French election polls: who is leading the race to be the next president of France?

Emmanuel Macron and the far-right hopeful Marine Le Pen are among 12 candidates in the French presidential election. We look at the latest polling, and introduce some of the candidates

France will vote to elect a new president in April, and the final list of candidates consists of twelve competitors, chief among them the Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen.

The current president, Emmanuel Macron, declared earlier this month that he intends to run for a second term. His second-round opponent from 2017, the far-right Marine Le Pen, had already launched her campaign.

The hard-left Jean-Luc Mélenchon is currently polling in third place.

The right’s Valérie Pécresse, standing for Les Républicains, is vying with the far-right former TV pundit, Eric Zemmour, for fourth place.

They are followed in the polls by the Green’s Yannick Jadot, the Communist party’s Fabien Roussel and the Socialist candidate and mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo.

Would-be candidates had until 4 March to present the 500 signatures of elected officials supporting their run, which the law requires.

A first round is to be held on 10 April, and in the likely event that no candidate receives a majority of the votes, a second round runoff will be held two weeks later, featuring the two leading candidates from the first round.

Polls suggest that the run-off will probably put Macron up against Le Pen, in a re-run of the second round in 2017.

• This article is being regularly updated to ensure that it reflects the current situation as well as possible. Any significant corrections made to this or previous versions of the article will continue to be footnoted in line with Guardian editorial policy.

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