Emmanuel Macron has been elected new President of France. According French media projections, the 39-year-old centrist bagged 65.1 per cent of the vote, defeating far-right leader Marine Le Pen.
Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve confirmed that Macron has won the presidential election.
The victory caps an extraordinary rise for the 39-year-old former investment banker, who will become the country's youngest-ever leader.
Cazeneuve said in a statement minutes after the last polls closed that the vote ‘testifies to the lucidity of the voters who rejected the deadly project of the extreme right’.
He said that the vote shows an embrace of the European Union.
According to AP, many French voters backed Macron reluctantly, not because they agreed with his politics but simply to keep out Le Pen and her far-right National Front party, still tainted by its anti-Semitic and racist history.
Le Pen concedes defeat
Pen said that she has called Macron to congratulate him. She said that the vote confirms her National Front party and its allies as the leader of France's opposition.
Minutes after the first results were released, Le Pen said that she would call for a new political force as legislative elections loom in June.
She hinted that her party may rename itself from the National Front, which has been dogged by allegations of racism and anti-Semitism since it was founded by her father.
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