(CNN) By turning to Emmanuel Macron as its new president, France has elevated a charismatic new leader in the great political battle between globalism and nationalism that is underway in Western democracies. 
 
 The 39-year-old's win over far-right candidate Marine Le Pen Sunday in the second round of the French election represents liberal internationalism's most significant response yet to the populist tsunami that yielded President Donald Trump and Brexit and ended a crop of establishment political careers. 
 
 Macron, a proponent of globalization, centrist politics and the European Union, in effect erected a bastion against the unconventional and disruptive forces that have roiled developed world politics over the last year. 
 
 "This is our civilization that's at stake, our way of life," Macron said shortly after his victory, in which he took around 66% of the vote against Le Pen. 
 
 But it would be premature to declare that the populist wave has reached a high-water mark, given the recent turbulence in international politics. And Macron, who ran as an outsider despite establishment credentials, does bear some resemblance -- in his light political resume if nothing else -- to the neophyte leaders who have come from nowhere to shake up politics. 
 
 The French campaign trod what has become familiar ground in big Western elections over the last year. It saw the older, establishment politicians crushed as they failed to identify and adapt to waves of change. None of the traditional parties reached the run-off as voters in France, like elsewhere, soured on the same old choices. 
 
 As with the Brexit referendum and the US election last year, the election was fought on the fault line between well-off, cosmopolitan, urban elites and insurgents who tapped the frustrations of rural, less-educated and poorer voters, ones who are fixated on immigration policies and feel disenfranchised in a global economy that has hemorrhaged blue collar jobs. 
 
 A fresh-faced candidate wins 
 
 But this time, the elite candidate -- albeit one whose youth and outlook suggested a break from older, more conventional political forces -- came out on top. In effect, Macron ran on insider ground while adopting the rhetoric and habits of an outsider. 
 
 The graduate of exclusive French schools who become a banker and finance minister formed his own party "En Marche" to escape the taint of the political establishment. His youth was a break from the past in itself. He will be the youngest French president ever and the youngest French leader, period, since Napoleon. 
 
 That sense of freshness could help break the somber mood that has settled over French politics for years -- though his inexperience will also test him. 
 
 Such attributes allowed him to separate himself from old-school politics and the establishment "swamp" in a way that Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, with her decades at the center of Washington intrigue, failed to do last year. 
 
 Macron's victory is likely to be studied by other centrist hopefuls in Europe and the United States as they struggle to combat the powerful economic message of candidates like Trump. 
 
 JUST WATCHED What to know about Emmanuel Macron Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH What to know about Emmanuel Macron 01:32 
 
 He will have to tackle the question of how to reach out to those who have given up on politics as usual and who find the promises of Trump and candidates like him so attractive. 
 
 In fact, Macron's enthusiastic support for the EU and globalization was an implicit rebuke to the instincts of Trump and those who successfully campaigned for Britain to leave the European Union. 
 
 He portrayed himself as a reformer, but as a bulwark against the forces of disruption dedicated to tearing down institutions rather than repairing them. 
 
 But he also took aim at the hidebound realities of French politics by warning of public spending cuts and more free market reforms designed to kick-start France's highly regulated economy. 
 
 Macron's triumph will buck up establishment figures who have had little to cheer in recent months: He was endorsed by former President Barack Obama, who is seeing his own legacy dismantled by the populist Trump. Macron also carried the hopes of European elites like German Chancellor Angela Merkel. 
 
 Trump, however, had seemed to hint earlier in the race that he preferred Le Pen. The US President has struck similar themes to Le Pen on Islamic terrorism and immigration. And following a terrorist attack in Paris last month, he tweeted: "Will have a big effect on presidential election!" 
 
 Reinforcing the EU 
 
 Despite the idiosyncrasies of the French race, many European analysts believe that Macron's win sent an unequivocal signal at an existential moment for EU unity. 
 
 "This is a victory of values, the values of the Enlightenment, the values of France, the values on which America was founded, the values from which the US and the UK have gone significantly astray," said Nicholas Dungan, an Atlantic Council senior fellow, who teaches at Sciences Po, a top international research university in France that counts Macron as among its most distinguished alumni. 
 
 "This is the end of know-nothing populism," he said. 
 
