Emmanuel Macron wins the second round of the french presidential election in a 32 point landslide.

According to exit polls it looks like Macron and Le Pen have made it to the second round. Results are still being counted so things can change. This is the first time in decades candidates from both of the major right and left wing parties in France have made the runoff in French presidential elections.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-election-idUSKBN17O0DG

Estimates at 12pm MT according to Politico EU were

23.7% Macron

21.7% Le Pen

19.5% Fillon and Melenchon

6.2% Hamon

5% Dupont-Aignan

Final Results

How each department voted

http://graphics.france24.com/results-first-round-french-presidential-election-2017/

Look at this link for vote count

http://elections.interieur.gouv.fr/presidentielle-2017/FE.html

Will update this once all the votes are counted for the first round

Final vote tally for first round for all candidates that made it past 5%

Emmanuel Macron: 24.01%

Marine Le Pen: 21.30%

Francois Fillon: 20.01%

Jean Luc Melenchon: 19.58%

Benoit Hamon: 6.36%

Marine Le Pen barely made it to the second round and she is expected to be crushed by anywere between 20% and 36% in the second round by Macron.

Second round results will be added once all the votes are counted

Final results for the second round

Emmanuel Macron:66.10

Marine Le Pen: 33.90%

Extra info

Abstention:25.44%

Voter Turnout:74.56%

Whites:6.33%

Null:2.22%

Link

http://elections.interieur.gouv.fr/presidentielle-2017/FE.html

Oh boy

Hopefully France won't make the same mistakes the U.K. and U.S. have made.

I was really hoping Macron would have received somewhere close to %50....not even half is distressing.

Hamon has endorsed Macron:

The Socialist Party's candidate, Benoît Hamon secured just 6.3% of the vote, according to BFMTV-Elabe estimates.

Speaking at his campaign headquarters, Hamon said he took full responsibility for the poor result, and urged his supporters to vote for Macron to defeat Le Pen in the second round, "even if he is not left-wing."

Come on Macron! Please win!

Not only are we going to France, Tom Harkin, we're going to the United Kingdom and the United States And Germany...And then we're going to the European Union to take back our sovereignty! Yeah!!!

A lot of people from the major right and left wing parties have even endorsed Macron now. Even someone from the French communist party has endorsed Macron.

Tough but hope Le Pen wins it, France is burning.

@brenobnfm: So you want to kill the fire by pouring gasoline into it?

"Britain and America f***ed up!" - John Oliver speaking French

lol nice

France/West need strong leaders like Trump and Le Pen to face the enemy, not another leftist beta male, and i know Macron is pro free market, he would be good in another scenario but right now Europe needs a far-right injection.

Macron is the political version of vanilla ice cream but thats still worlds better than Le Pen, daughter of holocaust denying Satan. And I'd rather not have my EU passport turn into a worthless piece of paper and plastic.

Go banker, go banker, go!

Also, any candidate that receives campaign money from Vladimir Putin is enough reason not to vote for them.

Nobody needs a far anything in the political spectrum. We see how much damage they do, left and right. Just look at what Trump is doing. You think purges of Latin Americans and banning people of a certain religion (much to the point that Muhammed Ali's own son was captured... TWICE, I'm surprised Lupe Fiasco didn't get caught yet) are what makes a "strong" leader

Do you think the terrorists are from the moderate spectrum? You'll defeat them with love and peace? Singing John Lennon?

And you're talking for me, i never said anything you're pointing out.

They won´t since they have this 2 round system.

Now the other candidates are gone, they will vote for anyone but Le Pen so Macron has already won and is the next French president.

You are correct, No western democracy need a far-left or far-right.

You need someone who is not afraid to take tough choices like going against unfair practices

@brenobnfm: I don't know if many people agree with you about Trump being a strong leader. Until now he seems to be easy to manipulate, going as far as reacting based on what his favourite TV shows and radio hosts say. Plus, the only good thing he had, staying away from external conflicts, is also not a thing anymore.

No, but have you not seen what Trump has done? ISIS even admits that he gave them strength in the Muslim ban in their quest to prove the West doesn't give a damn about their religion. Repeat: Trump gave ISIS strength in the Muslim ban.

Quick run down of my impressions:

1. All Politicians: Vermin. Round them all up and nuke them from orbit. Let's see if there aren't countries that can run themselves without them. I think you'd be surprised.

2. Hollande: Thought he was left-wing trash since the day he was elected. I knew the French would regret electing him.

3. Macron: How refreshing, a social and economic liberal, just like me. Can't tell you how frustrated I've long been at how often I've seen social progressives talking left-wing economics gibberish and religious fundamentalist nutjobs extolling the virtues of free-market economics. Aside from the fact that he's a bit more pro-EU and much more annoyingly optimistic than I am, he's practically my ideological blood brother. I doubt he'll get a working majority in parliament, and the petty and short-sighted Socialists, Republicans and the ever belligerent unions will probably stonewall him in hopes of crushing him and his supporters in 2022, but still, refreshing.

