- Chad Christopher Rediker
The 2017 French Presidential Election
By GlobalSecurity -Presidential Election - 23 April / 07 May 2017

Independent centrist Emmanuel Macron became France’s youngest ever president after earning a decisive win the country’s run-off vote on Sunday 07 May 2017. The win marks a climax for Macron’s meteoric rise from relative obscurity, but the tough task of building a governing majority for his newcomer En Marche! movement was yet to come. The 39-year-old political neophyte, who had never been elected to any office before winning his country’s top job, beat anti-immigration Europhobe Marine Le Pen, with 65.8 percent of the vote to Le Pen’s 34.2 percent, according to estimates released after final polls closed at 8pm Paris time.
The wide margin of victory was not a record in French presidential politics – conservative President Jacques Chirac beat Le Pen’s father, National Front founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, 82.2 percent to 17.8 percent in 2002 – but it did top all recent polling in a twist-after-twist presidential campaign.