PARIS (Reuters) - Far-left firebrand Jean-Luc Melenchon embraced technology during the launch of his presidential campaign at a rally in Lyon on Sunday, with a 3D hologram of him making his speech appearing at the same time at another rally in Paris. 
 
 Technicians are seen with equipment used to produce a hologram that is trasmitted to a gathering in Saint-Denis as politician Jean-Luc Melenchon, of the French far-left Parti de Gauche, and candidate for the 2017 French presidential election, speaks on stage during a campaign rally in Chassieu, near Lyon, France, February 5, 2017. REUTERS/Emmanuel Foudrot 
 
 Melenchon, wearing a Nehru-style jacket, tried to use the hologram technology give a modern look to his launch, which coincided with that of the far-right leader Marine Le Pen. 
 
 Melenchon is certainly not the first politician to employ such technology - in 2014, then-Turkish prime minister Tayyip Erdogan used a huge hologram of himself to attract wider support, while India’s Narendra Modi trounced the opposition with a campaign that included holograms of his speeches in villages across the country. 
 
 Melenchon tried to position himself on Sunday as a key adversary of Marine Le Pen, choosing Lyon - and almost the same timing - for the launch of his campaign. 
 
 Le Pen, speaking in Lyon on Sunday, told thousands of flag-waving supporters chanting “This is our country!” that she alone would protect them against Islamic fundamentalism and globalisation if elected president in May. 
 
 There are some similarities between Melenchon’s platform and Le Pen’s, as both are skeptical of the EU and globalisation, but they differ sharply on other issues including migration. 
 
 During his speech, Melenchon mentioned the Socialist party’s presidential candidate Benoit Hamon, who has called on left-wing forces to unite. 
 
 “Everyone wants to abolish El Khomri (a labor law), including the Socialist candidate. I wonder what holds him back?” said Melanchon, who has between 11 and 11.5 percent support, according to Friday’s BVA poll. 
 
 The Socialists, weakened after the deeply unpopular presidency of Francois Hollande, have no chance of getting beyond the first round of the election in April, according to the latest polls. 
 
 The poll by BVA of voting intentions on Friday gave Hamon between 16 and 17 percent in the April 23 first round, behind far-right leader Marine Le Pen on 25 percent, independent centrist Emmanuel Macron on 21-22 percent and conservative Francois Fillon on 20 percent. ||||| Far-right leader and candidate for the 2017 French presidential election, Marine Le Pen, addresses supporters after exit poll results of the first round of the presidential election were announced at... (Associated Press) 
 
 Far-right leader and candidate for the 2017 French presidential election, Marine Le Pen, addresses supporters after exit poll results of the first round of the presidential election were announced at her election day headquarters in Henin-Beaumont, northern France, Sunday, April 23, 2017. Polling agency... (Associated Press) 
 
 PARIS (AP) — French voters shut out the country's political mainstream from the presidency for the first time in the country's modern history, and on Monday found themselves being courted across the spectrum for the runoff election. 
 
 The May 7 runoff will be between the populist Marine Le Pen and centrist Emmanuel Macron, and French politicians on the moderate left and right immediately urged voters to block Le Pen's path to power. 
 
 The defeated far-left candidate, Jean-Luc Melenchon, pointedly refused to do the same, and Le Pen's National Front is hoping to do the once unthinkable and peel away voters historically opposed to a party long tainted by racism and anti-Semitism. 
 
 "The voters who voted for Mr. Melenchon are angry voters. They can be in agreement with us," said Steeve Brios, a vice president of Le Pen's National Front party. He said they express a choice "outside the system." 
 
 Choosing inside the system is no longer an option for French voters, who rejected the two mainstream parties that have alternated power for decades in favor of Le Pen and the untested Macron, who has never held elected office and who founded his own political movement just last year. Turnout was 78 percent. 
 
 Socialist candidate Benoit Hamon, whose party holds a majority in the legislature and whose President Francois Hollande is the most unpopular in modern French record-keeping, got just 6 percent. The conservative candidate fared marginally better, coming in third with just shy of 20 percent of the vote. 
 
