In the coming two weeks of the French campaign, Marine Le Pen’s challenge is to break through a wall of voter antipathy that she inherited from her father. Emmanuel Macron’s task is to persuade the French he has the gravitas and experience to be president.

The far-right Le Pen and centrist Macron both took just under a quarter of the vote in a contest with 11 candidates. Now they must convince the rest of the population that they have what it takes to lead the country after the May 7 runoff.

The next round will see two radically different visions. Macron embraces globalization and European integration, Le Pen channels the forces of discontent that triggered Brexit and brought Donald Trump to power. The runoff will also be unique in that it will be the first contested by neither of the major parties, giving Macron, 39, and Le Pen, 48, space to try to forge alliances that might have seemed unlikely until recently.

“Marine Le Pen’s toughest job is to break the traditional glass ceiling which her father Jean-Marie also suffered from,” said Yves-Marie Cann, a pollster at Elabe. “Even if her image is better than his was, the truth remains that most voters say they don’t share her ideas and have a bad opinion of the Front.”

Macron has still to convince voters he has the aura of a head of state and can reach out to a nation in which 40 percent of the electorate opted for anti-European extremes on both left and right. A snap Ipsos survey late on Sunday suggested that Macron, who’s aiming to be the country’s youngest head of state, would win by 62 percent to 38 percent for Le Pen, who would be the country’s first female president.

“Macron is not yet the president the French want,” said Frederic Lazorthes, a communications consultant who was an adviser to Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin. “He needs to show that he can assume the great responsibility of a nation that is divided and convince the country that it can thrive in a globalized world.”

David Fuller's view

Yes, Macron is young at 39 and inexperienced but he is also very smart, having defeated the two established French parties – the Socialists and the Republicans.  He also established his own centrist party En March! which I believe means Forward! or On The Move!

I would not underestimate Macron. Markets have already assumed that he will win next month’s runoff comfortably and I agree.     

Whatever happens to Marcon’s Presidency down the road, today he is a male version of Jeanne d’Arc, having saved France and the Eurozone from the break-up possibilities of a Le Pen versus Mélenchon presidential contest. For a short while the Eurozone is no longer one of the biggest known risks and markets are celebrating, as you can see from the French CAC and Germany’s DAX.

This may be mostly short covering but it is still good news for stock markets which may not have to worry seriously about the Eurozone until the Italian election beckons later this year, with Beppe Grillo’s populist Five Star Movement dominating headlines.  Elsewhere, Donald Trump has surprised everyone by being almost presidential.  His public opinion ratings have bounced from near 35% at the end of March to 40% today.  Now he is talking about advance news later this week on his “biggest ever” US tax cuts. 

What’s not to like with the Nasdaq 100 and the Nasdaq Composite surging to new all-time highs. It looks like the seasonal corrective phase is over for a while.  The Fed may even skip a June rate hike.  Meanwhile, Trump has reigned in the US Dollar Index and US 10-Yr T-Bond yields are at only 2.2730 today.  

(See also: Don’t Laugh, But France Really Might Reform This Time, from Bloomberg Gadfly)