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Rabat – Voters have elected French President Emmanuel Macron to a second term in the position with 58.2% of the vote, according to figures from the Ipsos polling institute.
Projections had predicted Macron’s win, but analysts also said that his share of the votes would go down compared to his 2017 win, where more than 66% of the voters chose him for the position.
“We could have seen a great wind of freedom sweep across this country”, Marcon’s rival Marine Le Pen, told supporters in Paris, adding that the voters had “decided otherwise.”
But despite the loss, the numbers are not all negative for Le Pen’s party.
Macron’s far-right rival got 41.8% of the vote, in an improvement on the number of votes she got in 2017, 33%.
She touted the numbers during her address, saying that opponents had deemed her party dead.
Sunday’s vote saw 63.2% of voters turn out to the polls, with the country witnessing the highest abstention rate in 50 years.
A considerable number of voters who chose other candidates in the election’s first round, particularly supporters of Jean-Luc Melanchon, had said that they would not cast a ballot for either Macron or Le Pen during the second round.
Melanchon, who narrowly lost his chance to make it to the run-offs, called Le Pen’s loss “very good news for the unity of our country,” inviting supporters to vote for him in France’s upcoming legislative election and aim for a leftist majority.
Many, including France’s Muslim population, saw the choice picking one of two lesser of two evils, with disapproval for Macron’s economic policies outweighed by fear of what a far-right presidency under Le Pen could mean for the country’s marginalized communities.
Read also: France Faces ‘Sophie’s Choice’ in Second Macron VS Le Pen Showdown
But many have still pointed out that Macron’s policies have only helped accelerate islamophobia and some xenophobic statements in the country as well.
