After a campaign packed with shocks, dirty tricks and invective, Macron beat the National Front leader, who won 34.5 percent support, to become, at 39, the youngest president in the history of France's post-war fifth republic.

But his victory was marred by the high number of abstentions, many of them apparently from left-wingers who voted for Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the first round and are bittetly hostile to his free-market economic programme.

So Macron can expect vigorous opposition from unions and a left boosted by Mélenchon's seven million votes to his plan to make new reforms to France's labour law and social conflict seems pretty much guaranteed.

Macron's election will have been greeted with a huge sigh of relief in Brussels, where Le Pen's threat to pull out of the euro and put France's membership of the European Union to a referendum had sent shivers down spines, especially in the aftermath of Brexit.

Most of France's mainstream politicians feel the same way, failed right-wing candidate François Fillon having called for a vote for the centrist to stop Le Pen, as did most MPs of his Republicans Party, and many of the Socialist Party leaders having campaigned for Macron, despite the fact that the party had its own candidate, Benoît Hamon, in the first round.

Although most commentators stressed the difference in their programmes, Macron and Le Pen did have some things in common - they are both millionaires, they have both claimed to be neither on the right nor on the left, and they both lead parties that have never held the presidency or led a government.

Both France's mainstream parties - the Socialists and the Republicans - came out of the first round profoundly damaged and the second round result will increase their woes.

Le Pen referred to their "decomposition" in her speech after the result was announced, adding that her party would undergo a "profound transformation" in order to create a "new political force."

The two traditional parties have been rejected by many who feel hard hit by globalisation and European Union-backed austerity policies.

Some Republicans voters appear to have ignored Fillon's appeal and backed Le Pen, who is now a major force on the right, even if her much-criticised performance in her TV debate with Macron may have damaged her attempts to render the National Front (FN) acceptable.

The Socialists, too, have lost support to the FN, notably in deindustrialised areas like the north, which was a bastion of theirs for decades.

The parliamentary elections that will take place in June will be a major challenge for both the Republicans and the Socialists.

Macron, who will form the next government, has said that his En Marche ! (Onwards!) party will not endorse any candidate who does not stand under its colours.

That poses a dilemma for any politician with ambitions to be a minister, former Socialist prime minister Manuel Valls, for example.

So there could be mass defections, particularly from Socialist ranks.

Of course, En Marche !, which has only just been formed, may not repeat its presidential success in the parliamentary poll and Macron could be obliged to form some sort of coalition.

In any case, the next parliament is likely to be very different in its make-up to the outgoing one.

The National Front certainly hopes to increase its number of MPs from the one member and the one supporter in the present legislature.

Mélenchon and his allies also hope to increase their representation, although projections in the media do not show a triumph for them.

Whatever happens, France's 2017 presidential election has turned a page of history and the next chapter in the country's history looks likely to be stormy.

To read our French presidential election 2017 coverage click here</s>PARIS (AP) — Far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen said Friday she believes she can pull off a surprise victory in France’s high-stakes runoff Sunday, while independent front-runner Emmanuel Macron suffered a document leak that his team called a bid to throw the vote.

In an interview with The Associated Press in the final hours of a hostile, topsy-turvy campaign, Le Pen said that win or lose, “we changed everything.” She claimed an “ideological victory” for her populist, anti-immigrant worldview in an election that could change Europe’s direction.

Macron’s political movement said late Friday night it has been the victim of a “massive and coordinated” hacking attack that led to the leak of campaign emails and financial documents.

In a statement, the En Marche movement said it was hacked a few weeks ago, and that the leaked documents have been mixed with false documents to “seed doubt and disinformation” and destabilize Sunday’s presidential runoff. Hillary Clinton’s U.S. presidential campaign suffered similar leaks, and also said that authentic documents were mixed with false documents.

Fears of hacking, fake news manipulation and Russian meddling clouded the French campaign but had largely gone unrealized — until Friday’s admission by Macron’s campaign that it had suffered an online pirate attack.

U.S. far-right circles were abuzz with the news that Macron’s campaign had been hit by a massive disclosure, but the news comes soon after a crude forgery was circulated on an online message board popular with pranksters and extremists. Wikileaks sounded a skeptical note, saying the Macron leaks might be misinformation.

The candidates stopped campaigning at midnight Friday to give voters a day of reflection before the election. It’s a stark choice: Le Pen’s anti-immigration, anti-European Union platform, or Macron’s progressive, pro-EU stance.

Tensions marred the race right to the end.

