Dear Commons Community,

French President Emmanuel Macron was re-elected by a wide margin, according to projections based on early ballot counts, overcoming deep divisions among voters worried about inflation, the war in Ukraine and the impact of immigration on France’s national identity.

Mr. Macron garnered 58.8% of the estimated vote yesterday, while far-right leader Marine Le Pen won 41.2%, according to a projection from polling firm Ipsos.  As reported by The Wall Street Journal,

Mr. Macron, 44 years old, becomes the first French president to secure a second term in office since 2002, when then-President Jacques Chirac beat Ms. Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, in a 64-point landslide. Since then, however, the country has fractured along economic, generational and geographical lines, with wealthier urban voters gravitating toward Mr. Macron and younger, working-class voters in France’s rural areas backing Ms. Le Pen.

Mr. Macron is now under pressure to unite millions of French who cast ballots for his rivals in the election’s first-round of voting, when more than 50% of the vote went to candidates on the far right and far left. At stake is Mr. Macron’s drive to consolidate years of pro-business overhauls to the French economy—from tax cuts to his loosening of rules on hiring and firing employees—that have fueled discontent among voters who haven’t prospered under his administration.

“I know that many of our compatriots voted today for me—not in support of the ideas I defend—but to block those of the far-right,” Mr. Macron told hundreds of supporters at the foot of a resplendent Eiffel Tower.

Small protests cropped up around France, with students and others in the southern city of Toulouse marching behind a banner that read: “Neither Le Pen, Nor Macron.” The U.S. Embassy in Paris warned the protests risked turning violent, advising U.S. citizens to steer clear of them.

Mr. Macron’s double-digit win was wider than expected. Still, Ms. Le Pen, 53 years old, managed to significantly narrow Mr. Macron’s margin of victory compared with the 2017 election, when Mr. Macron notched a 32-point landslide against her. Her score Sunday was the highest ever by a far-right candidate in a presidential election.

“A great wind of freedom could have blown over our country. The fate of the ballot box decided differently,” Ms. Le Pen said in a concession speech.

Mr. Macron acknowledged Sunday that the tide of public support for Ms. Le Pen’s ranks was on the rise. “I also know that many of our compatriots chose the far right. The anger and the disagreements that led them to vote for that project must also find an answer,” he said.

Mr. Macron is expected to swiftly form a government whose composition will provide voters with the first indication of whether he intends to stick with his self-proclaimed “Jupetarian” style of governance, which has at times involved lecturing the public on his overhauls and marginalizing the role of the National Assembly in lawmaking.

A heavy-handed approach won’t work in Mr. Macron’s second term, some analysts say, as he is likely to find it much harder to secure the commanding majority his party, La République en Marche, and its allies enjoyed during his first term. Mr. Macron is expected to select ministers from outside his party who can help bridge the political divide.

“Macron will need to lead a policy of social reconciliation,” said Pascal Perrineau, a political-science professor at the Paris Institute of Political Studies, more commonly known as Sciences Po.

At the top of Mr. Macron’s agenda is his plan to streamline France’s complex pension system and raise the country’s retirement age to 65 from 62. Mr. Macron says the move is necessary to fund lower taxes and boost government spending on the country’s vaunted public health system, which was severely stretched during the pandemic. Ms. Le Pen and other opponents say Mr. Macron’s push to make people work longer is unbearable for working-class French who started working much earlier in life.

During his campaign, Mr. Macron said he would build consensus through a series of nationwide debates on the country’s school system, hospitals and democratic institutions. He also said he would work more closely with local officials to improve public services across the country, including in rural areas.

“He’s the only one who can pacify the country,” said François Bianco, a 46-year-old financial consultant in Paris.

Supporters of the president who arrived at the Eiffel Tower to celebrate his election found a much more somber event than the blowout party that shook the Louvre in 2017.

“I am so relieved. We’ve avoided the worst,” said Valentin Fortunati, a 32-year-old engineer.

