- French president Emmanuel Macron has been reelected with 58.5 percent of the votes.
- Marine Le Pen lost the election, but by a smaller margin than in 2017, when she got 34 percent support.
- Macron is the first French president in twenty years to win a second term.
- However, he is less certain of winning another National Assembly majority in June.
Results
Macron |
Le Pen |
| 58.6% | 41.5% |
The latest projection from Ipsos has Macron at 58.8 percent and Le Pen at 41.2.
This matches projections made by Harris Interactive, IFOP and Opinion Way.
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Macron’s speech was unremarkable: boilerplate about the need for unity and better years ahead, nothing concrete or substantive.
To his credit, he did stop his supporters when they booed at the mention of Le Pen.
Macron giving his victory speech in front of the Eiffel Tower is notable. Nicolas Sarkozy gave the last major speech of his 2012 presidential campaign in the same location. (He lost.)
The center-right has historically celebrated election victories in the Place de la Concorde. The Socialists had the Place de la Bastille for its connection to the 1789 Revolution. François Hollande broke with tradition to give his victory speech in Tulle, the town where he had been mayor for seven years.
With neither plaza available to Macron in 2017, he chose the esplanade west of the Louvre Museum.
Macron’s next challenge
Only a few surveys have been taken for the legislative elections in June, but they are not encouraging for the liberals.
Without a majority in the National Assembly, Macron might have to accept a prime minister of another party (the French call this “cohabitation”) and could not cut taxes, invest €50 billion in green energy or raise the retirement age from 62 to 65.
Click here to read my analysis of the most likely scenarios, which does not include a left-wing victory.
A combative Le Pen, who calls her defeat a great “victory” for the far right, says she will “never” abandon the French and have her revanche in the legislative elections in June.