French presidential election’s 1st-round official results validate Macron, Le Pen lead

France's Constitutional Council on Wednesday declared the official results of the first round of the country's presidential elections, validating outgoing President Emmanuel Macron and the National Rally party's Marine Le Pen to be the leading candidates who will contest the final round.

According to the results announced by the council's president, Laurent Fabius, the Republic on the Move (LaREM) party's candidate Macron garnered 9,783,058 votes, or 27.85% of the total votes and far-right candidate Le Pen got 8,133,828 votes (23.15%). The far-Left candidate of La France Insoumise party, Jean-Luc Melenchon, came in third with 7,712,520 votes (21.95%).

The majority of the exit polls guessed the estimated vote share correctly.

Of the 48,747,876 registered voters, 35,923,707 (73.69%) participated in the first round of polling. The abstention rate was 26.31% -- the highest since the 2002 elections.

A total of 543,609 ballots were left blank, with voters choosing to cast their vote for none of the 12 candidates

Official results of the 12 candidates:

Emmanuel Macron, LaREM Party, Center: 27.85% (9,783,058 votes)

Marine Le Pen, National Rally, Far-Right: 23.15% (8,133,828)

Jean-Luc Melenchon, France Insoumise, Far-Left: 21.95% (7,712,520)

Eric Zemmour, Reconquest, Far-Right: 7.07% (2,485,226)

Valerie Pecresse, The Republicans, Right: 4.78% (1,679,001)

Yannick Jadot, Europe Ecology-The Greens (EELV), Left: 4.63% (1,627,853)

Jean Lassalle, Let's Resist, Ruralist: 3.13% (1,101,387)

Fabien Roussel, French Communist Party (PCF), Far-Left: 2.28% (802,422)

Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, Stand up France, Far-Right: 2.06% (725,176)

Anne Hidalgo, Socialist Party, Left,: 1.74% (616,478)

Philippe Poutou, New Anti-Capitalist Party, Far-Left: 0.76% (268,904)

Nathalie Arthaud, Workers' Struggle, Far-Left: 0.56% (197,094)