France has a new president, Emmanuel Macron the candidate from the central party who won over his opponent Marine Le Pen from the extreme right. At age 39 Macron will be France’s youngest president.
All surveys say Macron got 65.9% of the votes and Le Pen got 34.1% so Macron is the clear undisputed winner of this election. Macron’s first comments after hearing about his victory was: “A new chapter of hope begins now for France.”
Already the night before the elections all the surveys predicted a landslide victory and that Le Pen’s chances to win were slim. Even so, garnering 34.1% for an extreme right party is still impressive.
For comparison, the last extreme right candidate to get to the second round of elections was Jan Marie Le Pen, father of Marine Le Pen who received only 17.8% of the votes. So even though she lost Marine Le Pen’s loss is still considered a success and reflects the extreme right’s gain of strength.
It’s important to note that the results publicized by the Elections Committee are based on a representative sample of 500 ballots. But in contrast to other countries, the samples are from real votes from the votes casted in the boxes so the results they give are very reliable.
It is also worth mentioning that the total voter turnout was very low. 3 hours before the ballots closed the ministry of the interior announced that only 65.3% of eligible voters actually did so. This number is very low.