France’s presidential voting watchdog called on the Interior Ministry late Friday to look into claims by the Le Pen campaign that ballot papers are being tampered with nationwide to benefit Macron. The Le Pen campaign said electoral administrators in several regions who receive ballot papers for both candidates have found the Le Pen ballot “systematically torn up.”

Earlier in the day, anti-Le Pen crowds disrupted her visit to a renowned cathedral in Reims.

The presidential campaign has been unusually bitter, with voters hurling eggs and flour, protesters clashing with police and candidates insulting each other on national television — a reflection of the widespread public disaffection with politics as usual.

Le Pen, 48, has brought her far-right National Front party, once a pariah for its racism and anti-Semitism, closer than ever to the French presidency, seizing on working-class voters’ growing frustration with globalization and immigration. Even if she loses, she is likely to be a powerful opposition figure in French politics in the upcoming parliamentary election campaign.

“Even if we don’t reach our goal, in any event there is a gigantic political force that is born,” she told AP in her campaign headquarters. Her party “imposed the overhaul” of French politics and set the tone of the election, she said.

The 39-year-old Macron, too, played a key role in upending France’s traditional political structure with his wild-card campaign.

Voters liked the idea, and chose Macron and Le Pen in the first-round vote, dumping the traditional left and right parties that have governed modern France. Le Pen said those parties have been “blackballed.”

Many voters, however, don’t like either Le Pen or Macron. They fear her party’s racist past, while worrying that his platform would demolish worker job protections or be too much like his mentor, the deeply unpopular outgoing President Francois Hollande.

Students protested both presidential candidates Friday by blocking high schools and marching through Paris.

Le Pen, who was pelted with eggs Thursday in Brittany, was met by hecklers Friday at the Reims cathedral. She left via an unmarked door, putting her arms over her head as if to protect herself and diving into a black car.

Le Pen denounced her critics for disrupting a sacred place during her final campaign stop. The site has special meaning for her National Front party because it’s the cathedral where Charles VII was crowned in the presence of Joan of Arc — the party’s icon — at a time of war and division.

In the AP interview, Le Pen said she was confident she can bring the divided country together if elected.

“Yes. I want most of all to put democracy back in place … we must re-weave the links among people.” She said.

The pro-business Macron, who topped all vote-getters in the first-round, also has been booed and heckled frequently as he visited blue-collar workers.

Violent protests erupted in Paris earlier this week against both candidates, with several police officers injured. And critics decried the bitter tone of Wednesday night’s presidential debate.

Le Pen acknowledged to AP that she became angry at the debate but said she was merely channeling the mood of France.

Macron acknowledged that the French are exasperated by the government’s ineffectiveness, but he dismissed Le Pen’s vision of an infuriated country.

She “speaks for no one. … Madame Le Pen exploits anger and hatred,” Macron told RTL radio.

The unprecedented negativity in one of the most unpredictable and scandal-hit French presidential campaigns in recent times has turned off countless voters.

About 100 students pulled garbage bins in front of the entrance to the Lycee Colbert in northeastern Paris, with cardboard signs saying, “Neither Le Pen nor Macron, neither the fatherland nor the boss,” — a reference to Le Pen’s nationalist views and Macron’s pro-business ties.

Students at another school, Lycee Buffon, wrote an open letter calling on the French to exercise their vote and recalling the fate of five students shot in 1943 for fighting the Nazis. Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie, has minimized the Holocaust, and her National Front party has been stained by anti-Semitism in the past.

“Even if I’m not old enough to vote, I’m concerned,” the letter said. “Dear reader, you should know that Marine Le Pen’s France is not the France we love. Our France is beautiful, tolerant and cosmopolitan. So go and vote on Sunday, for this France, this democracy.”

Never miss another Facebook post from 8News

Find 8News on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram; send your news tips to iReport8@wric.com.</s>PARIS (AP) — The Latest on France’s presidential runoff between centrist Emmanuel Macron and far-right candidate Marine Le Pen (all times local):

Feminist activists have hung a big banner from a church to protest French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen in the depressed northern town where she is casting her ballot.

The activists were quickly detained after the protest Sunday in Henin-Beaumont, the latest among many actions in recent days against Le Pen or against both candidates.

Polls suggest centrist Emmanuel Macron is favored to beat Le Pen in Sunday’s runoff election.

Parisian voter Yves Robert staged his own kind of protest, casting a blank ballot. Many voters like him are both worried about the racist past of Le Pen’s National Front party and worried about the 39-year-old Macron’s inexperience or his pro-business policies.

Retiree Gabrielle Lebbe says she voted because she’s “worried for my grandchildren, I’m worried for the world.”

Voters across France are casting ballots in a presidential election runoff that could decide Europe’s future, choosing between independent Emmanuel Macron and far-right populist Marine Le Pen.

