It's the presidential election," he said, flanked by senior party members, after a morning of speculation he was about to quit the race. New opinion polls continued to show Fillon would fail to make the second round of the April/May election, albeit by a narrow margin. They showed centrist Emmanuel Macron consolidating his status as favourite to win a second-round head-to-head against Le Pen, who favours taking France out of the euro. He later went ahead with the visit, a staple of French election campaigning. The poll showed Macron going on to beat Le Pen in the second round with 63 percent of votes.

Source: dna March 01, 2017 18:45 UTC