 "We are in a phase of decomposition, demolition, deconstruction," said former Socialist prime minister Manuel Valls. "We didn't do the work — intellectual, ideological and political — on what the left is, and we paid the price." 
 
 Both center-right and center-left fell in behind Macron, whose optimistic vision of a tolerant France and a united Europe with open borders is a stark contrast to Le Pen's darker, inward-looking "French-first" platform that calls for closed borders, tougher security, less immigration and dropping the shared euro currency to return to the French franc. 
 
 European stock markets surged on the open as investors welcomed the first-round results, with Macron favored to win. German Chancellor Angela Merkel wished Macron "all the best for the next two weeks." 
 
 Merkel's chief of staff, Peter Altmaier, tweeted that "the result for Emmanuel Macron shows: France AND Europe can win together! The center is stronger than the populists think!" 
 
 Le Pen's father, Jean-Marie, made it to the second round against Jacques Chirac in 2002 and was crushed. Many commentators expect the same fate for his daughter, but she has already drawn far more support than he ever did and she's transformed the party's once-pariah image. 
 
 Le Pen offers an alternative for anyone skeptical of the European Union and France's role in it, said Louis Aliot, the vice president of the National Front party. 
 
 "I'm not convinced that the French are willing to sign a blank check to Mr. Macron," he said. 
 
 But Macron's party spokesman, Benjamin Griveaux, said the far-right candidate is hardly a vector of change. 
 
 "She's been in the political system for 30 years. She inherited her father's party and we will undoubtedly have Le Pens running for the next 20 years, because after we had the father, we have the daughter and we will doubtless have the niece," he said. "So she is in a truly bad position to be talking about the elites and the people." 
 
 Macron came in first in Sunday's vote, with just over 23 percent; Le Pen had 21 percent; Melenchon and losing conservative candidate Francois Fillon each had 19 percent. Fillon, a former prime minister, bested the former Trotskyist by just 94,998 votes. 
 
 Protesters overnight burned cars, danced around bonfires and dodged riot police at the Place de la Bastille and Republique. Twenty-nine people were detained at the Bastille, where protesters waved red flags and sang "No Marine and No Macron!" in anger at the results. 
 
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 Ganley reported from Henin-Beaumont. Lori Hinnant and Thomas Adamson contributed from Paris. 
 
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 This corrects that Socialist candidate was Benoit Hamon ||||| Socialist candidate for the presidential election Benoit Hamon, center, greets from left to right, Conservative presidential candidate Francois Fillon, Independent centrist presidential candidate for... (Associated Press) 
 
 Socialist candidate for the presidential election Benoit Hamon, center, greets from left to right, Conservative presidential candidate Francois Fillon, Independent centrist presidential candidate for the presidential election Emmanuel Macron, Far-left presidential candidate for the presidential election... (Associated Press) 
 
 PARIS (AP) — The two front-runners for the French presidency clashed spectacularly in the campaign's first televised debate between leading candidates Monday night. 
 
 All five candidates landed punches during vigorous discussion on the big issues for France: jobs, terrorism, immigration, Europe. 
 
 But the faceoff between independent centrist Emmanuel Macron and far-right populist Marine Le Pen provided political theater, even moments of high drama in pitting two opposing visions of France. 
 
 Macron's performance, in particular, was being closely watched. One of the big surprises of the election has been the success of the former economics minister's new-look campaign, positioning himself as a centrist alternative to France's traditional left-right politics. 
 
 But Le Pen, the anti-immigration, anti-European Union leader of the National Front, was looking for opportunities to pounce. With polls suggesting that she and Macron could be direct rivals in the decisive May 7 runoff of the two-round election, both sought to score points against each other. 
 
 As Macron was discussing foreign policy, Le Pen portrayed him as wishy-washy, muttering: "It's empty, completely empty." 
 
 "We don't know what you want," she said. 
 
