VOTERS in France are growing used to seeing would-be presidents spar aggressively on television. In recent months the Republican and Socialist parties each held a series of broadcast debates on prime-time television, in their respective primary campaigns. The result: the established front-runner of each party was knocked aside by insurgent candidates who better caught the mood of their audiences.

The presidential campaign has now begun in earnest, ahead of the first round on April 23rd, and the televised debates are about to show their influence again. Opinion polls indicate Marine Le Pen, of the far-right National Front, tied for first place with Emmanuel Macron, a centrist newcomer to electoral politics, with established parties trailing. Each of the two front-runners has some 26% support, enough to reach the run-off in early May. In that second round, if the polls hold, Mr Macron is expected to triumph. But whereas most of Ms Le Pen’s backers report an unshakable faith in her, Mr Macron’s support is less robust. Many who prefer the 39-year-old former economy minister are not entirely sure of their choice. Were he to stumble in a debate, or set out a programme too explicitly of the right or the left, he might scare off some of his current supporters.

So when the five main candidates met for a marathon debate—over three hours long—on national television on March 20th, the stakes were highest for Mr Macron. He has limited experience in such confrontations, not having taken part in a party primary. He has never been elected to any post. He is often vague about his policy programme (avowedly neither left nor right). And each of the other candidates had every incentive to confront him as a front-runner.

Given all this, Mr Macron defended himself well enough, despite occasional spells of waffling (for example when pressed on how he would handle relations with Donald Trump, and again in summing up). He rightly put the most emphasis on the need to get France’s economy moving faster. After a nervous start, he became increasingly confident as the night progressed. With his telegenic looks and frequent smile, he charmed an otherwise stiff studio audience into laughing along with him at the other candidates’ relentless attacks.

Ms Le Pen, however, will also be happy. She proved consistent and forceful enough to reassure her fans. As a public speaker, at least on topics where she feels comfortable, the one woman surrounded by four men easily held her populist own. She praised Britain’s “great” decision to quit the European Union, and her calls to protect the national economy against “wild globalisation” echoed Mr Trump. She promised secure national borders and an almost total halt to immigration. When pressed on the topic of immigration, Mr Macron said the solution lay in more EU co-ordination. To this Ms Le Pen offered scornful laughter. Yet even she said she would “respect” voters and let them decide, in a referendum, what France’s relationship to the EU should be—muting her Euroscepticism to reassure cautious voters that a Le Pen presidency would not mean France marching out of the union on day one.

The stakes for the other three candidates were lower. François Fillon, the Republican who once led the race, has been dogged for two months by a corruption scandal over payments of official salaries to members of his family. His poll numbers have drifted below a previously solid 20%, suggesting that—short of a big blunder by Mr Macron—he can do little to restore his fortunes. Mr Fillon’s performance in the debate was subdued. On economic matters he spoke sensibly, underlining the urgent need to create conditions for boosting private investment. On foreign affairs, by contrast, he was an embarrassing apologist for Russia’s Vladimir Putin, whose invasion of Crimea he bizarrely likened to the Western intervention in Kosovo.

Farther behind were the two candidates of the left. The Socialist one, Benoît Hamon, a former minister under President François Hollande, has a clean-cut image and an aggressive debating style that plays well to the cameras. He raised a few trenchant issues that other candidates ignored, such as France’s need to build more renewable power and to stop its prisons from making criminals even more dangerous when they are released back into society. He also trotted out his populist plan for a state-provided basic income to cope with “digital disruption” of the economy, a platform that helped him win the Socialist primary debates. His performance might have been more impressive or even made him a viable candidate to reach the second round were it not for the fifth candidate, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a gruff and amiable old-fashioned socialist who sucks away voters on Mr Hamon’s left.

The debate should leave supporters of Mr Macron reassured. Their candidate did not blunder in his first big televised test; instead he grew in confidence—enough to deny Mr Fillon the chance to re-establish his credibility. The debate may have been most interesting as a preview of the increasingly likely second-round match-up between the pro-EU, pro-trade and socially liberal Mr Macron, and the isolationist, inward-looking, anti-immigrant Ms Le Pen.