Macron Holds Off Far-Right Push in France

Live Updates: Macron Holds Off Far-Right Push in France

 

Marine Le Pen concedes defeat to President Emmanuel Macron, the first French leader to be re-elected since 2002.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/04/24/world/french-election-runoff-results

 

Here’s what you need to know:

Emmanuel Macron is re-elected French president, defeating Marine Le Pen.

After Macron’s win, relief for his supporters.

‘I had no choice’: The weary voters backing Macron to keep Le Pen out.

Voter turnout, a key to the outcome, is lowest in two decades.

Le Pen’s message found a strong audience in the north.

 

Emmanuel Macron is re-elected French president, defeating Marine Le Pen.

 

PARIS — Emmanuel Macron won a second term as president of France, triumphing on Sunday over Marine Le Pen, his far-right challenger, after a campaign where his promise of stability prevailed over the temptation of an extremist lurch.

 

Projections at the close of voting, which are generally reliable, showed Mr. Macron, a centrist, gaining 58.5 percent of the vote to Ms. Le Pen’s 41.5 percent. His victory was much narrower than in 2017, when the margin was 66.1 percent to 33.9 percent for Ms. Le Pen, but wider than appeared likely two weeks ago.

 

Speaking to a crowd massed on the Champ de Mars in front of a twinkling Eiffel Tower, a solemn Mr. Macron said his was a victory for “a more independent France and a stronger Europe.” At the same time he acknowledged “the anger that has been expressed” during a bitter campaign and that he had duty to “respond effectively.”

 

Ms. Le Pen conceded defeat in her third attempt to become president, but bitterly criticized the “brutal and violent methods” of Mr. Macron. She vowed to fight on to secure a large number of representatives in legislative elections in June, declaring that “French people have this evening shown their desire for a strong counter power to Emmanuel Macron.”

 

At a critical moment in Europe, with fighting raging in Ukraine after the Russian invasion, France rejected a candidate hostile to NATO, to the European Union, to the United States, and to its fundamental values that hold that no French citizens should be discriminated against because they are Muslim.

 

Jean-Yves Le Drian, the defense minister, said the result reflected “the mobilization of French people for the maintenance of their values and against a narrow vision of France.”

 

The French do not generally love their presidents, and none had succeeded in being re-elected since 2002. Mr. Macron’s unusual achievement in securing five more years in power reflects his effective stewardship over the Covid-19 crisis, his rekindling of the economy, and his political agility in occupying the entire center of the political spectrum.

 

Ms. Le Pen, softening her image if not her anti-immigrant nationalist program, rode a wave of alienation and disenchantment to bring the extreme 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 people seem to have voted for Mr. Macron to ensure that France not succumb to the xenophobic vitriol of the darker passages of its history.

 

Ms. Le Pen is a longtime sympathizer with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, whom she visited at 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 Russia’s assault, offered Mr. Putin a breach to exploit in Europe, and undermined the European Union, whose engine has always been a joint Franco-German commitment to it.

 

If Brexit was a blow to unity, a French nationalist quasi-exit, as set out in Ms. Le Pen’s proposals, would have left the European Union on life support. That, in turn, would have crippled an essential guarantor of peace on the continent in a volatile moment.

 

Olaf Scholz, the German Chancellor, declared that Mr. Macron’s win was “a vote of confidence in Europe.” Boris Johnson, the British Prime Minister, congratulated the French leader and called France “one of our closest and most important allies.”

 

Mr. Scholz and two other European leaders had taken the unusual step this week of making clear the importance of a vote against Ms. Le Pen in an opinion article in the daily newspaper Le Monde. The letter was a reflection of the anxiety 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 sides with those who attack our freedom and our democracy — fundamental values ​​that come directly from the French Enlightenment,” they wrote.

 

— Roger Cohen

 

After Macron’s win, relief for his supporters.

 

PARIS — Hundreds of supporters waving French flags and signs in support of President Emmanuel Macron screamed with joy and relief when his face appeared on a large screen facing a sea of blue, white and red in front of the Eiffel Tower.

