French voters go to polls for presidential run-off

French voters went to the polls Sunday for the presidential run-off between the centrist incumbent Emmanuel Macron and his challenger Marine Le Pen whose far-right party appears set to have its strongest election showing ever.

Macron went into the election with a stable lead in opinion polls, an advantage he consolidated in the frenetic final days of campaigning, including a no-holds-barred performance in the pre-election debate.

Analysts have cautioned that Macron, who rose to power in 2017 at 39, as the country's youngest modern leader, can take nothing for granted given forecasts of low turnout that could sway the result in either direction.

The second round of the run-off is a repeat of the 2017 clash between Le Pen and Macron when the centrist won 66 percent of the vote. The margins are seen as being much narrower this time, with polls projecting a victory for Macron by around 10 percentage points.

At midday, voter participation was at 26.4 percent, nearly two percentage points lower than at the same time five years ago, when Macron handily beat Le Pen in her first face-off.

But turnout was above the 25.5 percent seen at midday in the first round of voting on April 10, according to the interior ministry, which will issue its next update on voter participation at 5: 00 pm 1500 GMT At times this campaign didn't have enough debate, but even so I was still able to make up my mind, said Cedric Kuster, a 35-year-old voter in Strasbourg, eastern France.

Le Pen greeted supporters before casting her ballot in the northern town of Henin-Beaumont, a stronghold of her National Rally party.

Macron worked with a crowd of hundreds before voting with his wife Brigitte in the Channel town of Le Touquet, where they own a holiday home.

Voting stations will close at 8: 00 pm, 1800 GMT when preliminary results will be released that usually predict the final result with a high degree of accuracy.

In particular, Macron hopes that leftist voters who supported other candidates in the first round will support the former investment banker and his pro-business, reformist agenda to stop Le Pen and her populist programme.

Despite his close third-place finish in the first round, far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon refused to urge his millions of followers to back Macron, while insisting that they should not vote for Le Pen.

Macron repeatedly made clear that his complacency of stay-at- home voters precipitated the shocks of the 2016 elections that led to the departure of Britain and Donald Trump's election in the United States.

Analysts have forecast that abstention rates could reach 26 to 28 percent, though the 1969 record for a second-round abstention rate of 31.1 percent is not expected to be beat.

Elections are held in the midst of Easter school break in much of France.

According to Martial Foucault, director of the CEVIPOF political studies centre, a high abstention rate will narrow the gap between Macron and Le Pen, describing this as a real risk for the president.

The stakes are huge for France and Europe, with Macron promising to reform and tighter EU integration, while Le Pen, who would be France's first female president, insists the bloc should be modified in what opponents describe as Frexit by another name.

Macron opposes Le Pen's plan to make it illegal to wear the Muslim headscarf in public, but her team has walked back on the proposal ahead of the vote, saying it was no longer a priority for Macron to be the first French president to win re-election in two decades since Jacques Chirac in 2002.

If elected, he is expected to address supporters on the Champ de Mars in central Paris, at the foot of the Eiffel Tower.