 Macron's victory is already being seen as an invigorating boost for the European Union, which was knocked sideways by the British decision to exit and would have faced a meltdown had Le Pen, an avowed opponent of the European bloc, won. 
 
 "The French electorate clearly said after Brexit, against all the forecasts from the Dr. Dooms of this world, that they were against Frexit and against leaving the Eurozone," said Philippe Le Corre, a Brookings Institution visiting fellow, who is a former French Defense Ministry official. 
 
 Just as Trump raged against Washington, Le Pen played into frustration with distant EU bureaucrats among blue collar voters, a tactic that proved potent for "Leave" campaigners in the British referendum. 
 
 JUST WATCHED Macron addresses nation after election Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Macron addresses nation after election 02:05 
 
 But this time, the anti-establishment fury was not enough. 
 
 In dramatic scenes Sunday, Macron, whose supporters often waved EU flags alongside those of the French tricolor, marched to his victory rally at the Louvre in Paris to the strains of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" — which serves as the European anthem. 
 
 In many ways, the trauma of the UK's vote to leave Europe, which was warmly and repeatedly welcomed by Trump as a political achievement akin to his own shock election victory, appears to have concentrated the minds of French voters. 
 
 "The Brexit vote, you could even say, helped (Macron), because it helped France realize the importance of the European Union," said Dominic Thomas, head of the Department of French and Francophone Studies at UCLA, on CNN International. 
 
 There are some reasons to think that the populist wave has broken. 
 
 Le Pen's defeat follows a showing of far-right leader Geert Wilders in the Dutch election in March that fell short of expectations. In local council elections across the Channel last week, meanwhile, the UK Independence Party, which campaigned for Brexit, was all but wiped out. A surge by a right-wing populist party in Germany, the AfD, appears to have peaked ahead of Merkel's re-election bid in the fall. 
 
 Yet it would be premature to dismiss populist, anti-establishment sentiments as a force in modern Western politics. For one thing, some establishment parties have adopted populist positions -- one reason why UKIP voters, for instance, are moving back towards the Conservative Party in Britain ahead of a general election in June. 
 
 Le Pen splits France 
 
 And after all, Le Pen managed to garner around 34% of the vote in the second round of an election which opened up deep splits in French society. 
 
 Still, Macron's presidency may not count for much unless he is able to address the feelings of economic disenfranchisement and blight that have forced themselves to the fore in elections in the Western world over the last year. 
 
 Macron signaled in his victory speech that he understood the stakes, asking his supporters not to boo Le Pen or her partisans. 
 
 "They expressed today anger, dismay and sometimes strong beliefs. I respect them but I will do everything over the next five years to make sure there is no reason at all to vote for extremes," Macron said. 
 
 The new French President will also have to consider how to frame his relations with the United States and Trump, whom he will now encounter at the G7 and NATO summits in Europe this month. 
 
 Populist influences in the White House, including political guru Steve Bannon, have been openly critical of the European Union. 
 
 But Trump played it straight down the line on Sunday, writing on Twitter: "Congratulations to Emmanuel Macron on his big win today as the next President of France. I look very much forward to working with him!" 
 
 Macron, for all his philosophical, generational and temperamental differences with Trump, is likely to move carefully, stressing areas of agreement with the administration -- on fighting terrorism for instance. 
 
 But he is likely to be critical of Trump in places where the US and France differ, like climate change. ||||| PARIS/CHATELLERAULT, France (Reuters) - Marine Le Pen’s bid to defy the odds and win the French presidency risked a setback on Friday when her designated stand-in as National Front party leader stood down to defend himself against charges he shares the views of Holocaust deniers. 
 
 After an intense day of campaigning ahead of a May 7 run-off vote in which both the far-right’s Le Pen and her centrist opponent Emmanuel Macron were carried back to the events of World War Two, surveys continued to show the independent Macron well ahead. 
 
 But in a couple of potential blows to the centrist favorite, defeated far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon stopped short of endorsing him, despite telling his faithful not to vote for Le Pen. 
 
 Election graphic: http: //tmsnrt.rs/2p6zUPE 
 
 First round election graphic: tmsnrt.rs/2lPduBG 
 
 And another loser from the first round, Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, endorsed Le Pen, as expected. 
 
