Macron Wins French Election
He will be the youngest French President at 39 years old
39 year old Emmanuel Macron will become the next President of France following the election. His win has cemented him as the youngest French President in history. Macron is a self-identified centrist, and his competitor Le Pen was a right-winger nationalist who had been gaining momentum in the weeks towards the election. Despite a massive leak of documents and emails from Macron (NY Times, 2017), and a spirited effort by Le Pen in the final days towards the election, Macron still won in a landslide, with 65.1% voting Macron and 34.9% voting Le Pen (French Interior Ministry, 2017).
Voter turnout was 74%, which is 6% lower than 2012’s election (The Atlantic, 2017). This is the lowest voter turnout since 1969 (The Guardian, 2017). Another record saw 12% of voters casting a blank (Business Insider, 2017), which equals about 4 million spoiled votes (The Atlantic, 2017), a dishonorable number that has never been reached before.
Macron is the first modern elected French president to not belong to a major political party; he started his own independent party in mid-2016, which he said had the goal to, “reconcile the two Frances that have been growing apart for too long.” (The Atlantic, 2017) But in a controversial race between two ideological opposites that resulted in the lowest voter turnout in 4 decades, this year’s unfortunate situation has led to just the opposite. France is continuing to grow apart. Many are beginning to embrace nationalist and right-wing tendencies that yearn to slow immigration rates, while another many are beginning to embrace globalism and left-wing tendencies to that opposite. Politics are beginning to polarize further, and a good portion of the population is upset.
We will continue to hope that Macron’s vision to reconcile France will see true. The current French President’s mandate will end on May 15.
The date is approaching fast, and Macron has big plans once he’s in office. He pledged a $65 Billion cut in public spending, to cut unemployment to under 7%, and to remain with close ties to the European Union, which his opponent Le Pen heavily opposed (BBC News, 2017). These ambitions will meet plenty of challenges with his party, En Marche, having no seats in Parliament and no mainstream support apart from his distance from Le Pen’s views. (BBC News, 2017).
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