There was friction in the air yesterday in France, and a full menu of candidates on the ballot paper, just days after last week’s fatal attack on a policeman at the Champs-Élysées.

Strolling around a poster-plastered Paris, you wouldn’t struggle to come across Emmanuel Macron’s confident grin defaced with the words: “sold to the banks,” or Marine Le Pen clad with a felt-tip Adolf Hitler-styled moustache.

Yet one of these faces will be the next Président de la République, after Macron secured 23.9% of the vote in the first round, ahead of Le Pen who finished on 21.4%.

The French people’s rebuke of their two main parties was confirmed yesterday, with the Républicains and the Parti Socialiste finishing in third and fifth place respectively.

The biggest backlash came for Benoît Hamon of the socialists who scraped a pathetic 6.3% of the vote, as the electorate punished him for his boss, President Francois Hollande’s mismanagement of France.

Indeed, it was the maverick outsider Jean-Luc Mélenchon who stole most left-wing votes confirming the general mood of disillusionment with the traditional political landscape.

Emmanuel Macron was astute, he saw this coming. In many ways he is a creature of the system (he attended the elite École nationale d’administration, served as Economy Minister under President Hollande and even worked for Rothschild’s bank), but he knew he couldn’t win from within, so he skilfully repackaged himself as the leader of a new movement for change, En Marche.

Amidst their disarray, the republicans and socialists have nonetheless thrown their support behind Macron. Hamon admitted that he does not see Macron as a man of the left, but stressed that voting for him was essential to block the rise of the far right.

Macron has received notable endorsements from outside France too: a phone-call from Obama, a tweet from George Osborne and from Merkel’s spokesperson, amongst others.

Still, let’s be cautious. Hillary Clinton also enjoyed international praise as a candidate, and it pitted many people further against her.

The fight is not over yet. Pollsters may have called it right yesterday, but let’s not forget the huge miscalculations made ahead of the EU referendum and US election.

Le Pen will likely bank on a similar ‘us versus the establishment’ rhetoric employed by Donald Trump in the latter campaign.

She will attempt to cast Macron as a French Hillary Clinton, with hyperbolic claims that he wants no borders and “uncontrolled globalisation.”

Another trait of the US election could be repeated in France if enough voters on the left either refuse to vote at all in the second round, or worse, vote for Le Pen as some sort of misguided attack on the system.

The fact that the far-left Mélenchon, who came in with an impressive 19.6% share of the vote, has so far refused to back either one of the candidates, shows that this concern cannot be excluded.

The contrast in the reactions of Le Pen and Macron to last Thursday’s Paris attack speaks volumes about their politics. Macron insisted that this attack could not become part of the campaign, whereas Le Pen was swift to cash in on the act of terror, vowing to increase deportations. This is particularly odd given the fact that the perpetrator was French-born.

Le Pen’s move to step down as Front National leader because she intends to be “the president of all the French” should fool no-one. Marine Le Pen is inseparable from the Front National, she is the Front National, and her candidacy just like the party itself feeds on fear and division.

EU jubilation at the prospect of an ultimate Macron victory is palpable; an over-excited Jean-Claude Juncker broke with protocol and offered his congratulations to Macron.

Even the markets rejoiced, with the Euro reaching a five-month high and European shares rising.

Let’s hope their joy isn’t premature.