Macron won the second round of the presidential election in France, as expected. Of course, with the upset over Brexit and the US presidential race, ‘expected’ has taken on a meaning tinged with an understanding that nothing is expected to definitely be ‘as expected’ any longer.
A lot of voters entered a null vote, indicating that they didn’t like either candidate. That is not an invalid vote as in UK elections, but a positive vote indicating a preference.
That aside, Marine Le Pen got 10,644,118 votes (33.9% of the vote) against Macron’s 20,753,797 votes (66.1% of the vote).
In the 2002 election, Jean-Marie Le Pen of the National Front took 4,804,713 votes in the first round.
In the run-off Jacques Chirac took 25,537,956 votes, representing 82.21% of the votes cast and Jean-Marie Le Pen took 5,525,032 votes, representing 17.79% of the votes.
So Marine Le Pen has doubled the votes and the percentage. Well yes, she might have gained a lower percentage if those null votes had gone to Macron.
But the raw numbers would still show that between 2002 and today, Le Pen the daughter – leader of the National Front – got twice as many votes as her father did fifteen years ago.
And that is a bad result for France and for the world.