Macron pulls ahead of Le Pen in first round vote, one poll says

French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron pulled ahead of his far-right rival Marine Le Pen for the first time in a poll of voters' intentions for the first round of the elections.

Support for Macron, the independent centrist contender for the Elysee palace, stood at 27.0%, up by two percentage points, against the 25.5% who backed Le Pen, who had been at 27.0% in the last survey from Odoxa.

The poll was conducted on 1 and 2 March among 951 people.

Nonetheless, the same poll also revealed that Alain Juppe, who had already been defeated in the Republican party's primaries by Francois Fillon, was in fact voters' preferred candidate, ahead of both Macron and Le Pen.

Some Republicans were said to be eyeing a return by Juppe ahead of the first ballot on 23 April.

To take note of, the separate daily-conducted Opinionway poll showed Le Pen's support in the first round of voting reaching a year-to-date high of 27.0%, up two percentage points on Thursday's results.

Opinionway put support for Macron at 24.0%, which was up by one point.

In second round of voting scheduled for 7 May, that latest Opinionway poll put support for Macron at 62.0% and that for Le Pen at 38.0%.

As of 1436 GMT the yield on the 10-year French government bond was up by two basis points at 0.95% and that on similarly-dated German Bunds up by four to 0.36%.