Emmanuel Macron set to be re-elected in France

According to projections by polling agencies based on early returns, French President-electEmmanuelMacron will be re-elected for a second term after defeating far-right leader Marine Le Pen in the second round of voting on Sunday.

The victory of the liberal internationalist, first elected in 2017, will mean continuity in economic and foreign policy, and the outcome will be a relief to investors and France's EU and Nato allies in the midst of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. If Le Pen had won, it would have been like an earthquake or the election of Donald Trump.

The projections show that Macron won the election with 58 per cent of the vote, compared to 42 per cent for Le Pen.

The last time a French president was re-elected in 20 years was in 1962, when the voting system was established.

Marine Le Pen put in the best performance of her three campaigns for the ElysE.

Millions of people showed their support for the far right and left when she left to preside over a divided France.

In line with nationalists and populists elsewhere in the world, France's far-right movement has grown stronger over the years.

In the first round of voting five years ago, Macron won by 66 per cent to 34 over Le Pen. The centre-right incumbent Jacques Chirac defeated the father of the Front National leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, in the 2002 election.

At one point, his lead over Le Pen narrowed to within the margin of polling error, as she criss-crossed the country emphasizing the problems of poverty and the cost of living while also down.

In the first round on April 10, Macron took the lead with 28 per cent of the votes, ahead of Le Pen on 23 and Jean-Luc Mélenchon on 22. More than half of the first-round votes were cast for candidates of the extreme right or left.

Over the past two weeks, Le Pen and Macron have been courting 7.7 million voters, with Le Pen emphasizing her programmes to support the poor by lowering taxes on food and fuel.

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His first term was marked by the gilets jaunes anti-government demonstrations that began in 2018, the Covid-19 pandemic that swept across the world in early 2020, and the invasion of Ukraine launched by Vladimir Putin in February this year.

The EU-backed programme to help employers and employees through the coronaviruses crisis was praised by foreign investors and French businesses.

Many of the French dislike him for his arrogance and lack of concern for the poor. The so-called "republican front", in which voters are supposed to keep an extreme-right candidate from power, appears to be crumbling.

I have mixed feelings tonight. I'm happy that he won, but I'm uneasy that the far right is doing so well.

Maurice Blanc, a long time supporter of Le Pen's Rassemblement National movement, said that they must throw all their energy into the next battle for the legislative elections so as to be able to shape the fate of the country.