc Melenchon, who have split the left-wing vote.
Macron, 39, a former economy minister and investment banker who has never run for elected office, made a name for himself by criticising sacred cows of the French “social model” such as the 35-hour working week, iron-clad job protection, and civil servants’ jobs for life.
The other candidates were likely to attack his relative inexperience.

Paris fraud squad offices hit by bomb threat
Around 100 people were evacuated yesterday from the offices of France’s financial fraud prosecutors over a bomb alert, two days after an attack led to the evacuation of the city’s second busiest airport.
An anonymous caller had told police that there was a bomb in the building that houses prosecutors investigating high-level financial crimes, a police source said.
Bomb disposal experts were sent to the site in central Paris, which was cordoned off.
The all-clear was given after “the usual checks” were carried out, the source said.
The financial fraud wing of the Paris criminal court is currently investigating Francois Fillon, the conservative candidate in France’s April-May presidential election, on charges of misusing public funds.
It is also investigating the far-right National Front party of Marine Le Pen over alleged fake jobs.
The bomb scare comes after Saturday’s attack at Orly airport where a man who had been investigated for links to radical Islam was shot dead after assaulting a soldier on patrol and grabbing her rifle.