(Fwrd Axis) — French President Emmanuel Macron won re-election in convincing fashion on Sunday, defeating far-right leader Marine Le Pen in a landslide to win another term in office, according to projected results from French polling agencies.
Macron is expected to win 57 and 58.5 percent of the vote in Sunday’s run-off compared to the 43 percent for Le Pen.
The win for Emmanuel Macron is a smaller margin than when he won in 2017 by more than 30 percentage points to become France’s youngest president. Despite her loss, Le Pen seems to have secured the most votes ever for a French far-right candidate.
“The ideas we represent are reaching summits,” she said as she conceded victory.
In a victory speech at the Eiffel Tower in Paris, Macron thanked those who voted for him regardless of their reasoning.
“I’m not the candidate of one camp anymore, but the president of all of us,” he said.
With the win, Macron became the first president since Jacques Chirac to secure a second term in office. Now, he will face the uphill changes of the Covid-19 pandemic and the ongoing war in Ukraine. He also faces a tough election in June to keep his parliamentary majority.
European leaders from Brussels to London feared a win by Le Pen. However, the results of the election show France has changed politically. Le Pen is sympathetic to Russian President Vladimir Putin and skeptical of both NATO and the European Union, something many French people embraced.
France is a member of NATO, the EU, and the G7. It has a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council and is a nuclear power — all of which Le Pen disagreed with.
Polls showed a majority of the people were not happy with Macron or Le Pen, leading to turnout being five points lower than the last election. In the end, Macron won a clear victory, despite poor polling numbers at just 36 percent approval.
