Story highlights France picks its new president Sunday. Emmanuel Macron, of the newly formed En Marche party, faces off with Marine Le Pen of the National Front

Polling in France has proved much more accurate than in the British referendum or the US presidential election

Immigration and terrorism have been put center stage by the far right and have, as result, been central

Macron represents all that Donald Trump is not

(CNN) France picks its new president Sunday. Emmanuel Macron, of the newly formed En Marche party, faces off with Marine Le Pen of the National Front. Macron, who led narrowly in the first vote on April 23, has been endorsed by former President Barack Obama. President Donald Trump has praised Le Pen's populism and views on immigration but has not endorsed her. I reached out to CNN Paris correspondent Melissa Bell for her perspective on today's vote and what it means for France -- and the United States. Our conversation, conducted via email and lightly edited for flow, is below.

Cillizza: Polling suggests this is Macron's to lose. Is there any sense he might? And if he does, why is that?

Bell: A word on polls, first of all. The polling in France has proved much more accurate than the polling in either the British referendum or the US presidential election. French pollsters had explained to me in the run-up to the first round of voting that they did not believe they were likely to get caught out in the same way. They explained that France has long had a far right and a far left vote and that they are far more used to weighting their results than Anglo-Saxon pollsters.

The "vote that dare not speak its name" is something that they are better equipped to hear because they are more used to factoring it in. And so it proved. In the first round of voting on April 23, the pollsters were very close to the final result. There is no reason to think that this won't also be true in the second.

The concern has been that some external factor might come and disrupt the process ahead of the run-off. France's two-round system gives the French the luxury of voting with their hearts in the first round and their minds in the second. Or, as the French sometimes put it, of voting in favor of someone in the first and then against someone in the second. Which means that there has been little doubt in the minds of many people that even though Le Pen got through the first round, she would be less likely to get past the second.

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