PARIS – Emmanuel Macron won a second term as president of France and triumphed over Marine Le Pen, his far-right challenger, on Sunday after a campaign in which his pledge of stability triumphed over the temptation of an extremist sting.
Forecasts at the end of the vote, which are generally reliable, showed that Mr Macron, a centrist, won 58.5 percent of the vote, against 41.5 percent from Ms Le Pen. His win was much smaller than in 2017, when the margin was 66.1 percent to 33.9 percent for Ms Le Pen, but bigger than it seemed likely two weeks ago.
Speaking to a crowd gathered on the Champ de Mars in front of a twinkling Eiffel Tower, a solemn Mr Macron said his victory was a victory for “a more independent France and a stronger Europe”. He added: “Our country is riddled with so much doubt, so much division. We will have to be strong, but no one will be left by the side of the road.”
Ms. Le Pen admitted defeat in her third bid for president, but bitterly criticized Mr Macron’s “cruel and violent methods,” without explaining what she meant. She vowed to fight to bring in a large number of representatives in the parliamentary elections in June, declaring that “French tonight have shown their desire for a strong counter-force to Emmanuel Macron.”
At a critical moment in Europe, with the fighting in Ukraine after the Russian invasion, France rejected a candidate who was hostile to NATO, the European Union, the United States, and to its fundamental values that French citizens should not be discriminated against for being being muslim.
Jean-Yves Le Drian, the foreign minister, said the result reflected “the mobilization of the French to preserve their values and against a narrow view of France.”
The French generally don’t like their presidents, and none have managed to get reelected since 2002, let alone by a 17-point margin. Mr Macron’s unusual feat to remain in power for another five years reflects his effective stewardship of the Covid-19 crisis, his resurgence in the economy and his political agility in occupying the entire center of the political spectrum.
Softening her image, if not her nationalist anti-immigrant program, Ms. Le Pen was part of a wave of alienation and disenchantment to bring the far right closer to power than at any time since 1944. Her National Rally party has joined the mainstream, even if at the last minute many French have clearly voted for Macron to ensure that France does not succumb to the xenophobic vitriol of the dark passages of its history.
Ms. Le Pen has long sympathized with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, whom she visited in the Kremlin during her last campaign in 2017. She would almost certainly have pursued policies that weakened the united Allied front to save Ukraine from Russian attack; offered Mr Putin an infringement to exploit in Europe; and undermined the European Union, whose engine has always been a joint Franco-German commitment.
If Brexit had been a blow to unity, a French nationalist quasi-exit, as set out in Ms Le Pen’s proposals, would have kept the European Union alive. That, in turn, would have paralyzed an essential guarantee of peace on the continent in a fleeting moment.
Germany’s chancellor Olaf Scholz said Macron’s victory was “a vote of confidence in Europe”. Boris Johnson, the British Prime Minister, congratulated the French leader, calling France “one of our closest and most important allies”.
Mr Scholz and two other European leaders took the unusual step last week to make clear the importance of a vote against Ms Le Pen in an opinion article in the daily Le Monde. The letter reflected concerns in European capitals and Washington that preceded the vote.
“It is the choice between a democratic candidate, who believes that France is stronger in a powerful and autonomous European Union, and a far-right candidate, who openly sided with those who attack our freedom and our democracy,” they wrote.
Macron’s second win felt different from his first. Five years ago, he was a 39-year-old child prodigy who burst onto the French political scene with the promise of burying sterile left-right divisions and building a more just, equal, open and dynamic society. He organized a grand celebration in the great courtyard of the Louvre to mark the beginning of a new political era in France.
On Sunday night, given the war in Europe, he asked for sobriety from his supporters. While Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’, the European Hymn, played (but much softer than in 2017), he walked onto the Champ de Mars with his wife Brigitte’s hand. Children surrounded the couple; the choreography conveyed simplicity and humility.
Mr Macron has often been criticized during his first term in office for a detachment bordering on arrogance.
