Macron to become next French president after beating back Le Pen and her populist tide
By Griff Witte, and Isaac Stanley-Becker May 7 at 2:30 PM
PARIS — France on Sunday shrugged off the siren call of right-wing populism that enchanted voters in the United States and United Kingdom, rejecting anti-E.U. firebrand Marine Le Pen and choosing as its next president Emmanuel Macron, a centrist political neophyte who has pledged to revive both his struggling country and the flailing continent.
The result brought to a close a tumultuous and polarized campaign that defied prediction at nearly every turn, though not at the end. Pre-election polls had forecast a sizable Macron victory, and he appeared to have delivered, with projections issued after polls closed showing him with around 65 percent of the vote.
A downcast Le Pen conceded defeat, telling her demoralized supporters in Paris that the country had “chosen continuty.” Meanwhile, a raucous celebration of Macron backers was getting underway outside Paris’s Louvre Museum.
The outcome will come as a major relief to Europe’s political establishment, which had feared a Le Pen victory would throw in reverse decades of efforts to forge continental integration.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/with-europe-on-the-line-polarized-french-voters-choose-between-macron-and-le-pen/2017/05/07/ccf8e5e2-31d9-11e7-9534-00e4656c22aa_story.html?pushid=590f68cefdd5491d00000027&sdhfkh&tid=notifi_push_breaking-news&utm_term=.9b4584eda46f
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