President Emmanuel Macron is reaching out to left-wing voters. His team was quick to remind French voters of his rival's links with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The offensive has begun to take down Ms Marine Le Pen, barely 24 hours after the results of the first round of the presidential election were out.

"I want to reach out to anyone who wants to work for France. I am ready to invent something new to bring together convictions and sensitivities," Mr Macron promised yesterday. In theory, he has a better chance of winning another term in office when the second and decisive round of French elections takes place in two weeks. But as his frantic appeal to the electorate shows, Mr Macron knows he has a serious fight on his hands.

For Ms Le Pen, the leader of the National Rally, a far-right, anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim party, could surprise us all and win the presidency after all, just as Mr Donald Trump defied predictions in 2016. And a Le Pen triumph would inflict a potentially fatal blow to both the European Union and Nato, the US-led military alliance in Europe, precisely when both institutions are straining to keep Europe protected in the face of the war in Ukraine.

Yet even if Mr Macron does secure the presidency for a further five-year term, the fact remains that France's political map is in a meltdown. Populists and extremist politicians of both the far right and far left variety have moved from the fringes and now firmly occupy the main stage in French politics.

Under the French electoral system, anyone securing a sufficient number of nominations from mayors and other local officials can stand for the presidency in the first round of elections. If a candidate obtains an overall majority of over half of all the votes cast, he or she gets elected. But as that has never happened since the current Constitution was adopted more than six decades ago, a second ballot is held two weeks later, at which only the two best-placed candidates from the first round are allowed to compete.

Calculations gone wrong

President Macron's re-election strategy was always based on ensuring that Ms Le Pen would be his opponent in the second, decisive round of the vote. As conventional wisdom put it, with Ms Le Pen as the only choice on the ballot paper, Mr Macron could not lose. Regardless of whether people loved or hated the President, he would always be a better bet and attract more votes than a far-right rabble-rouser politician who heads a party rooted in the darker period of French history.

Mr Macron got his wish, and he will face Ms Le Pen on April 24 for the final battle. The President did better than expected by polling just over 27 per cent of the votes cast on Sunday. But Ms Le Pen also achieved the highest score of her political career: just under 24 per cent.

To put it into perspective, her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, who established the party, got less than 1 per cent of the votes when he stood for the French presidency back in the 1970s, and by the 1980s, he was polling around 10 per cent. His daughter did better, but never before did she enjoy the current level of popularity.

Going into the final round, opinion polls indicate that Ms Le Pen remains behind President Macron as both fight to attract supporters of candidates eliminated from the running.

But all opinion polls also suggest that the result will be very close. And the reasons for this are a confluence of developments; some are the result of self-inflicted mistakes by Mr Macron, while others are beyond anyone's control.

Before the electoral campaign started, Mr Macron made a decision that may come back to haunt him: to campaign as little as possible and as late as possible.

At that time, this made perfect sense. Mr Macron is known to the public and has no difficulty commanding the media's undivided attention. So, unlike other candidates who crave publicity and recognition, the President stood to gain nothing from exposing himself to too much scrutiny.

There was also the question of time and resources: Like all sitting French presidents, Mr Macron decided that both were better devoted to the second round of the voting since he was always guaranteed to finish top in the first round. As a result, he formally announced his candidature only three weeks ago and attended only a single major public rally.

Most of his campaign relied on paid media adverts, which sought to demolish Mr Macron's opponents rather than explain what the President wanted to do; the "great man" remained elusive.

That was a mistake, partly because - as it became clear - his hold on power is much more contested than anticipated. His aloofness from the hustings not only drew attention but also accentuated a perception of his arrogance and elitism. Thus, instead of shielding himself from brickbats, Mr Macron, a former banker turned politician, ended up annoying large segments of the electorate who felt neglected.

And then, there was the President's misjudgment on how the war in Ukraine would impact French domestic audiences. When the Russians invaded Ukraine in late February, his ratings soared; most French voters appreciated the central role he played in the diplomatic efforts to avert the war.

Mr Macron tried hard to maximise this advantage. He frequently complained about the burden of both "managing a war" and running an electoral campaign. He delivered speeches to the nation about the war in a grave, "my dear compatriots" tone. And he even tried to mimic Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's man-of-action attire by walking around the gilded halls of the Elysee Palace in Paris unshaven and dressed in a hoodie top that bore the printed name of an elite French military unit.

The gimmick attracted ridicule, and Mr Macron's "war bonus" soon evaporated. This was partly because the French President had very little to show for his diplomacy, apart from frequent phone calls with Mr Putin that annoyed France's partners, and particularly the Ukrainians.