 The abrupt departure of Jean-Francois Jalkh from the National Front (FN) party leadership before he had even taken on the job raised ghosts of the FN’s past and revived a furor sparked by Le Pen’s father when he called the Nazi gas chambers a “detail” of history. 
 
 The renewed controversy threatens moves by Le Pen, who expelled her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, from the party two years ago, to cleanse the FN’s image of xenophobic and anti-semitic associations and make it more palatable to a broader electorate. 
 
 “There comes a time when the women and men of France must open their eyes to where the National Front comes from,” Macron’s campaign director Richard Ferrand said. 
 
 The presidential contest has blown apart traditional party loyalties, presenting voters with a stark choice between a resurgent far right, once a pariah in French politics, and a man whose political movement is less than a year old and who has never held elected office. 
 
 It sets Macron’s enthusiasm for the European Union and call for pro-business reforms to boost growth against Le Pen’s desire for France to close its borders to immigrants, unwind EU institutions and restrict imports to protect jobs. 
 
 Most opinion polls show him winning next Sunday, with 60 percent or more of the vote, a slightly smaller margin than a week ago. 
 
 Jalkh, a long-time ally of Le Pen senior who founded the National Front, was one of 35 FN members elected to parliament in the mid-1980s. He had been due to take over as interim party chief, a post Marine Le Pen has vacated to focus on the presidential race. 
 
 FN officials said Jalkh denies the allegations linking him to Holocaust deniers, and Le Pen herself later told BFM TV “there is no one in the leadership of the National Front who defends this sort of thesis”. 
 
 At issue are comments attributed to Jalkh in a conversation with a researcher in 2005 about the work of a professor convicted more than once for questioning the scale of Jewish extermination in Nazi gas chambers during World War Two. Also unearthed was a 1991 report that said Jalkh attended a rally held by supporters of Marshal Philippe Petain, French wartime leader and Nazi collaborator, in July of that year. 
 
 Le Pen’s father has been convicted of inciting racial hatred for his remarks on the Holocaust, and referred to them himself as recently as 2015. 
 
 Marine Le Pen (C), French National Front (FN) political party leader and candidate for French 2017 presidential election, arrives at her campaign headquarters in Paris, France, April 28, 2017. REUTERS/Charles Platiau 
 
 GAY MARRIAGE JIBE 
 
 A thorn in her side, the 88 year-old has refused to be silent as his daughter bids for power. 
 
 He courted controversy again on Friday, saying a remembrance ceremony for a policeman killed last week by an attacker in Paris “exalted” the concept of gay marriage by giving the policeman’s male partner the stage to speak in his memory. 
 
 Marine Le Pen attended the state ceremony with other political figures including Macron, and distanced herself from her father’s comment on Friday. 
 
 “I felt it was a very dignified ceremony and I was very moved by the speech of his partner,” she said. 
 
 As Le Pen and her party grappled with the latest turn of events, Macron had troubles too. 
 
 Melenchon, who came fourth in the election with about one on five votes of which about 40 percent are expected to back Macron, stopped short of endorsing him in a video released on YouTube. 
 
 Fringe right-wing candidate Dupont-Aignan, meanwhile, gave his backing to Le Pen as expected. He gathered 4.7 percent of the first round vote. 
 
 Macron on Friday campaigned at a village preserved as a monument to inhabitants killed by German SS soldiers in 1944. 
 
 Slideshow (10 Images) 
 
 “Deciding not to remember is to take the risk of repeating history,” the 39-year-old said in Oradour-sur-Glane, near Limoges in central France, a thinly veiled attack on Le Pen for the anti-immigrant policies he says are fuelling divisions in French society. 
 
 Macron later gave a speech in Chatellerault, western France, taking his election battle to rural areas where disgruntled farmers have increasingly shied away from politicians or turned to the far-right following years of crisis. ||||| Image copyright AFP Image caption How did a 39-year-old with a new party who has never before been elected win the French presidency? 
 
 Emmanuel Macron has triggered a political earthquake in French politics. 
 
 A year ago, he was a member of the government of one of the most unpopular French presidents in history. 
 
 Now, at 39, he has won France's presidential election, defeating first the mainstream centre left and centre right and now the far right as well. 
 
 He got lucky 
 
 No doubt about it, Mr Macron was carried to victory in part by the winds of fortune. 
 