With Macron the pollsters’ favorite, voting stations opened across mainland France at 8 a.m. (0600 GMT) under the watch of 50,000 security forces guarding against extremist attacks. Polling agency projections and initial official results will be available when the final stations close at 8 p.m. (1800 GMT).

The unusually tense and unpredictable French presidential campaign ended with a hacking attack and document leak targeting Macron on Friday night. France’s government cybersecurity agency is investigating the hack.

Either candidate would lead France into uncharted territory, since neither comes from the mainstream parties that dominate parliament and have run the country for decades.</s>Francois Fillon came third in Sunday's first round with 19.9 per cent of the vote and pledged his support to Macron in his concession speech. The Ifop poll suggested that 42 per cent of Fillon supporters will heed their candidate's advice but that 31 per cent would switch to Le Pen.

While 51 per cent of Mélenchon supporters said that they would switch to Macron in round two, just 12 per cent said they'd vote for Le Pen with the remaining 37 per cent preferring to abstain.

All this meant that Le Pen had a lot of persuading to do over the fortnight between the two votes.

Edouard Lecerf of the Kantar Public polling firm told The Telegraph: "Macron’s strength is that even if he isn’t the first choice for the 50 per cent of the first-round voters whose preferred candidates were eliminated in the first round, he is still seen as acceptable by many of them, whereas Marine Le Pen isn’t."

Our poll tracker takes in national polls from OpinionWay, Ifop-Fiducial, Elabe, Harris and BVA Interactive. Their individual polls, while of different sample sizes, take in a representative sample. Their individual margin of errors vary from +/-0.8 per cent to +/-3.3 per cent.</s>Macron won between 65.5 and 66.1 percent of the vote ahead of far-right Marine Le Pen on between 33.9 percent and 34.5 percent: estimates</s>The leader of the anti-immigration National Front (FN), which won almost a third of the votes in regional elections this month but is shunned as extremist by mainstream politicians, posted the photo on her Twitter account along with two others.

She did it to object to views voiced by an author, who said there were similarities between her party and Islamic State.

"This is #Daesh," she said in the posting, using the pejorative Arabic term for the jihadist group that controls swathes of Syria and Iraq and is being bombed by Western forces.

Among the photos was the beheaded corpse of a man in a prisoner-style orange tracksuit with his severed head placed on his chest.

"We are offended that that awful image of our son's brutal murder be used publicly," Diana Foley said in an interview on Europe 1 radio. "To tweet it again just continues to promote their propaganda - the horrible way they recruit others who want to be brutal. I certainly do not want that to continue."

Separately, in a joint statement with Foley's father John tweeted by Nicolas Henin, a French journalist and former Islamic State captive, Diana Foley said: "We are deeply disturbed by the unsolicited use of Jim for Le Pen's political gain and hope that the picture of our son, along with two other graphic photographs, are taken down immediately."

The beheading picture had vanished from Le Pen's Twitter account on Thursday, but two others - one showing a prisoner being burnt alive and the other a tank driving over another man in an orange tracksuit - were still there.

Le Pen told journalists she did not know one of the pictures was of Foley, adding that she removed it after the family asked her to do so. She did not say why she left the other two graphic pictures on her Twitter account.

A French prosecutor in Nanterre, west of Paris, opened a preliminary investigation into the publication of violent images, a spokesman said on Thursday.

Le Pen's tweet was a response to a comment from Gilles Kepel, an academic who this week published a book called "Terror in the Hexagon (France)" about French-born jihadist militants.

In a radio interview, Kepel said that although Islamic State and the National Front were very different, there were similarities because of their politics of exclusion.

Le Pen has strived for years to make her anti-Europe, anti-immigrant party more mainstream. Seeking to soften the party's image, she usually avoids the type of provocative acts that her father, FN founder Jean-Marie, relishes.</s>Ms Le Pen said that the far-Right party must be relaunched after conceding defeat.

She had temporarily stepped down as leader of the Front National inbetween the first round of voting and the run-off in an attempt to broaden her appeal.

Jean-Marie Le Pen said on Sunday evening that his daughter's bid for the presidency had been undermined by its promise to ditch the euro and hold a referendum on EU membership.</s>Mr Macron won by 66.06% to 33.94% to become, at 39, the country’s youngest president.

Mr Macron will also become the first president from outside the two traditional main parties since the modern republic’s foundation in 1958.

He said that a new page was being turned in French history.

“I want it to be a page of hope and renewed trust,” he said.

Mr Macron said he had heard “the rage, anxiety and doubt that a lot of you have expressed” and vowed to spend his five years in office “fighting the forces of division that undermine France”.