“We have avoided some form of violence. I’m relieved,” said Eric Maus, 64, a Macron supporter. “But I feel like I’m giving my daughter an insecure world where the far right ranks so highly.”
Mr Macron succeeded in boosting growth, reducing unemployment and creating a technology start-up culture, but was unable to address the growing inequality or the simmering anger among the alienated and struggling people in neglected city and urban areas. remote countryside. Social divisions deepened as incomes stagnated, prices rose and factories moved abroad.
As a result, Macron’s political capital is more limited, even if his clear victory saved France from a dangerous tendency towards xenophobic nationalism and gave him momentum ahead of the June parliamentary elections.
Yet many of the 7.7 million voters who had supported left-wing candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the first round of the presidential election on April 10 only reluctantly voted for Mr Macron to remove Ms Le Pen from power. Assina Channa, a Muslim of Algerian descent who votes in the suburb of Saint-Denis north of Paris, said: “Nothing is going to change, but I had no choice.”
Ms. Le Pen had proposed a ban on the Muslim headscarf and has regularly equated Islam with violence in the country with the largest Muslim community in Western Europe. “At least he doesn’t threaten us like she does,” said Mrs. Channa.
Mr Macron acknowledged that “many of our compatriots voted for me today, not to support my ideas, but to build a barrier against the far right.” He thanked them and said: “I am now entrusted with their devotion to duty, their attachment to the Republic and their respect for the differences expressed in recent weeks.”
Some 28 percent of voters abstained, three percentage points more than in 2017, and it turned out that more than 13 million people had voted for Ms Le Pen and the far right. “The anger and disagreements that led my compatriots to vote for this project must also find an answer,” Macron said.
It was not a speech of rousing rhetoric, but of sober realism, at times almost remorseful, a reflection of his acknowledgment of a deeply divided France and perhaps also of his lack of consideration for those for whom life has been most difficult.
The dreams of radical change of 2017 have been pushed aside by fears of political clashes over the summer, partly because Mr Macron’s distaste is high among his opponents, and partly because parliamentary elections in June could result in a National Assembly less accommodating to His will.
By constantly adjusting his positions, expanding the circle of his allies and refining his ideas, Macron has proved himself a consummate politician, suffocating any potential moderate challenger. He brought about the near total demise of the center-left Socialist Party and the center-right Republicans, the two political forces at the heart of post-war French politics. It was a remarkable achievement.
But for all this a price had to be paid. The old fabric of French politics has collapsed and it is less clear how to mediate society’s violent conflicts.
Those conflicts have become more acute as anger has grown in parts of France that felt neglected or even forgotten by the elites in the big cities. By addressing these concerns and promising a series of tax cuts to help people cope with rising gas and electricity prices, Ms Le Pen built an effective campaign.
Her message, to some voters, was that she would care for and protect them, when their president seemed to have other concerns. But her nationalist message also resonated with people angry about undocumented immigrants entering the country and seeking scapegoats for the country’s problems.
The president’s problems reflect both his personality and his political choices. His highly personalized top-down style of government owed more to Bonaparte than to the democratic opening he said he was bringing to the French presidential system. His attempts to force Europe into a vision of ‘strategic autonomy’, supported by its own integrated military, met resistance in countries like Poland, which are most attached to America as a European power.
Emerging from the moderate left of the political system, and backed by many socialists five years ago, Macron turned to the right, both in his initial economic policy and in a much-criticized decision to face what he called “Islamic separatism.” said shutting down several mosques and Islamic associations – often on weak legal grounds.
He judged he had more to gain on the right than to fear on the fragmented left of the political spectrum in a country whose psyche has been deeply scarred by several Islamist terrorist attacks since 2015. In a way, his victory proved him right, the master of a wide web of adaptable loyalties that left his adversaries floundering.
Aida Alami† Daphne Angles† Aurelien Breeden† Adele Cordonnier and Constant Meheut reporting contributed.