President Emmanuel Macron, 44, is due to be re-elected this Sunday (24) for another five years as president of France. This is what the projections released shortly after the polls close at 8:00 pm local time (3:00 pm Brasília time) indicate. According to Ipsos, Macron won 58.2% of the vote, ahead of Marine Le Pen, 53, with 41.8%.
The numbers are estimates calculated from the results of polling stations that ended voting at 7 pm — in large cities, voting continued for another hour.
The final result should be counted later this Sunday. Fifteen minutes after the projection was released, however, Le Pen admitted defeat in a speech to supporters. The last poll released before the decision, on Friday (22), showed Macron with 57% of voting intentions, against 43% for his rival.
If the victory is confirmed, the center-right president will become the fourth president re-elected in the Fifth Republic, as the period after 1958 is called in France. The feat had not been achieved for 20 years, when Jacques Chirac defeated Marine’s father, Jean -Marie Le Pen.
Elected in 2017 as a breath of centrism in polarized French society, Macron will continue as head of state of the seventh largest economy in the world and the second largest in the European Union, a bloc of which he is one of the founding countries. With 67 million people, France is the largest EU country by territory. It is also one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, with veto power.
The inauguration for the new term must happen until the 13th of May.
The contest was a repeat of the 2017 second round, but marked by a much smaller difference between the two candidates. Five years ago, Macron won 20.7 million votes and won by 66.1% to 33.9%. This time, Le Pen’s result is the best in history for a far-right candidate, who has been trying to get to power since 1974, when his father ran for the presidency for the first time.
Le Pen was the first to vote this Sunday, around 11 am (local time), in Hénin-Beaumont, in the north of the country. About two hours later, Macron, accompanied by his wife, Brigitte, appeared at her section in Le Touquet, also in the north.
Projections from the Ipsos and Ifop (French Institute of Public Opinion) institutes, just over an hour before the close of voting, indicated 28% abstention, only below the 1969 record (31.3%), in the dispute between Georges Pompidou and Alain Poher. According to the balance sheet released at 5 pm by the electoral authority, the turnout rate was 63.23%, two points lower than that recorded in the second round five years ago at the same time.
Voting is not mandatory in France.
Unlike in 2017, when he was running for office for the first time, by a party launched just a year ago, The Republic on the Move, Macron has now faced at the polls the evaluation of his first term by a population partly dissatisfied with the rising cost of life, compared to an annual inflation of 5.1%, registered in March — a year ago, the index was 1.6%.
The issue even occupied a large space in the electoral debate and was one of the main banners of her opponent, who presented promises such as tax reductions, from 20% to 5.5%, on electricity and fuel prices. The strategy, combined with a campaign that covered the interior of the country and the urban peripheries, contributed to Le Pen achieving significant results in both rounds – in the first, she came in second, with 23.15% of the votes.
Macron, who finished the first phase with 27.85%, spent less time on the campaign in the initial phase. Involved in diplomatic negotiations involving the Ukrainian War, he only confirmed his candidacy one day before the deadline, on March 3, a week after the start of the conflict.
In addition to the two, the dispute included ten other candidates, and one of the surprises was the expressive vote of the third place, the ultra-left Jean-Luc Mélenchon, which attracted 21.95% of voters. His performance, especially among younger people, made Macron and Le Pen expand their attention to the left camp in the second round, with promises dedicated to social and environmental issues.
On the eve of the vote, those who declared they had voted for Mélenchon in the first round were divided on Sunday’s decision: 41% announced their vote for Macron, 21% for Le Pen, and 38% did not speak.
The ultra-left himself did not clearly support the president, but he urged his supporters not to give “a single vote” to Le Pen. In the days following the first round, he asked the French to elect him as prime minister, with his party, Insubmissive France, voting heavily in the legislative elections scheduled for June — he called the “third round” of this dispute.
In 2017, Macron’s party was the most voted for the National Assembly, and the current prime minister, Jean Castex, is his ally.
Considered the most European French president in recent history, Macron received support from the bloc’s leaders in a demonstration on domestic affairs considered rare in the EU. The German Olaf Scholz, the Spaniard Pedro Sánchez and the Portuguese António Costa showed, in an article in the newspaper Le Monde, fearful of the effects of a victory for Le Pen, a policy that has always had a strong Eurosceptic discourse and long-standing relations with the Russian president. , Vladimir Putin.
If in the previous election, the far-rightist defended France’s departure from the bloc, now she went on to say that the ideal was a reform “from within”. Among his most controversial promises were measures to prioritize French access over immigrants to employment and social housing and control of goods at the borders, which would clash with fundamental points of the EU.
Macron, in his campaign, promised to continue working for European sovereignty. The expression, coined by him since the beginning of his term, means making the bloc more autonomous both in terms of Defense and the economy.
In addition, it announced its intention to accelerate the energy transition, expanding the participation of nuclear, solar and wind power arrays. On the socioeconomic level, he defended raising the retirement age from 62 to 65, which must face resistance from the French.