 

The crowd screamed, “One, and two, and five more years,” as the song “One More Time,” by the French group Daft Punk, blasted from the speakers. People hugged and kissed each other and danced as the sun started setting on Paris.

 

“I haven’t slept in three days because I was so anxious. Now I am relieved,” said Sharif Attane, 39, a cook. “I voted for Macron in part because of the war in Ukraine. It was a vote in favor of peace. To me, Marine Le Pen is superficial and misunderstands France. She wants a nation divided in two.”

 

Jackie Boissard, 60, who works in finance, had a big smile on her face. While thrilled by Mr. Macron’s projected vote tally of 58.2 percent, she said there was still more work to be done.

 

“I was sure that Macron was going to win,” said Ms. Boissard, who held a French flag. “I’m still afraid of the legislative elections though. The fight is not over.”

 

Hatem Ayachi, 63, an immigrant from Tunisia, came with two of his four children.

 

“I voted for Macron for the future of my children,” he said standing near the podium where Mr. Macron was set to speak. “I was not entirely pleased with Macron’s first term, but he will always be better than Marine Le Pen, and that is why I voted for him.”

 

He added, “We are immigrants, and we were really stressed about Marine Le Pen winning.”

 

— Aida Alami and Adèle Cordonnier

 

PARIS — The crowd of supporters, packed into a large room and holding champagne glasses, chanted “Marine! Marine!” as they waited for the final results of Sunday’s presidential vote. At last, a face appeared on the large screen, revealing who would be France’s president for the next five years. When the screen flashed Emmanuel Macron’s face, the crowd booed.

 

On Sunday, Mr. Macron defeated Ms. Le Pen, garnering 58.2 percent of the vote to her 41.8 percent, according to early projections by polling firms. The defeat was a blow for Ms. Le Pen, who was running for president for the third time and in recent months had appeared closer than ever to gaining power.

 

But Sunday’s results were also bittersweet for Ms. Le Pen, who addedseveral percentage points to her vote tally from 2017.

 

“Tonight’s result is a resounding victory in itself,” she told supporters, as she conceded her defeat in a speech about 10 minutes after the first projections were published, her voice and eyes at first filled with emotion.

 

Rémi Ulrich, a 29-year-old supporter who was fervently applauding just a few feet from Ms. Le Pen’s stage, said Sunday’s result symbolized “the end of the glass ceiling.”

 

Some supporters in the crowd had tears in their eyes as the far-right leader delivered her speech. Others halfheartedly waved French flags, at times looking lost.

 

“I’m terribly disappointed,” said Ghislaine Bernard, 60, adding that Ms. Le Pen had been vilified by the media and the mainstream parties in recent weeks. A longtime Le Pen sympathizer, Ms. Bernard said she would stay at the event for the rest of the night. “Marine Le Pen, I don’t want her to feel alone now,” she said.

 

Ms. Le Pen gathered her supporters in the affluent 16th arrondissement of Paris, in a gilded complex of pavilions set up at the entrance of the Bois de Boulogne, a large park west of the French capital. The gathering, with its hallways lined by large mirrors and champagne glass pyramids lining the main room, brought out 500 or so supporters, many of them young and in their best clothes, hoping for the best.

 

Ms. Bernard, who said she had kept a close eye on the polls, said she “expected” Ms. Le Pen to lose. “She’s formidable, but she could not do the impossible,” Ms. Bernard said.

 

But after conceding defeat, Ms. Le Pen’s tone soon turned offensive, as she vowed to keep the fight going and called on her supporters to turn their sights on June’s parliamentary elections.

 

“More than ever, I will continue my commitment to France and the French people,” she said, to the cheers of the crowd chanting, “Marine! Marine!”

 

“The game is not totally over!” she said. “As a consequence, we are launching tonight the big electoral battle for the parliamentary elections!”

 

— Constant Méheut