Voting underway in French presidential runoff

Voting is underway in the final round of Frances presidential race on Sunday after a massive online hack of frontrunner Emmanuel Macrons campaign data delivered a final dramatic twist to the countrys most divisive election, media reports said.

Mainland France's 47 million voters began casting their ballots at about 70,000 polling stations across the nation at 8 a.m., the media reported.

Estimates of the result, based on a representative count of actual votes cast, will be released as the last stations close at 8 p.m. Paris time.

Voting got underway in France's overseas territories and French embassies abroad on Saturday.

According to analysts, up to a quarter of the electorate is expected to abstain, with some supporters of the centre-right candidate Francois Fillon and the hard-left veteran Jean-Luc Melenchon, both defeated in the first round on April 23, saying they would not be voting for either Macron, a 39-year-old former banker and economy minister running as an independent centrist, or his far-right rival Marine Le Pen, 48.

Macron and Le Pen topped an 11-strong field, taking 24 per cent and 21 per cent of the vote respectively, media reports said.

While Macron has campaigned on a pro-Europe, pro-integration platform, Le Pen has suggested she would aim to take France out of the European Union, withdraw it from the NATO and forge closer ties with Russia.

Hours before the official close of campaigning on Friday, Macron's campaign announced he had been the target of a "massive and coordinated" hacking operation, reports CNN.

Around 14.5 gigabytes of emails, personal and business documents were posted to the text-sharing site Pastebin.

Macron's party said the hackers had mixed fake documents with authentic ones "to create confusion and misinformation".

The French election watchdog has warned that it would be a criminal offence to publish the tens of thousands of hacked emails and other documents until polls close on Sunday evening.

Both candidates also traded insults in a bad-tempered head-to-head debate on French television on Wednesday.

He called her a liar who sowed division and hatred, while she accused him of being soft on terrorism and said he would preside over a nation enfeebled by its powerful neighbour Germany, CNN reported.

Final polls published on Friday suggested Macron widened his lead over the Front National leader to between 22 and 23 percentage points.

Macron, if successful, would become the youngest President in the history of France and the nation's youngest leader since Napoleon.

If Le Pen wins, she would be the first female head of state in France.

The official results of Sunday's polls will be officially proclaimed by France's constitutional council on May 11, reports the BBC.

May 14 marks the end of outgoing President Francois Hollande's term and is the latest possible date for the inauguration and official transfer of power to his successor.