The fortnight between the first round of the presidential elections to Sunday's runoff sparked an intensewriting frenzy among the French. The on-line site of LIBERATION featured dozens of daily comments, reactions,analyses and debates. How Jean-Marie Le Pen had ended up in the second-round of the elections, for the firsttime and beyond all expectations, fostered explanations that proliferated from two main sources. One centeredon a pure luck factor, the other on the rising tide of the European far-right.