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The president, Emmanuel Macron, was the winner of the second round this Sunday according to the first estimates released by Ipsos with 58.2% of the votes compared to 41.8% obtained by the far-right candidate of the National Group, Marine Le Pen .
58.2% of the votes. These are the estimates of Ipsos, which grants re-election to the liberal candidate of the Republic On the Move, Emmanuel Macron, against the far-right candidate of the National Rally, Marine Le Pen.
At the close of the polling stations, the first estimates drew a result equal to that of 2017, but with different percentages. In 2017, Macron (66.1%) beat Le Pen (33.9%) by more than 30 points.
Marine Le Pen went to a press conference after the publication of the first estimates. The National Group candidate acknowledged her defeat on Sunday night but asserted that “today’s result is already a victory.”
41.8% of the votes support it, since it is the best result of the party in its entire history. Her father, Jean Marie Le Pen, founder of the Front National, won 17% of the vote in 2002 against Jacques Chirac.
Le Pen confirmed that her sights are already set on the legislative elections on June 12, the new electoral scenario where her proposals will confront those of the president.
In the same vein, the candidate of the France Insumisa, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who also at a press conference confirmed that he is already thinking about June: “The third round begins today,” he confirmed to the media.
The second round of the French elections repeated the same general pattern as five years ago, but with a very different context.
President Emmanuel Macron and the far-right Marine Le Pen faced each other in a ballot marked by the uncertainty of the direction of the vote of the electorate of the leftist candidate of the Untamed France, Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
Another of the ghosts that hovered over the last two weeks of the campaign was the level of abstention, which according to Ipsos estimates for France 24 would stand at 34.7%.
According to the calculations of four demographic institutes, the final participation could be around 72%, which would be the lowest since 1969.
A second round marked by confrontation
The second round of the elections has been marked by direct confrontation between the candidates, with two different country proposals at a crucial moment for France, the future of the European Union and the Atlantic Alliance in the context of the war in Ukraine.
After a first round in which President Macron ruled out, for the most part, participation in debates and electoral rallies, this trend changed after knowing the results on April 10.
In the last two weeks, the candidate of the Republic on the Move toured the bastions that offered the greatest support to Le Pen to present his proposals and get closer to an electorate dissatisfied with his management during the last five years.
According to an opinion poll carried out by the Ipsos pollster, among the main concerns of the French are purchasing power (54%), the war in Ukraine (33%), the environment (26%), health (24%) , immigration (23%), social inequality (21%), pensions (19%), crime (18%), the public deficit (13%) and debt (12%).
Between these great blocks the candidates defined the end of the campaign.
Climate policies and the war in Ukraine protagonists in the campaign
“The policy that I will make in the next five years will be environmental or it will not be,” Macron said at a rally in Marseille last weekend with the aim of attracting Mélenchon’s electorate. The president then pledged to make France “the first great nation to abandon gas, oil and coal” and to appoint someone with a determined “green outlook” as prime minister.
Macron accused Marine Le Pen during the last electoral debate of being a “climate skeptic”, but the far-right candidate confirmed during the last days of the campaign that her will was to govern within the framework of the Paris climate agreement.
The war in Ukraine and the personal proximity between Marine Le Pen and Russian President Vladimir Putin also entered the campaign.
While the candidate mentioned that her will is to seek a rapprochement with Russia and NATO “as soon as the Russo-Ukrainian war has ended and has been resolved with a peace treaty”, Macron defended carrying out sanctions on Russian gas and oil after the massacre of civilians in the city of Bucha, a city near kyiv.
In economic matters, one of the great battlefields between the candidates was the retirement age, which Macron wants to delay, with nuances from 62 to 65 years, and Le Pen wants to reduce it to 60 years.
News in development…
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