 A public scandal knocked out the initial frontrunner, centre-right candidate François Fillon; and Socialist candidate Benoît Hamon, already on the left fringe of the party, suffered a very public drubbing as traditional voters looked elsewhere. 
 
 Image copyright Reuters Image caption A "fake jobs" scandal put paid to the hopes of the early election frontrunner, François Fillon 
 
 "He was very lucky, because he was facing a situation that was completely unexpected," says Marc-Olivier Padis, of Paris-based think tank Terra Nova. 
 
 He was canny 
 
 Luck doesn't tell the whole story. 
 
 Mr Macron could have gone for the Socialist ticket, but he realised after years in power and dismal public approval ratings the party's voice would always struggle to be heard. 
 
 "He was able to foresee there was an opportunity when nobody could," says Mr Padis. 
 
 Instead, he looked at political movements that have sprung up elsewhere in Europe - Podemos in Spain, Italy's Five-Star Movement - and saw that there was no equivalent game-changing political force in France. 
 
 In April 2016, he established his "people-powered" En Marche! (On the move) movement and four months later he stood down from President François Hollande's government. 
 
 He tried something new in France 
 
 Having established En Marche, he took his cue from Barack Obama's grassroots 2008 US election campaign, says Paris-based freelance journalist Emily Schultheis. 
 
 His first major undertaking was the Grande Marche (Big March), when he mobilised his growing ranks of energised but inexperienced En Marche activists. 
 
 "The campaign used algorithms from a political firm they worked with - who by the way had volunteered for the Obama campaign in 2008 - to identify districts and neighbourhoods that were most representative of France as a whole," Ms Schultheis says. 
 
 "They sent out people to knock on 300,000 doors." 
 
 The volunteers didn't just hand out flyers - they carried out 25,000 in-depth interviews of about 15 minutes with voters across the country. That information was entered into a large database which helped inform campaign priorities and policies. 
 
 "It was a massive focus group for Macron in gauging the temperature of the country but also made sure that people had contact with his movement early on, making sure that volunteers knew how to go door to door. It was a training exercise that really laid the groundwork for what he did this year," Ms Schultheis explains. 
 
 And he capitalised on it. 
 
 He had a positive message 
 
 Mr Macron's political persona appears beset with contradictions. 
 
 The "newcomer" who was President Hollande's protege and then economy minister; the ex-investment banker running a grassroots movement; the centrist with a radical programme to slash the public sector. 
 
 It was perfect ammunition for run-off rival Marine Le Pen, who said he was the candidate of the elite, not the novice he said he was. 
 
 Image copyright Getty/AFP Image caption Protester versus pop music - observers said Le Pen rallies couldn't match the positivity on show at Macron gatherings 
 
 But he dodged attempts to label him as another François Hollande, creating a profile that resonated among people desperate for something new. 
 
 "There is a very prevalent pessimistic mood in France - in a way, too pessimistic - and he comes with a very optimistic, positive message," says Marc-Olivier Padis. 
 
 "He's young, full of energy, and he's not explaining what he'll do for France but how people will get opportunities. He's the only one to have this kind of message." 
 
 He was up against Marine Le Pen 
 
 Up against his more optimistic tone, Marine Le Pen's message came across as negative - anti-immigration, anti-EU, anti-system. 
 
 Macron campaign rallies featured brightly lit arenas blaring with pop music, says Emily Schultheis, while Marine Le Pen's mass meetings involved protesters throwing bottles and flares, a heavy police presence, dark audience stands and an "angrier" undercurrent. 
 
 Image copyright Reuters Image caption Emmanuel Macron's rallies came across as youthful and fresh, while his rival's message appeared more negative 
 
 The big TV debate on 3 May was an angry affair, with a string of insults hurled by both sides. 
 
 She was a "grand priestess of fear", a snake-oil merchant from the same extremist background as her father. He was a Socialist puppet, a dangerous tool of global finance who would do whatever Germany's Angela Merkel asked. 
 
 But many were alarmed by the prospect of a potentially destabilising and divisive far-right presidency and saw him as the last obstacle in her way. 
 
 Marine Le Pen may have run a highly effective campaign, but her poll ratings have been on the slide for months. She was ahead in the polls last year, nudging 30%, and yet in just two weeks she has been beaten twice by Emmanuel Macron. 
 
