CENTRIST Emmanuel Macron has won the French presidency, but now faces the challenge of convincing around a third of the population he is up for the job.
He took 65.68% of the vote (20.2 million) to far-right National Front Le Pen’s 34.32%.
But with a voting population of 47.5 million, Le Pen saw 10.5 million back her, while those who didn’t vote broke through the 25% mark totalling 12 million, and blank or invalid votes came to four million.
Here in Loubéjac, 111 people voted in favour of Macron and 51 supported Le Pen (photo above), but afterwards in the small Café Associatif L’Ecole there was a feeling of trepidation as France stepped forward into the unknown.
Many believed that it was time for change, and that Macron provided hope and support remained strong for the EU.
But you also felt that it had to work this time and that it would take all parties to pull together to ensure that Le Pen and other far-right tendencies didn’t gain strength from the number of votes received, but also abstentions.
Macron and France now moves on to creating a parliament with the French legislative elections taking place on June 11 and June 18.
Full results of the presidential elections from communes across France are available here.
Related: First round – Loubejac, and France, steps into the unknown
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One response to “Macron becomes French president, but real work now begins”
The next worry is the legislatives.
Had LePen faced a politician with more experience yet no taint (does it exist? Christine Lagarde? she was in a scandal, but tangentially), she would have gotten a lot fewer votes. She got 100% of the racist vote, but not everybody who voted for her was racist, just as not everybody who voted for Trump was. Some people are scared of losing what little they have–people near retirement who fear Macron’s promises of making it easier to fire employees and raising the retirement age. Just try to get a job when you’re 50 or older. Those people with jobs now see retirement threatening to be even farther off, while not being sure they’ll still have a job in the meantime.
That said, LePen’s promises would have led to economic ruin. Better a later retirement than none at all.