Political newcomer Emmanuel Macron will be France's next president, delivering a resounding victory to an unabashedly pro-European former investment banker and strengthening France's place as a central pillar of the European Union.
A crowd outside the Louvre museum at a Macron victory party jubilantly waved red, white and blue tricolor flags at the news.
The result constitutes a resounding rejection of far-right Marine Le Pen's "French-first" nationalism and dash her hopes that the same populist wave that swept Donald Trump into the White House would also carry her to the French presidential Elysee Palace.
A Macron victory marks the third time in six months — following elections in Austria and the Netherlands — that European voters have shot down far-right populists who want to restore borders across Europe. The victory of a candidate — Macron — who championed European unity could strengthen the EU's hand in its complex divorce proceedings with Britain, which voted last year to leave the bloc.
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.
After the most closely watched and unpredictable French presidential campaign in recent memory, many voters rejected the choice altogether: Pollsters projected that voters cast blank or spoiled ballots in record numbers Sunday — a protest of both candidates.
At 39, Macron becomes France's youngest-ever president — and one of its most unlikely.
Unknown to voters before his turbulent 2014-16 tenure as a pro-business economy minister, Macron took a giant gamble by quitting the government of outgoing Socialist President Francois Hollande to run his first-ever electoral campaign as an independent.
His startup political movement — optimistically named, "En Marche!," or "Forward!" — caught fire in just one year, harnessing voters' hunger for new faces and new ideas and steering France into unchartered political territory.
In a first for postwar France, neither of the mainstream parties on the left or the right qualified in the first round of voting on April 23 for Sunday's winner-takes-all duel between Macron and Le Pen.
Despite her loss, Le Pen's advancement to the runoff for the first time marked a breakthrough for the 48-year-old. She placed third in 2012, underscoring a growing acceptance for her fierce anti-immigration, France-first nationalism among disgruntled voters.
