Paris: French President Emmanuel Macron won re-election on Sunday, convincingly defeating his rival Marine Le Pen and prompting a wave of relief in Europe that the far-right had been kept out of power. Centrist Macron was set to win around 58 per cent of the vote in the second-round run-off compared with Le Pen on 42 per cent, according to projections by polling firms for French television channels based on a sample of the vote count.
Macron is the first French president to win a second term for two decades, but Le Pen's result also marks the closest the far-right has ever come to taking power in France and has revealed a deeply divided nation.
The 44-year-old president faces a litany of challenges in his second term, starting with parliamentary elections in June, where keeping a majority will be critical to ensuring he can realise his ambitions to reform France.
In a victory speech, Macron vowed to respond to the anger of voters who backed his far-right rival, saying his new term would not continue unchanged from the last five years.
