French President Emmanuel Macron won re-election on Sunday despite challenger Marine Le Pen recording the best score ever for her far-right party. Macron's party now faces an uphill battle ahead of June parliamentary elections, with rivals on both left and right vowing to take the fight to him. FRANCE 24 takes a look at some of the main takeaways from France's presidential vote.
A nation divided
A post-election map of France shows startling regional disparities, with Macron largely enjoying support in Paris, the west, southwest and centre of the country while Le Pen won backing in the struggling northern industrial heartlands, the Mediterranean south and French overseas territories.
Big city centres, the upper-middle classes and older voters backed Macron while lower-income groups voted overwhelmingly in favour of Le Pen.
But according to Mathieu Gallard, research director of the Ipsos France polling firm, it would be a mistake to imagine a country divided between an urban pro-Macron camp and rural Le Pen supporters.
"The biggest fractures are, above all, generational and social," said Gallard.
Rising abstention
Turnout was at just 72 percent, with abstentions at their highest of any second-round vote in France since 1969.
In an alarming signal for Macron, 8.6 percent of those who made the effort to turn up at voting stations on Sunday cast a protest vote to send the message that neither candidate was acceptable. Some 6.35 percent of votes were "blank" on Sunday and another 2.25 percent were "null", with a candidate's name crossed out or a ballot otherwise invalidated.
Macron "is submerged in an ocean of abstention and nullified ballots", said far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who finished third in the first round just behind Le Pen.
Street protests and discontent
Police used tear gas on leftist demonstrators who were furious at the candidates France was forced to choose between after sporadic protests erupted in cities including Paris, Rennes and Toulouse following the release of election results on Sunday.
While the protests were relatively small, they could be a harbinger of things to come.
"Here we go for another five years of liberalism led by a Parisian oligarchy that has done a lot of damage to the country," said Joroni Piques, a protester in Toulouse who did not vote.
Generational divide
For a man who is just 44, Macron is still struggling to make a major impact among younger voters and remains reliant on large support among seniors.
Figures by Ipsos and data analysis firm Sopra Steria show that while 61 percent of votes from 18- to 24-year-olds went to Macron, 41 percent of people in that age group did not vote at all.
His victory margin was narrow among those aged 25-34 and 35-49, and Le Pen was even slightly ahead among the 50-59 age group.
It was only among pensioners that Macron could count on a bedrock of support, with 71 percent of votes from those aged 71 or over going to the president, according to the Ipsos-Sopra Steria report.
"We have an aged France that massively supported Emmanuel Macron and a younger France that partially turned their backs on the vote," political analyst Jerome Jaffre told LCI television. "It's a major sociological gulf."
Macron loses the French territories
Macron is always keen to play up France's global reach through overseas territories that are integral parts of the country and have a total population of almost 3 million.
Le Pen came out easily on top in France's main Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique as well as in French Guiana in South America and the Indian Ocean islands of Reunion and Mayotte.
Macron could only claim victory in the Pacific islands such as New Caledonia and French Polynesia.
"The anti-Macron feeling has considerable power," said Martial Foucault, a political scientist at Sciences Po university in Paris. "A vote for Le Pen is a vote by default; it does not mean [one supports her]."
(FRANCE 24 with AFP)