4. Fillon: His social conservatism does give me pause, but sometimes I think his reforms might just be the bitter medicine France needed. Shame Penelopegate sunk him, and starting his term so scandal-hit would have sapped his capital anyway. Probably for the best that he lost.

5. Melenchon: Left-wing trash. Basically France's Tsipras and Syriza. Would have been stuck wrecking his country's economy while blaming Germany for it.

6. Hamon: *yawn*

7. Everybody else: Who cares.

8. Le Pen: Basically a real-life French version of this guy:

9. Who's going to win: Macron. A poll I saw read that 50% of French people saw the FN as a threat to their democracy. When half the country is automatically inclined to come out and vote just to keep you out of power, that's a very steep hill to climb in just two weeks. The 2015 regional elections was a demonstration of that.

10. Overall opinion: meh. I'm not a religious person, but maybe it's my Buddhist background: I believe in Karma, of sorts, or as I call it; "Cosmic Newton's Third Law." In this case, I believe people eventually get the leaders they deserve. For example: I've long had very low opinions of American so-called "democracy" since 2004, so in a way, in my mind, a blithering, narcissistic man-child and unholy spawn of Juan Domingo Peron and Silvio Berlusconi is exactly what America deserve. Same thing here: if France elects Le Pen, either now or in 2022 after Socialists, Republicans and the unions gang up on Macron and disenchant French voters even further, then the French will deserve it.

@madrocketeer:

So Le Pen is the Joker because she wants to keep out untold amounts of illegal immigration and close the borders thus keeping the country safe. Nice logic there bruh. And here we have leftist thugs dressed like ISIS currently destroying their streets and fire bombing buildings.(sound familiar?) yet for some reason Le Pen and her voters are satan spawn.

The left's utopian dream. France used to be such a beautiful place and now it looks like Syria. :(

2017 Paris shooting. Perpetrator: Karim Cheurfi. Born: Livry-Gargan, France.

2017 Machete attack. Perpetrator: Egyptian national.

2016 stabbing. Perpetrator: Larossi Abballa. Born: Meulan, France.

2016 Nice attack. Perpetrator: Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel. Born: Tunisia, French resident since 2005.

2015 Paris attack. Perpetrators: 5 French nationals, 2 Belgians and 2 Iraqis.

I could go on. 2015 Saint-Quentin-Fallavier attack. French born. 2015 Charlie Hebdo attacks. All three attackers were French born. 2012 Toulouse shooting. French born. You get the picture, and it's a similar one pretty much everywhere else, including UK and America.

My point is the same one from the beginning of all this years ago: the greatest terrorist threat Western countries face right now is NOT large, co-ordinated attacks from foreign soil like 9-11. The greatest threat right now are home-grown, lone wolf or small team attackers, self-radicalised on the internet. Closing borders is going to do shit to stop that. Worry less about the people coming in, worry more about the people that are already here.

It's all red herring anyway. FN's real enemy isn't Islamic extremists, that's just something to run on so they can attract more voters. You may not have seen the likes of these so-called "alt-right" nationalists before, but I have, in many different forms and in many different countries. One thing they share in common is that they feel they're the victims of pretty much everyone and everything - history, most of all. They all have a weird obsession with history and how it's being taught, and think history itself is persecuting them. That's why I have my own personal term for them: "revisionist nationalists."

So yes, FN want to burn everything down, starting with the EU. Le Pen would just spend all her time picking fights with the EU, the media and everyone else who criticise her, then play victim and blame everybody else, wreaking havoc in her path. It's what they do.

And f*** those rioting left-wing nuts. All told, they're throwing their toys out because they hate both Le Pen and Macron. I don't give a shit about them, and I doubt most French people do either. Stop trying to import the f***ed-up, binary, left-vs-right, black-and-white American politics into countries that know better.

A leader that isolates and doesn't want to work together?

Together with whom?

@omnichris: Le Pen is going to win, when Hollande has put his full support for Macron

Wanting less federal EU is not saying no to working together with other countries, it´s just acknowledging that the EU is a doomed ship heading for a iceberg.

A lot of politcal parties outside of france and inside of france have endorsed Macron now. People in france like Fillon, Juppe and etc have now endorsed Macron. Even someone high up in the french communist party has endorsed him. Tying him to hollande won't work for Le Pen at all as we saw through the first round result. French people don't really care that he played a role in Hollande's government. Le Pen is facing a completely different beast compared to what trump faced during the US presidential election last year. Her loss on May 7th has a decent chance of being the second biggest second round loss for a presidential candidate in France at this point.

