Rubbing his hands with glee

So far, so good. Author: The Kremlin, Moscow

Emmanuel Macron must be loving the way this election race is shaping up. With around six months to go until the first round of voting on Sunday 10 April, things are playing in his favour.

On the right hand side of the ballot paper, the field is very crowded. While Les Républicains have decided to use a congress on 4 December to choose their candidate, the current front-runner (although only just) Xavier Bertrand is saying he doesn't want to take part. He's invited the other candidates to withdraw their own candidacies so that a natural candidate, by which he means himself, can emerge. The other candidates don't look very likely to agree. Michel Barnier said as much on BFM TV, urging Bertrand to respect the party activists.

Then over on the far right, Marine Le Pen is watching her previously high first-round predicted vote crumble as journalist Eric Zemmour zooms up behind her. The latest poll from Ipsos puts him at 15%, just behind her on 16%. This is despite the fact he hasn't yet declared he will enter the race.

Meanwhile, over on the left of the ticket, the recently launched campaign of likely Parti Socialiste candidate Anne Hidalgo is already flailing. The Paris mayor is down on 5.5%. Not much of a honeymoon with the voters there. Let's not forget that the miserable score of 2017 PS candidate Benoit Hamon was 6.35%, which was the lowest score the party had ever achieved in a presidential race. Is Anne Hidalgo heading in the same direction? Is it too late for the party to change its mind or does the PS just need to sit this one out and hope for better things in the future?

All this leaves President Macron as the clear front-runner, with his first-round score of 24%. So far, so good, but things can change very quickly.

Here's how the vote looks according to the Ipsos poll. There's a link here to the full results which show how things play out with different candidates for Les Républicains.