Big turnout as French right votes for candidate to oppose Marine Le Pen

More than 2.5m ballots cast so far in first round of contest to decide who will take on Front National leader for presidency

The centre-right candidate Alain Juppé is still favourite, but the race has recently become much tighter. Photograph: Denis Charlet/AFP/Getty Images

Angelique Chrisafis in Paris-Sunday 20 November 2016 

More than 2.5 million people voted in France on Sunday in the first round of the primary race to choose the rightwing candidate likely to face the far-right Marine Le Pen in next spring’s presidential election.

Donald Trump’s US win has thrown the spotlight on France as the next possible shake-up of the political system. Polls have consistently shown that Le Pen, the Front National leader, will make it to the final round run-off next May, but that it would be difficult for her to win.

The three leading contenders to represent the right are all establishment figures - two former prime ministers, Alain Juppé and François Fillon, and the former president Nicolas Sarkozy. They have been fighting for weeks over who could better unite French voters against the far-right in a country still struggling with mass unemployment and a major terrorism threat.

By 5pm, 2.5m votes had been cast, which party officials said showed overall turnout would be high. Any voter who signed a charter saying they agreed with the “Republican values of the centre and the right” and paid €2 (£1.70) could cast a ballot.

After a bitter row over cheating threw a separate 2012 rightwing party leadership contest into disarray, Sunday’s vote and count were held under heavy scrutiny. Several layers of checks mean the result, which is impossible to predict, will be announced very late after polls close on Sunday night.

Juppé, 71, the mayor of Bordeaux, who served as prime minister under Jacques Chirac in 1995, has led a centrist campaign promising economic reform and rejecting what he calls the “suicidal” identity politics of Sarkozy, which he says would deepen rifts in French society.

Juppé is currently France’s most popular politician and he has been favourite to win for months. A last-minute surge in the polls by Fillon, however, means the selection of two candidates to go through to the final round remains wide open.

Fillon, who served as prime minister under Sarkozy, is an admirer of Margaret Thatcher. He is socially conservative, voted against same-sex marriage and has promised the most radical free-market reform, vowing to cut 500,000 public sector jobs in five years.

Juppé used his last rally in Lille to warn against Fillon. “France needs far-reaching and radical reforms, but be careful of going too far. We must remain credible,” he said.

Fillon attracted huge crowds at his final rally in Paris, where he promised radical free-market reform. “I’m tagged with an [economically] liberal label as one would once, in the Middle Ages, paint crosses on the doors of lepers,” he said. “But I’m just a pragmatist.”

At his final rally in Nîmes, Sarkozy continued his hardline campaigning that has veered towards the far-right, warning of a France whose “identity and unity are threatened”. Having proposed to ban the Muslim headscarf from universities, he said: “Political Islam is doing battle against our values. There’s no room for compromise.”

Sarkozy jumped the long queue of voters at his polling station in the west of Paris to cast his vote, sparking criticism after the other candidates had waited patiently in line in their constituencies.

Whoever wins the final round on 27 November will instantly become the favourite to take the presidency next spring.