Macron wins the elections in France: in which regions has Le Pen won and in which Macron?
In a consequential presidential election for France and the European Union many voters chose to sit it out with the lowest turnout since 1969.
President Emmanuel Macron faced off against Marine Le Pen in a rematch of the 2017 second round of France’s presidential election on Sunday. Turnout was the lowest since 1969 as voters saw the election as casting a ballot for the “lesser of two evils.”
Macron’s victory was seen as crucial for the future of France, the European Union and West’s united front in maintaining pressure on Vladimir Putin to stop his war on Ukraine. The final round pitted pro-European incumbent Macron against far-right and Putin-friendly Le Pen.
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Voters choose to stick with the devil they know, Macron
Despite even lower turnout than the 2017 second round of the French presidential election, voters decided to keep Macron in office for another term. It’s the first time French voters have reelected a sitting president since Jacques Chirac was returned to office for a second term in 2002 when he faced off against Marine Le Pen father and former head of the far-right National Front, now renamed the National Rally.
It wasn’t so much as a vote for him as much as a vote against her, as was the case in 2017, and 2002 against her father. Macron over his presidency has become one of the most hated French leaders, seen as an elitist with disdain for ordinary people.
However, his challenger and her party are even more reviled by the French public who see them as a threat to France’s democracy. In the only debate between the two candidates Macron pointed out Le Pen’s coziness with Moscow and Putin, asking her about a $10 million loan a Russian bank gave her party in 2014, one which still hasn’t been paid back.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine, Le Pen has been down playing her ties to the Kremlin, there were reports that her campaign even shredded 1.2 million pamphlets that featured a photo of her and Putin shaking hands during a 2017 trip to Moscow during the run-up to the 2017 presidential election.
Which regions voted for Macron and Le Pen?
In the first round of the 2017 French presidential election, Le Pen found her greatest support in the northeast, south of France and Corsica. The map looked much the same in 2022 but she lost influence in some of the interior regions. Macron had his strongest support in the Paris and the surrounding area along with the interior south and western France.
A coalition of voters to stop Le Pen in 2017 known as the “Republican Front” handed Macron a majority in all but two regions in the northeast, Aisne and Pas-de-Calais. The end result gave a resounding victory to Macron with a 33 point margin of victory.
Despite the low turnout that could have boded ill for Macron, he once again was able to see off his rival for a second time. The results weren’t as solid for Macron in the rematch but he still had a double digit lead with the final tally giving him over 58 percent of the vote to Le Pen’s less than 42 percent.
Le Pen managed to hold onto Corsica and take a number of overseas territories this time as opposed to none in 2017. These were some of the places she received her best results along with the two departments she won in 2017. Generally the less populated parts of the northeast went for Le Pen, but areas north of Paris flipped for her this time. She managed to pick up some gains in the south but outside of the overseas territories she failed to break 60 percent in the Metropolitan France.
The captial and the vast majority of population centers around the nation went solidly for Macron, although the margins in most cases were less than five years ago. Among the French expat community Macron was the clear choice giving him his highest majority at 86 percent of the vote, besides Paris and the western suburb of Hauts-de-Seine his only results over 80 percent.