By Paris Simone Weiler
French President Emmanuel Macron was re-elected. According to early projections, he won 58 to 58.2 percent of the vote. His opponent, the right-wing populist Marine Le Pen, only gets 41.8% to 42%. She has already admitted defeat.
By late Sunday afternoon, the Belgian media had already reported polls according to which Emmanuel Macron was leading the presidential elections.
Macron’s victory must be understood primarily as Le Pen’s defeat. Because many French people were dissatisfied with their first term. After the first round of the elections, several parties called for the construction of a wall against the right and that President Le Pen, who despite her decidedly more moderate behavior still takes extreme right positions, be prevented from voting for Macron. This dynamic already existed in 2017, when Le Pen and Macron faced each other for the first time in the second round, and in 2002, when Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, lost to conservative Jacques Chirac in an accident.
Faced with the war in Ukraine, Macron, 44, has also benefited from the population’s desire for stability and moderate politics. He also has clear successes in the job market and a robust take-off for the French economy after the Corona crisis.