He said he would “guarantee the unity of the nation and… defend and protect Europe.”

In his speech to the crowd, he said: “Tonight you won, France won. Everyone told us it was impossible, but they don’t know France.”

But he repeated a number of times that the task facing him and the country was enormous.

He said: “We have the strength, the energy and the will – and we will not give in to fear.”

His mention of Ms Le Pen drew loud boos, and he said he would do all he could to ensure in future there would be no reason to vote for extremism.</s>The Latest on France's presidential runoff between centrist Emmanuel Macron and far-right candidate Marine Le Pen (all times local):

Outgoing French president Francois Hollande has cast his vote in the runoff election to replace him.

Hollande voted Sunday morning in his political fiefdom of Tulle in southwestern France.

Hollande, the most unpopular French leader in the country's modern history, decided not to stand for re-election last year.

The Socialist president has called on voters to reject far-right candidate Marine Le Pen and to back centrist Emmanuel Macron, his former prot?g?.

The Socialist candidate, Benoit Hamon, was eliminated in the election's first round after receiving some 6 percent of the vote.

Police and soldiers are working to secure symbolic Paris venues where France's next president will celebrate victory after Sunday's runoff election between centrist Emmanuel Macron and far-right candidate Marine Le Pen.

Macron has opted for the dignified Esplanade du Louvre, the courtyard of the renowned museum in central Paris. The Louvre is already heavily guarded after an extremist attacker targeted soldiers near the museum during the presidential campaign.

If Le Pen wins, she plans to celebrate at the Chalet du Lac (sha-LAY doo lahk) in the Bois de Vincennes (bu-AH de vin-SEN) , a vast park on Paris' eastern edge. She is notably staying away from the area around the Paris Opera, associated with her father's past xenophobic reign over her National Front party.

Celebration sites have a huge symbolic power, and both candidates are trying to break with the past and the traditional left-right divide. It's no wonder Macron didn't choose the Bastille or Republique squares, two highly popular places for the left, or the Place de la Concorde, where former right-wing President Nicolas Sarkozy celebrated his victory.

Feminist activists have hung a big banner from a church to protest French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen in the depressed northern town where she is casting her ballot.

The activists were quickly detained after the protest Sunday in Henin-Beaumont, the latest among many actions in recent days against Le Pen or against both candidates.

Polls suggest centrist Emmanuel Macron is favored to beat Le Pen in Sunday's runoff election.

Parisian voter Yves Robert staged his own kind of protest, casting a blank ballot. Many voters like him are both worried about the racist past of Le Pen's National Front party and worried about the 39-year-old Macron's inexperience or his pro-business policies.

Retiree Gabrielle Lebbe says she voted because she's "worried for my grandchildren, I'm worried for the world."

Voters across France are casting ballots in a presidential election runoff that could decide Europe's future, choosing between independent Emmanuel Macron and far-right populist Marine Le Pen.

With Macron the pollsters' favorite, voting stations opened across mainland France at 8 a.m. (0600 GMT) under the watch of 50,000 security forces guarding against extremist attacks. Polling agency projections and initial official results will be available when the final stations close at 8 p.m. (1800 GMT).

The unusually tense and unpredictable French presidential campaign ended with a hacking attack and document leak targeting Macron on Friday night. France's government cybersecurity agency is investigating the hack.

Either candidate would lead France into uncharted territory, since neither comes from the mainstream parties that dominate parliament and have run the country for decades.</s>"I will vote for Le Pen. I think, the fact that she is in an alliance with [France Arise party leader Nicolas] Dupont-Aignan, who has more experience, says that they could achieve something together," the prince said.

According to the prince, independent candidate Macron, who "came out of the blue," is backed by a lobby that includes current president Francois Hollande.

"I simply do not trust them," the prince said.

Last week, Le Pen announced she would make ex-presidential hopeful Dupont-Aignan her prime minister should she win the presidency. Dupont-Aignan, who won 4.7 percent of the vote in the first round of election, said that under the governance deal with Le Pen, his policy proposals would be incorporated in her campaign.

The prince added that Macron was more likely to win, "especially after this week when the debates failed completely."

On Wednesday, Macron and Le Pen held the last debates ahead of the Sunday’s election. Over 60 percent of the viewers found Macron more convincing than Le Pen, and only 34 percent thought that Le Pen was more successful than her opponent.

Never miss a story again — sign up to our Telegram channel and we'll keep you up to speed!
Macron wins the election, earning 66.1% of the vote to Le Pen's 33.9%, becoming the youngest French head of state since Napoleon.