Front-runner says he’s chosen his PM candidate but will reveal the name only after victory

As campaigning for the French presidential polls draws to a close on Friday, Emmanuel Macron’s camp is leaving nothing to chance despite a and growing lead in opinion polls, owing to concerns over blank votes and abstentions.

On the last day of the campaign, an Elabe poll projected Mr. Macron getting 62% of the vote on Sunday compared to the National Front’s candidate Marine Le Pen’s 38%. Mr. Macron’s gain of a few percentage points is being attributed to his strong performance in a bitter and animated debate against his rival on Wednesday.

However, the team at En Marche!, as Mr. Macron’s movement is known, is not resting on its laurels just yet.

With just a few hours of campaigning left, at the group’s headquarters in Paris, many youth are making calls and sending emails to get 5,000 volunteers across France to spread Mr. Macron’s message.

Left voters

Earlier this week, some 65% of a sample of 240,000 far-left voters, who supported Jean-Luc Melenchon in the first round, said they would either cast a blank votes or abstain from the poll. This is of concern among Mr. Macron’s team.

“In fact, we are preciously [extremely] concerned, till the last minute, nothing is done. We can have a surprise at the last minute, so we will mobilise people until then,” Christian Dargnat, a key official in En Marche!, told The Hindu on Friday. The team has been answering 6,000-10,000 emails a day since the first round of voting on April 23, according to Mr. Dargnat.

Mr. Macron, who campaigned in Rodez, in southern France, on Friday, told RTL radio that he had chosen a Prime Ministerial candidate but would reveal the name only if elected.

His refusal to release the name is significant as last week, former presidential candidate and Gaullist (an adherent of a brand of widely accepted French nationalism inspired by Charles De Gaulle, founder of the Fifth Republic) Nicolas Dupont-Aignan was named Ms. Le Pen’s prime ministerial candidate.

Ms. Le Pen’s move was was widely criticised, including by Mr. Macron who called it a marriage of convenience, made to give Ms. Le Pen credibility and help Mr. Dupont-Aignan with his campaign debt. Ms. Le Pen spent part of Friday campaigning in the northeastern city of Reims, where she was booed by protesters outside the city’s cathedral. Both sides are required by law to stop campaigning by midnight on Friday.

Complaint against Le Pen

Meanwhile, Mr. Macron filed a legal complaint on Thursday after Ms. Le Pen repeated rumours during the TV debate that he had an offshore account.

Mr. Macron described his rival’s insinuation as “defamation” and after his complaint, prosecutors launched a probe on Thursday into who started the rumour.

(With AFP inputs)