Ms. Le Pen now faces questions about her future as leader of one of Europe’s most prominent anti-immigrant parties. Sunday marked Ms. Le Pen’s third defeat in presidential elections since her father, who was convicted of anti-Semitism, handed leadership of the National Front to her a decade ago. Her first loss to Mr. Macron came five years ago after she called for France to leave the euro, a stance that spooked many French households.

Ms. Le Pen dropped her opposition to the euro and focused on pocketbook issues, framing her 2022 campaign as a fight against inflation. She zeroed in on the impact the war in Ukraine was having on France’s economy, particularly the higher fuel prices that affect working-class commuters. She also rebranded her party as National Rally in an effort to turn the page on its far-right history, a strategy the party calls “de-demonization.” She toned down her rhetoric and opened up about her personal life, musing on her love of cats.

The changes weren’t enough to deliver victory.

“That’s eight times defeat has struck the Le Pen name,” said Eric Zemmour, the far-right former TV pundit, who failed to qualify for the runoff.

On Sunday, Ms. Le Pen said she planned to “continue with my commitments for France and the French.”

Mr. Macron built a comfortable lead in polls in early March as voters looked for a steady hand to lead the country in a time of war. Mr. Macron’s aides said the president was too busy with diplomacy, taking calls with President Biden and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, to hit the campaign trail in earnest.

The Macron campaign started to fret, however, when his lead in the polls evaporated heading into the first round of voting on April 10. Mr. Macron finished with 27.9% of the first-round vote compared with Ms. Le Pen’s 23.2%.

Mr. Macron went on the attack, highlighting during the only national debate of the election a loan of 9.4 million euros, equivalent to $10.2 million, that Ms. Le Pen’s party took from a Russian-Czech bank with ties to the Kremlin in 2014. Mr. Macron said the loan, which the party is still paying off, made Ms. Le Pen beholden to the Kremlin.

He drew attention to her political program, which included plans to rewrite France’s constitution to give “national preference” to French citizens over immigrants—including documented ones—in seeking jobs, public housing and welfare benefits. Ms. Le Pen also proposed a ban on the Muslim head scarf in all public places, describing the garb as an instrument of Islamist ideology.

Mr. Macron said Ms. Le Pen risked fomenting a civil war in a country that has one of Europe’s largest Muslim minorities. France has been targeted with terrorist attacks by assailants who cited cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in French media as their motive.

Still, Ms. Le Pen’s campaign managed to broaden her appeal with voters who, two decades ago, considered it taboo to vote for her father, who was convicted of anti-Semitism in the 1980s for describing the Nazi gas chambers as a detail of history.

“I have nothing against Marine Le Pen, even if I wear a head scarf,” said Lilia Missoum, a mother of four children in the port of Le Havre, along the English Channel. She cast her vote for Mr. Macron, because she approved of his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, including the subsidized paychecks her husband received during the crisis. Still, she says, Mr. Macron’s “door to immigration is too open.”

Parliamentary elections in June will represent a test for both Mr. Macron and Ms. Le Pen. In 2017, candidates across the country for Mr. Macron’s then-nascent party rode his coattails, securing a majority.

People who voted for Mr. Macron on Sunday only out of opposition to Ms. Le Pen, however, will be hard pressed to back his party in June, when other parties will have candidates on the ballot. Ms. Le Pen’s National Rally meanwhile has a history of struggling to win parliamentary seats.

Her party secured a handful of seats in the last parliamentary election, because opposing candidates in districts where National Rally has a strong following tend to drop out of the race, allowing more mainstream voters to coalesce around a single establishment candidate.

Both Mr. Macron and Ms. Le Pen will face stiff competition from the party of far-left firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who nearly qualified for the presidential runoff after garnering 22% of the first-round vote on April 10. Establishment parties that fared poorly in the presidential election also are expected to field candidates across the country where their roots run deep.

Congratulations President Macron.

Tony