 Macron proved during the three-hour evening debate that overran and spilled past midnight that he can defend himself. With limited experience of public office, he sought to portray himself as presidential and hard to push around. 
 
 Some of the most heated exchanges centered on the place of religion in France and the separation of church and state. 
 
 Macron reacted vigorously when Le Pen accused him of being in favor of Muslim swimwear — essentially suggesting that her rival isn't really committed to France's secular values and policies. 
 
 "I don't need a ventriloquist," he retorted. "When I have something to say, I say it clearly." 
 
 He, in turn, accused Le Pen of using Islam to divide the French. Le Pen wants all visible religious symbols worn by people, including Muslim headscarves and Jewish kippahs, banned from public. 
 
 "The trap you are falling into, Madame Le Pen, with your provocations is to divide society," Macron said. 
 
 Macron also used humor to defuse Le Pen's attacks. After a thinly veiled dig from Le Pen suggesting that the former banker would be beholden to financial lobbies if elected, Macron told her: "You'd be bored without me." 
 
 While they were feisty, conservative candidate Francois Fillon was noticeably and unusually restrained. Once considered a leading contender to move into the presidency's Elysee Palace, Fillon's campaign has been badly hurt by accusations that his wife and children were paid with public money for jobs they allegedly did not do, which he denies. The ex-prime minister appeared weary and at times absent during the debate. 
 
 "I may have made mistakes. I have defects. Who doesn't? But I have experience," Fillon said. 
 
 Socialist candidate Benoit Hamon and far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon, both looking to boost their poll numbers, were the first to take swipes at Le Pen. 
 
 Hamon described Le Pen's attitude as "sickening" after she spoke of French schools as "a daily nightmare," so dangerous that pupils attend with "fear in their stomachs." 
 
 Melenchon interrupted Le Pen as she was calling for boosted French-language teaching. 
 
 "How do you learn French, dear madam? By speaking it!" he said. 
 
 Of the 11 candidates in the election, only the five who are expected to be the largest vote-getters in the first round were included in the debate. 
 
 The first-round vote is set for April 23; the top two candidates go to the May 7 runoff. ||||| Emmanuel Macron is poised to beat Marine Le Pen when French voters head to the polls in the second round of their country's presidential election on Sunday. 
 
 Macron, a centrist, has a wide lead in public opinion polls over the the far-right Le Pen. Macron is a 39-year-old former banker with only a few years of government experience who's mounting his first campaign as a politician. 
 
 His prospective victory, however, appears to pertain more to a desire by French voters to deny Le Pen the presidency rather than any strong enthusiasm for Macron. 
 
 According to polls published Friday afternoon, Macron has a 24-point lead over Le Pen, with support of 62 per cent of decided voters. Le Pen has the backing of 38 per cent. 
 
 If those numbers hold up on Sunday, it would amount to one of the widest gaps ever in the second round of a French presidential election — the exception being 2002, when Le Pen's father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, lost by 64 points to Jacques Chirac. 
 
 The polls suggest Macron has successfully amassed support across the political spectrum from some of his first-round rivals. He appears to have won over voters from conservative François Fillon, from far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon and from centre-left Socialist candidate Benoît Hamon. 
 
 Both Fillon and Hamon endorsed Macron after their first-round defeats. 
 
 Benoit Hamon, centre, greets from left to right, Francois Fillon, Emmanuel Macron, Jean-Luc Melenchon and Marine Le Pen prior to a television debate in March. (The Associated Press) 
 
 Le Pen, who has stepped down temporarily from her job as head of the nationalist, far-right and anti-immigrant Front National (FN), is only doing better than Macron among supporters of Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, a right-wing social conservative candidate who took 4.7 per cent of the vote last month. 
 
 But she's also getting some support from backers of both Fillon and Mélenchon, bridging the gap between a business-friendly conservative and a Communist-backed populist. 
 
 Debate boosts Macron 
 
 Macron's lead over Le Pen has diminished somewhat since the first vote that propelled them both into the second round, when he was ahead in hypothetical match-ups by a margin of 28 points. 
 
