Emmanuel Macron beats Le Pen in French election, but can he lead France?

In the second round of the French presidential election, extremism lost.

It is less clear what won.

Estimates after the polls closed on May 7 had Emmanuel Macron winning with 63.7 percent of the vote. National Front candidate Marine Le Pen took approximately 36.3 percent. That’s less than the 40 percent some polls gave her as recently as two weeks prior to the vote, but more than twice as much as the 17.8 percent her father, Jean Marie Le Pen, received in his 2002 face-off against former president Jacques Chirac. Turnout was lower