French voters back centrist candidate Macron by wide margin

UPDATED French voters have again rejected a bid for the presidency from the nationalist right.

Final result 
When counting ceased at more than 95% of the vote Emmanuel Macron a winning marging of 65.7% to Marine Le Pen's 34.3%. This confirmed Mr Macron had widening his lead compared with earlier projections and polls taken before the election.

Mr Macron addressed a huge crowd at the Louvre museum in Paris, thanking them for "the risks" they have taken.

"I would like to say a word to the French people who voted for me, without necessarily having the same ideas... to the French people who simply voted in order to be able to defend the French republic," he said.

To those who voted for Ms Le Pen, Mr Macron said he respected them. "I will do my best to make sure that in five years there is no need to vote for extremists."

"The task that we're facing is enormous... we will have to look at aspects related to public life... give a place to each and everyone... to refound our Europe and ensure the safety of all the French people."

Update: What happens next 
President Macron will atke office on Sunday, May 14, and will appoint a temporary prime minister, who will appoint a cabinet (probably on May 15). This government will face some draft legislation on labour market and political conduct reforms.

The government will need to be reconfirmed after the National Assembly elections (June 11 and 18), when President Macron may have to choose a new prime minister depending on the new party lineup and the requirement of a majority (289 seats) in the lower house. 

Update: Makeup of National Assembly
Mr Macron will need more than rhetoric to achieve this. One recent (May 3) poll (Les Echos) on National Assembly vote show Mr Macron's political movement, En Marché, could win as much as 249-286 MPs, close to an absolute majority (289) with the Republicans and UDI (both right-wing parties) gaining 200-210 seats.

Ms Le Pen's National Front could win 15-25 seats, the Socialists 28-43 and the radical left 6-8. Other projections based on the outcome of the first presidential round show a hung parliament with the extremist parties of the left gaining many more seats than the mainstream ones as indicated in the Echos poll, which was taken in between the two elections.

Earlier report
By a margin of 61.3% to 38.7%, with nearly half the votes counted, the pro-European centrist Emmanuel Macron will be the next president. His opponent, Marine Le Pen, of the National Front, has conceded defeat. Exit polls show the end result is likely to be 63-37%.

Ms Le Pen has doubled the vote received by her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, in 2002 when the National Front last made it into the presidential runoff.

Turnout was lower compared with the first round, 74% versus 77%.

Mr Macron's win was widely predicted by public opinion polls. But the future of his presidency will depend on the next two rounds of voting for the National Assembly on June 11 and 18.

His fledgling political movement, En Marché, has no members in the 577-seat parliament and the National Front has only two. The two parties that have dominated during the Fifth Republic, the Republicans and the Socialists, both failed to have candidates in the presidential run-off, signalling a new era in French politics.

Neither Mr Macron, 39, nor Ms Le Pen had been elected to public office while Mr Macron does have ministerial experience as minister of the economy in the Socialist-led government until his resignation last year.

Mr Macron's victory has been widely welcomed by leaders throughout Europe as a blow to the rise nationalist populism that is opposed to the European Union and the euro as well as immigrants from the Middle East and Africa.

However, Ms Le Pen's near 40% support indicates the next round of voting could result in up to half of the National Assembly supporting these policies from both the Left and Right.

In conceding defeat, she vowed to re-fashion her party as the country’s leading opposition force.

“This run-off brought a major reconfiguration of the political order around the divide between patriots and globalists,” she says.

Mr Macron has said the EU’s future depends on whether it can be overhauled to correct economic imbalances among wealthier Northern and poorer Southern members as well as improve protection from Islamic terror attacks and control the wave of migration from Muslim dominated countries.

If Mr Macron fails to secure a majority in the National Assembly, he will need to seek ad hoc alliances with centrist parties or even be forced into a so-called “cohabitation” – a form of power-sharing under which a prime minister from another party runs the government.

Though the presidential result was widely expected by financial markets, the euro and sharemarkets are expected to react positively when trading resumes later today.