 But the polls have started heading back in his direction. 
 
 Macron and Marine Le Pen faced off in a combative debate on Wednesday. (Eric Feferberg/Reuters) 
 
 Before the two candidates participated in a combative debate on Wednesday, the polls were showing Macron's support had dipped to between 59 and 60 per cent compared to Friday's 62 per cent. While still a comfortable and secure margin by the standards of French presidential elections, a poor performance in the debate could have accelerated the negative trend and put Sunday's result into greater doubt. 
 
 Instead, his debate performance caused his poll numbers to inch upward just as a polling blackout descends over the country the day before the vote. 
 
 Polls accurate in 1st round 
 
 If supporters of Le Pen in France are hoping to confound the polls, they're banking on long odds. 
 
 The polls were remarkably accurate in the first round of the vote, predicting each of the four top candidates to within less than a point. In fact, of those four, Le Pen was the candidate most over-estimated by the polls, suggesting there were no "shy Le Pen" voters reluctant to tell pollsters they were intending to vote for the polarizing FN leader. 
 
 Historically, the polls in French elections have been accurate in the second round as well. Support for the candidates in the last two elections in 2007 and 2012 were called to within an average of 1.1 percentage points. There have been some bigger miscalculations in the past, but none large enough to overturn a 24-point deficit. 
 
 The surprise election of Donald Trump in the United States and Great Britain's decision to exit the European Union have been cited as populist upsets that Le Pen could repeat in France. But the bigger error in those elections concerned expectations rather than polls — in both cases the polls missed by only a handful of points and were well within historical margins of error. 
 
 Anybody but Le Pen 
 
 Macron's wide lead in the polls, however, shouldn't be mistaken for excitement about his candidacy. The head of En Marche!, a new party Macron formed after leaving the Socialist government of outgoing President François Hollande, took just 24 per cent of the vote in the first round. 
 
 Polls suggest that backers of Macron are more motivated by blocking his opponent than Le Pen's supporters are in blocking Macron. Le Pen's voters say they are voting primarily because of their candidate, rather than against the other name on the ballot. 
 
 Disillusionment with the candidates has been a theme of the campaign. Fillon and Hamon, the candidates of the two parties that have traditionally governed France, combined for just 26 per cent of the first round vote — 10 points less than their previous historic low in 2002. 
 
 It appears the French are poised to head into uncharted waters with the largely untested Macron, who has emerged the more acceptable option in a head-to-head contest with Le Pen.
– Far-right candidate Marine Le Pen and independent Emmanuel Macron have been drawing the lion's share of attention as the French presidential election nears (the first round is April 23), but a leftist candidate who has used a hologram of himself to stump at campaign rallies is now gaining some traction. In what the Washington Post calls a "truly unprecedented campaign," Jean-Luc Melenchon has seemingly emerged out of thin air as the Unbowed France candidate, with added support from the French Communist Party—and he "gives shivers to banks, businesspeople, and the bourgeoisie," per the New York Times. Melenchon, once considered a fringe candidate no one really paid mind to, is running on an anti-capitalism platform, with a mission to dismantle the monarchy-styled governmental system implemented by Charles de Gaulle in the late '50s. Melenchon is now ahead of mainstream conservative Francois Fillon in the polls and only a couple of points behind Macron and Le Pen. He's been speaking to the younger set with videos on YouTube and a video game in which players go after bankers and the head of the IMF. What makes this year's election in France notable is that the slightly left-leaning Socialists and slightly right-leaning Republicans aren't the ones duking it out for the country's top seat. And the showdown between Le Pen and Melenchon, whom the Times says is sometimes depicted as a "French Bernie Sanders," even sounds strikingly like the one witnessed between Sanders and Donald Trump, with both candidates vying for voters who want to decimate the status quo, though with different tactics: Le Pen is tapping into nationalism, while Melenchon is pushing help for the poor. (Facebook is going after false accounts before the election.)