 Insults that marked fierce debate 
 
 The issues dividing Le Pen and Macron 
 
 In depth: Meteoric rise of Emmanuel Macron 
 
 In depth: Is Marine Le Pen far right? ||||| CLOSE Former secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warns against feeling reassured by the expected defeat of far-right candidate Marine Le Pen in the French presidential election Sunday. USA TODAY 
 
 Former secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (Photo: Jack Gruber, USAT) 
 
 WASHINGTON — Former secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warns against feeling reassured by the defeat of far-right candidate Marine Le Pen in the French presidential election Sunday. 
 
 "I really do believe that these populists are changing the character of the politics just by being there, so even mainstream candidates are having to respond to their agenda," Rice told Capital Download. "You see fewer people talking about free trade. You see countries talking about industrial policy and protectionism. It's hard to defend immigrants almost any place in the world today. ... 
 
 "The rise of nativism is having an impact on the politics, even if the candidates aren't winning." 
 
 More than four years ago, Rice began writing a book about the challenges to democracy, especially in nations that only recently have moved toward free elections. Now Democracy: Stories from the Long Road to Freedom, is being published Tuesday by Twelve in the wake of the unexpected passage of Brexit in Great Britain and the surprise election of Donald Trump in the United States. 
 
 In a final chapter, Rice describes "the rise of populism, nativism, and a tinge of isolationism" around the world. "It is no surprise that this earthquake is shaking young democracies like Poland," she wrote. "But it is stunning that it has jolted the most mature of them." 
 
 The 486-page book is at its core a push-back to the America First ideology advocated by candidate Trump, the sense that the United States should be less engaged in international affairs and less concerned about advocating human rights outside its borders. Rice argues that the United States is essential in protecting and expanding democracies, an approach that she says ultimately safeguards American interests. 
 
 In an interview Saturday with USA TODAY's video newsmaker series, Rice was tempered in her comments about Trump — praising his national-security team as "outstanding," saying Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was "fantastic," and suggesting the president and his administration was successfully learning on the job. She declined to criticize the administration's proposal to cut the State Department budget by nearly 30% and to eliminate thousands of agency jobs. 
 
 Consider Trump's praise of authoritarian strongmen abroad, among them Russian President Vladimir Putin, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte and even North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. "A pretty smart cookie," Trump said in an interview on CBS' Face the Nation last week. 
 
 Does that send a dangerous message? 
 
 "The president's words matter," Rice said, though she distinguished between allies like el-Sisi — "I have no problem with that" — and adversaries like the erratic Kim. 
 
 "The president of the United States is the most important voice for our foreign policy. He's the most important voice for our values and for our interests, and the use of that voice is important, and I think we're starting to see recognition of that." 
 
 While every new president faces a learning curve, she acknowledged that it may be particularly steep in this administration. "President Trump has never been in government," she noted. "As a matter of fact, a lot of the people around him have never been in government as well. Yes, I think that they are getting accustomed to what the presidency can do." 
 
 Democracy: Stories from the Long Road to Freedom, by Condoleezza Rice (Photo: Twelve, publisher) 
 
 Rice, now 62 and a professor at Stanford, was a National Security Council aide with a specialty in Russia for the elder President Bush. (She still occasionally watches Russian newscasts online.) During the younger President Bush's administration, she became the first woman to serve as White House national security adviser. She was secretary of State during George W. Bush's second term. 
 
 During last year's presidential campaign, she called for Trump to withdraw as a candidate after the release of the Access Hollywood tape that included audio of him bragging about sexually assaulting women. "Enough!" she wrote on Facebook in October. "Donald Trump should not be President." 
 
 Five months later, in March, she sat down with Trump in the White House for what she calls "a very good meeting." 
 
 "For me, he is the president of the United States," she said. "He won it fair and square. We have an electoral process in our democracy and I completely respect that process and its outcome. I also respect the fact that he saw something and felt something in the population that a lot of people didn't see. And people took the democratic road to find a candidate who they thought would represent their interests and deal with their aspirations, deal with their fears, and so I respect that. 
 
 "He's the president, and I'll do what I can to help him." 
 
 That is, to help him. Not to join his administration. 
 
 "I'm going to stay in California," she demurred. "I'm a happy professor." 
 