But the Ukraine war effect also faded because the war lasted too long; now, into the seventh week of fighting, the French public got accustomed to the crisis and turned its attention again to the domestic issues the President neglected to address.

Ms Le Pen was guilty of no such mistakes. Right from the start of the campaign, she has concentrated on the shrinking purchasing power of French voters, confronted as they are with soaring food and energy prices. Her instinct was right, and Mr Macron has since played catch-up on domestic issues.

And then, there were developments beyond the French President's control that also worked against him.

For decades, the standard-bearer of the far-right in French elections was the National Front, as it used to be called before Ms Le Pen rebranded her party with a new name, the National Rally, aimed at broadening its appeal. She monopolised all the discussion against immigrants and the rants against Muslims in France.

Revival of the extremes

Yet, in this electoral cycle, she faced serious competition from Mr Eric Zemmour, a fiery orator, writer and pundit who competed with her in espousing anti-immigrant sentiments. Political pundits assumed that Mr Zemmour, whose popularity initially soared, would split Ms Le Pen's vote, thereby sinking the electoral chances of both of them.

Instead, Mr Zemmour was marginalised but his extremist electoral campaign helped Ms Le Pen come across as a moderate. And she helped this along with a clever strategy of softening her rough edges.

She no longer vows to pull France out of the euro single currency zone, which cost her dearly in the 2017 electoral campaign. She no longer mentions her friendship with Mr Putin or that her party is still paying off a loan it took from a Russian state-owned bank. And for good measure, she also posts online pictures of herself playing with cats. The tactic worked: Ms Le Pen is now stronger than ever.

But what has just happened in France is something more profound: the death of the country's traditional political parties. Mrs Valerie Pecresse, the standard-bearer of the centre-right Republicans, who are the political heirs to General Charles de Gaulle, the saviour of France in World War II and the founder of the current republic, got less than 5 per cent of the vote on Sunday.

Meanwhile, Mrs Anne Hidalgo, the representative of the centre-left French Socialists, one of Europe's most distinguished and oldest political parties, who were still in control of France a mere five years ago, got less than 2 per cent of the votes on Sunday.

In short, the two parties that have been central to the affairs of almost everyone alive in France today, who used to alternate in power for more than half a century, now command between them the loyalty of less than 10 per cent of voters.

President Macron is responsible for starting this process of disintegration during his presidential bid in 2017 when he rejected conventional politics and existing parties and created his movement, drawn from civil society bodies and non-politicians.

Initially, he was hailed around the world for this achievement. For while many Western nations seemed gripped at the time by a wave of right-wing populists - people such as Mr Trump in the US or Mr Boris Johnson in Britain - Mr Macron espoused an alternative concept that derived political legitimacy just from the claim that he had a superior ability to manage the country. No ideology, no preconceived ideas, no establishment elites: supposedly, simply good governance, by picking the best people for the appropriate jobs.

Of course, matters turned out quite differently. France is well-governed, but its economic problems have not gone away, and many voters resent Mr Macron's aloofness as much as they resented the old elite.

More importantly, the President's attempts to establish his movement as a functioning political party occupying the centre of political gravity have largely failed. The result is that France has a president who is most certainly a centrist but a political scene dominated by extremes.

Ms Le Pen occupies the far right of the political spectrum while on the extreme left there is Mr Jean-Luc Melenchon, who leads a movement called France Unbowed that advocates policies such as the imposition of a 100 per cent tax on rich people, the abolition of the right to private property and the nationalisation of almost everything.

Like Ms Le Pen, Mr Melenchon loves to peddle conspiracy theories, usually involving alleged nefarious activities of Americans or Germans but never Russians. Like her, he revels in heated rhetoric at public meetings and lashes out at journalists who do not portray him in a flattering light. And, like Ms Le Pen, he is now doing very well: In the ballots on Sunday, he came third, with around 21 per cent of the vote.

The current assumption is that most of these far-left votes will go to President Macron in the second round. But quite a lot of Mr Melenchon's votes may support Ms Le Pen instead.

Either way, the reality is that almost half of the French electorate has just voted for parties against the European Union and Nato and who advocate a variety of extreme policies abhorrent in most Western countries. Thus, even if Mr Macron wins in two weeks, his job of remaking France remains as hazardous as ever.

Mr Macron chose to name his party "The Republic on the March". France is indeed marching, but not to the tune the President envisaged and not in the direction he imagined.