Macron still leads a tightening presidential race

“I WANT IT to be less like a rally,” declares Emmanuel Macron in an electoral clip, as he strolls around the empty indoor arena west of Paris in an overcoat and scarf, scouting out the venue: “I want something more like a sporting event.” On April 2nd, a mere eight days before the first round of voting in France’s two-round presidential election, the sitting president will finally hold his first election rally. He might need to take his gloves off at last. He is still the firm favourite. But the race is tightening in the final stretch. And a narrow second-round victory could spell trouble for a second-term president later on.

The average gap between Mr Macron and his nearest rival, the nationalist-populist Marine Le Pen, has narrowed from 13 points on March 15th to seven points two weeks later, according to The Economist’s poll of polls. On March 29th our forecasting model still gave Mr Macron an 89% chance of re-election, and only a one-in-ten chance to Ms Le Pen. But two new polls suggest that, if the pair meet in the run-off as they did in 2017, his victory over her could be as narrow as 53% to 47%.