 A photo gallery of Condoleezza Rice: 
 
 
 
 Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2pjX3uP ||||| Far-right leader and candidate for the 2017 French presidential election, Marine Le Pen, addresses supporters after exit poll results of the first round of the presidential election were announced at... (Associated Press) 
 
 Far-right leader and candidate for the 2017 French presidential election, Marine Le Pen, addresses supporters after exit poll results of the first round of the presidential election were announced at her election day headquarters in Henin-Beaumont, northern France, Sunday, April 23, 2017. Polling agency... (Associated Press) 
 
 PARIS (AP) — French voters shut out the country's political mainstream from the presidency for the first time in the country's modern history, and on Monday found themselves being courted across the spectrum for the runoff election. 
 
 The May 7 runoff will be between the populist Marine Le Pen and centrist Emmanuel Macron, and French politicians on the moderate left and right immediately urged voters to block Le Pen's path to power. 
 
 The defeated far-left candidate, Jean-Luc Melenchon, pointedly refused to do the same, and Le Pen's National Front is hoping to do the once unthinkable and peel away voters historically opposed to a party long tainted by racism and anti-Semitism. 
 
 "The voters who voted for Mr. Melenchon are angry voters. They can be in agreement with us," said Steeve Brios, a vice president of Le Pen's National Front party. He said they express a choice "outside the system." 
 
 Choosing inside the system is no longer an option for French voters, who rejected the two mainstream parties that have alternated power for decades in favor of Le Pen and the untested Macron, who has never held elected office and who founded his own political movement just last year. Turnout was 78 percent. 
 
 Socialist candidate Benoit Hamon, whose party holds a majority in the legislature and whose President Francois Hollande is the most unpopular in modern French record-keeping, got just 6 percent. The conservative candidate fared marginally better, coming in third with just shy of 20 percent of the vote. 
 
 "We are in a phase of decomposition, demolition, deconstruction," said former Socialist prime minister Manuel Valls. "We didn't do the work — intellectual, ideological and political — on what the left is, and we paid the price." 
 
 Both center-right and center-left fell in behind Macron, whose optimistic vision of a tolerant France and a united Europe with open borders is a stark contrast to Le Pen's darker, inward-looking "French-first" platform that calls for closed borders, tougher security, less immigration and dropping the shared euro currency to return to the French franc. 
 
 European stock markets surged on the open as investors welcomed the first-round results, with Macron favored to win. German Chancellor Angela Merkel wished Macron "all the best for the next two weeks." 
 
 Merkel's chief of staff, Peter Altmaier, tweeted that "the result for Emmanuel Macron shows: France AND Europe can win together! The center is stronger than the populists think!" 
 
 Le Pen's father, Jean-Marie, made it to the second round against Jacques Chirac in 2002 and was crushed. Many commentators expect the same fate for his daughter, but she has already drawn far more support than he ever did and she's transformed the party's once-pariah image. 
 
 Le Pen offers an alternative for anyone skeptical of the European Union and France's role in it, said Louis Aliot, the vice president of the National Front party. 
 
 "I'm not convinced that the French are willing to sign a blank check to Mr. Macron," he said. 
 
 But Macron's party spokesman, Benjamin Griveaux, said the far-right candidate is hardly a vector of change. 
 
 "She's been in the political system for 30 years. She inherited her father's party and we will undoubtedly have Le Pens running for the next 20 years, because after we had the father, we have the daughter and we will doubtless have the niece," he said. "So she is in a truly bad position to be talking about the elites and the people." 
 
 Macron came in first in Sunday's vote, with just over 23 percent; Le Pen had 21 percent; Melenchon and losing conservative candidate Francois Fillon each had 19 percent. Fillon, a former prime minister, bested the former Trotskyist by just 94,998 votes. 
 
 Protesters overnight burned cars, danced around bonfires and dodged riot police at the Place de la Bastille and Republique. Twenty-nine people were detained at the Bastille, where protesters waved red flags and sang "No Marine and No Macron!" in anger at the results. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Ganley reported from Henin-Beaumont. Lori Hinnant and Thomas Adamson contributed from Paris. 
 