I agree that a less federal EU could be what people want now. However to do like UK and suddenly face them on the other side of the table might not be the best course of action. They will still rely on EU, at least they will want access to the marked. They got to pay up for that.

First impression is that she wants France to something similar to UK...

UK did the only thing they could, they were faced with a prospect of nothing ever changing. So as Churchill said "If ever faced with a choice between the open seas or europe, she must always choose the open seas"

But yes Le Pen wants to have a vote like UK , and that would not be a bad thing.

Eu needs to get back to it's core which is trade and national cooperation and not trying to make a United States of Europe. And right now the pro-eu states members are having way too much pull.

Yup, her name and the party will secure her a major loss. She should go on her own and rid herself of the name if she ever wants to become president.

It´s sad tho that the election ends like that , they should just have stopped at the first round, which would not have changed anything.

In other words, another the MSM vs Trump 2.0 in France? I'm sure Macron is also a favorite in the EU as well!

@FireEmblem_Man said:

@super600 said:

@FireEmblem_Man said:

@omnichris: Le Pen is going to win, when Hollande has put his full support for Macron

A lot of politcal parties outside of france and inside of france have endorsed Macron now. People in france like Fillon, Juppe and etc have now endorsed Macron. Even someone high up in the french communist party has endorsed him. Tying him to hollande won't work for Le Pen at all as we saw through the first round result. French people don't really care that he played a role in Hollande's government. Le Pen is facing a completely different beast compared to what trump faced during the US presidential election last year. Her loss on May 7th has a decent chance of being the second biggest second round loss for a presidential candidate in France at this point.

In other words, another the MSM vs Trump 2.0 in France? I'm sure Macron is also a favorite in the EU as well!

Nah. Macron's a completely different beast compared to hilary. He's a mix between Blair, Obama, and even JFK according to some people. He's a pretty dangerous opponent for Le Pen despite him being similar to hilary in some ways. And of course the EU is going to support him because he's really pro-EU even though he does want to change it. Also, Macron is not really going to attack Le Pen and the FN much in the next two weeks.

You couldn't create in a lab a more mainstream/establishment candidate than fucking Macron. He is disgusting in every way and if he becomes president, France deserves everything that happens afterwards.

She won´t get it.

Which is why Macron is almost 1.0 in all betting firms.

Tho labrokes have it at 1.14 so if you have 10.000 there is a small but fast profit to be made.

Le Pen is mightier than Le sword.

Indeed. Cooperation is what they do, though it feels a bit forced at times. Thanks to EU I can use my cellphone outside my own country and not have to spend half my next pay check to pay it off. :P

Yup,

Which is what EU should stick to, not trying to make a huge EUS with a central parliment with Jean-Claude Juncker as president.

Macron wins comfortably. Projections puts him at 65%-35%, and the partial results seem to be heading that way. While I wait for @super600 to update this thread, I'll go ahead a post my detailed take:

Like I said, a poll I saw read that half of French people saw the Front National as a "threat to the Republic." When half of the people are automatically inclined to come out and vote just to keep you out of power, you have a very big mountain to climb. The only way Le Pen could have won is if she was put in a "Clinton versus Trump" scenario: i.e. if she was matched against someone just as divisive as her. Good news for her? Such people exist. Bad news for her? Sarkozy was knocked out in the Republican primary, while Hollande chose not to stand for re-election. And even then, hypothetical polls showed they still had about 50-50 chances against Le Pen. I also said a long time ago that she needed to somehow reach out to the minorities-rich, economically disaffected Paris Banlieues (suburbs). She did not set one foot there.

I mean, I looked at the polls, and they were all bad news for her across the board. Hamon voters represented about 6-7% of the first round votes, but his lead on her was about 60-70 points, which made sense because Macron came from and still have a lot of friends in the Socialist Party. His Fillon vote split were the closest, but even then he had a lead of about 15 points. Moreover, I believed right from the start that his Fillon vote split would be the most stable: Fillon's social conservative base would vote Le Pen or abstain, while his economic liberal voters would vote Macron, and I believed everybody in that camp already made up their minds two weeks ago.

Perhaps most surprisingly, Macron even had a lead of about 35 points among Melenchon voters. You might think; "wait, isn't Melenchon a hardcore eurosceptic just like Le Pen?" Well, the press have all been saying that, and I thought so too, until I looked at the statements and political backgrounds of Melenchon and his closest supporters. Turns out, they actually don't see themselves as hardcore eurosceptics like Le Pen, and the talk among the Melenchon camp was actually of "saving" the EU, specifically from what they perceived to be their neoliberal and austerity-obsessed tendencies. This puts them much more in common with Greece's Syriza and left-wing economist Yanis Varoufakis (who, by the way, endorsed Macron): they genuinely want to reform the EU, whereas Le Pen can talk about reforms and referenda all she wants, everybody knows what she really wants to do is burn the whole thing down. Also, both Macron and Melenchon are social liberals, Le Pen is a social conservative.

