Socialist presidential challenger François Hollande topped the first round of France’s presidential election on Sunday with 28.4 percent of votes, while incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy finished second with 25.5 percent, according to exit polls. Those figures set up a widely expected run-off between Sarkozy and the candidate of France’s main opposition party who led most voter intentions surveys before the first round.

Exit polls showed Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Front party, had conquered third place with 18.5% of the vote. Far-left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon took 11.7%, and centrist François Bayrou 8.8%, the Ipsos polling agency said. While the tallies of the two leading candidates were in line with dozens of opinion surveys published before Sunday’s ballot, Le Pen’s figures were well above any of those forecasts.

Marine Le Pen far exceeded her father’s shocking second-place 16.86% score in the 2002 presidential race. Even if it was not enough to get her to the second round, the extraordinary score confirmed her presence at the head of the anti-immigration National Front party and in France’s political landscape for years to come. A drop in voter intentions for Sarkozy in the final weeks of the campaign appears to have swung to the far-right camp.

Hollande, who was seen as benefitting from a wave of hostility towards Sarkozy, proved a surprisingly resilient candidate. The Socialist hopeful began campaigning months before the incumbent and while he temporarily slipped behind Sarkozy in opinion polls, he regained his frontrunner status in the final two weeks of the race.

Exit polls also showed Green candidate Eva Joly with 2%, the right-wing eurosceptic Nicolas Dupont-Aignan at 1.8%, far-left candidates Phillippe Poutou and Nathalie Arthaud at 1.2% and 0.7% respectively, and off-beat candidate Jacques Cheminade winning just 0.2%.

A run-off between Sarkozy and Hollande is scheduled on May 6, with opinion polls largely favouring the Socialist Party candidate.

READ MORE: FRANCE 24