 ___ 
 
 This corrects that Socialist candidate was Benoit Hamon ||||| Here to stay: University of Georgia professor Cas Mudde , who has authored a number of works on populism and extremism in Europe, told Axios that the far right's well-established place in French politics, having played a part for the last 40 years, means Macron's presidency will only affect the National Front in the short-term: 
 
 With Emmanuel Macron's resounding victory in yesterday's French presidential election, it's easy to craft a narrative trumpeting the resilience of the grand European experiment and the death of European populism. But to do so would ignore a fundamental truth: Marine Le Pen might have lost, but her performance — capturing more than a third of the French electorate — was another step toward the normalization of far-right politics across both the continent and the West at large. 
 
 Not a surprise: In her defeat, Le Pen nearly doubled the vote tally of her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, in 2002's presidential runoff — the National Front's only prior appearance in the presidential election's second round — and she did so in a way that felt not only normal but expected. When Jean-Marie advanced to the runoff, France reacted with an almost visceral shock that saw more than a million people take to the streets. This time, Marine's success in the first round had been a constant expectation in polls stretching back to 2013. Though she failed to enter the Élysée, Marine's greatest victory is the transformation of the National Front into a mainstream force in French politics. 
 
 The next test: June's parliamentary elections will set the tone for the future of the National Front, which Le Pen has vowed will see a "deep transformation" into a "new political force," maybe even with a new name. Right now, polls have the party winning somewhere around 15 to 25 seats in the National Assembly — up from its current two. If the National Front does not have a strong result, Mudde believes that Le Pen "will become more criticized within the party, but she is still too strong to be replaced." 
 
 Farther ahead: If the pressure does mount on Le Pen, there's buzz that her replacement could be her 27-year-old niece Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, who was elected as an MP in 2012. Marion is even more hardline than her aunt, representing a move back toward the party's traditional far-right on religious and social issues. Steve Bannon called her a "rising star" and Sarah Palin gushingly named her a reminder of Joan of Arc, so perhaps Marion will attempt to lead the National Front to a coronation in 2022.
– The pollsters were wrong once again with France's presidential runoff election but there was no surprise result this time: Emmanuel Macron defeated far-right candidate Marine Le Pen 66% to 34%, a much bigger margin than the 20 points that had been predicted, Reuters reports. But 34% was still a record for Le Pen's National Front, and analysts say it shows the pro-business, pro-EU Macron has a big struggle ahead to unite a divided nation—as does the fact that in a race between two political outsiders, more than a third of voters either didn't show up or cast a blank ballot. A roundup of coverage: The BBC looks at five reasons for what it calls the "political earthquake" of Macron's victory. They include the scandal that knocked out the initial front-runner, and a strong grassroots operation inspired by Barack Obama's 2008 victory. The result may be a sign that the "populist wave" that led to the Brexit vote and the election of President Trump may be fading, the New York Times reports. "I understand the divisions of our country that have led some to vote for extremists," Macron said after the vote. "I understand the anger, the anxiety, the doubts that a great part among us have also expressed." Governing is going to be the hard part for Macron, who will have to deal with the country's established political parties while implementing his "neither left nor right" policies, EJ Dionne writes in a Washington Post op-ed. "Macron is both a former investment banker and a moderate social democrat," he writes. "Demonstrating how these two sides of him fit together will define the drama of his presidency." The Guardian predicts that there will be no honeymoon period for the 39-year-old president-elect and his "En Marche" movement. As well as the sharp divide between left and right, he has to deal with problems including mass youth unemployment, rising inequality, and the threat of terrorism, which still has the country under a state of emergency. Condoleezza Rice tells USA Today that despite the defeat, Marine Le Pen and similar anti-free trade, anti-immigration populists are still having a worrying effect on politics. "I really do believe that these populists are changing the character of the politics just by being there, so even mainstream candidates are having to respond to their agenda," she says. Vladimir Putin and President Trump were among the world leaders congratulating Macron on Sunday. "I look very much forward to working with him!" Trump tweeted. A spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel described the win as a victory for a "strong and united Europe," France24 reports. CNN notes that centrist candidates in Europe and elsewhere are now looking to Macron for an example of how to defeat candidates like Le Pen amid widespread voter dissatisfaction. Macron's youth—he is France's youngest president ever and its youngest leader since Napoleon Bonaparte became emperor at 34—helped distance him from the political establishment.