Even that last twist in the tail, the whole Macron hacking thing, wouldn't have made a difference. The e-mails could show that he's a son of a drug dealer and he would still have a decent chance of winning. French people have been through that before: ask any French voter about 2002, and then ask them what "Votez escroc, pas facho" means.

And the debate. Oh, the debate. That was Le Pen's last chance to change the momentum, and she blew it with a whole box of plastique and buried it in cement. Macron handed her a single point on terrorism, but on everything else her performance was pitiable. Her performance on the economy was particularly lamentable: for example, on the issue of the Euro. Madame Le Pen, it's basic freaking economics; currency value is determined by supply and demand, just like everything else. It is also determined indirectly by whether investors think you can pay your debts, and the fact of the matter is, the French economy isn't in the best of shape right now. This means that, without European Central Bank guarantees, the moment you switch back to the Franc, it will instantly drop like a stone. That may help the exporters, but it will hurt absolutely everybody else. This is basic Lycée (High School) economics, and the best you could come up with in response was "well, uh, the Euro is for bankers, and the Franc is for the people." Pathetic.

She never had a chance. This is not like Trump who had the American Republican Party machine and the right-wing media, mainstream and otherwise, behind him, and had months of leaks, gaffes and embarrassments from his equally-divisive opponent to help him. Even then, he still managed to lose the popular vote; he was just fortunate to be running in a system where that didn't matter. The FN is not a big political machine, all the mainstream media, left-wing and right-wing, were against her, Macron is not anywhere near as divisive as Clinton, and she was running in a system where the popular vote do matter.

As to what now for Macron? Well, we've actually been here before, believe it or not. In 1974, France elected Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, another centrist outsider, as their President, after the mainstream right endorsed him to stop left-wing Francois Mitterrand from coming to power. However, once he got into office, both the left and the right turned on him, and he lost re-election in 1981... ...to Mitterrand.

With this history in mind, I believe that if Macron doesn't succeed in reforming France and if the left and the right turn on him like they did to VGE, FN or another, perhaps more acceptable, nationalist party will come into power in 2022. Here’s a sneaky little tip: I would keep an eye on Nicolas Dupont-Aignan and his more mainstream but equally eurosceptic Debout la France movement; he got 4.7% in the first round before endorsing Le Pen, and if FN cannibalises on itself, as these right-wing populist parties tend to do if left to their own devices, Dupont-Aignan and DLF could be the chief beneficiaries in 2022.

But, you know, as I said before, Karma. "Cosmic Newton's Third Law," as I call it. Every country get the leaders they deserve eventually.

@madrocketeer: Macron have already made some reforms, hasn't he? Under Hollande I mean.

That would be the more un-democratic parts of EU, wouldn't it?

Yes, the "Macron Rule," which if I recall correctly, allowed businesses to open longer on weekends. Sounds simple enough, right? The story went that he thought so too, until it was watered down to a shadow of what it was. He thought there were centrists from both the Socialists and the Republicans who were in favour of it, but could not back it because they were constrained by their party machines.

And so, as the story goes, his political journey began.

I'm planning to update this thread once all of the votes are counted which should be in the next few hours or so.

Macron wins, France maintains its sanity.

Full Story Here

Look at this map. France has 102 Departments, which are basically like Counties or Provinces of France.

Le Pen has won a grand total of two. Even in her stronghold regions, the industrial north east (basically France's "Rust Belt"), and the Mediterranean south east (for rather complicated reasons), she's getting her arse kicked. Basically, this is 2015 regional elections all over again, and this does not bode well for FN in the upcoming parliamentary elections, which uses two-round first past post.

Here are some polls from Ipsos France. Le Pen leads by 10 points among the working class (Ouvrier), but Macron won in every single other demographics. His next closest leads were 8 points (Employees), 10 points (lowest income earners and least well-educated) and 14 points (35-49 year-olds). Basically, this is about the most comprehensive win as you can get. This was the size of Le Pen's task.

And now, let's check in with some British right-wing crybabies (sorry, grew up in England, so I have a bit more of a history with these creatures than other countries' right-wingers):

You keep crying, babies. See you on June 8.

Good to see the majority of French people are sensible.

Again, thank god Le Pen lost. Any blow to growing nationalism (US, UK, Philippines) is only good news.