Marwa Shaheen - Beth:
Emmanuel Macron was re-elected as France's president for a second five-year term on Sunday, defeating rival Marine Le Pen, who achieved the highest result for a far-right candidate in a presidential election since the founding of the Fifth Republic in 1958.
The president achieved a clear victory and won between 57.6 and 58.2 percent of the votes, according to semi-final estimates published by polling centers, in an election that was characterized by a high rate of abstention.
According to preliminary estimates by polling institutes, the final turnout in the French elections may reach 72 percent, a decrease of 2.6 points from the 2017 elections, which recorded a turnout of 74.56 percent.
The turnout in the French presidential elections 2022 was about 63.23 percent as of five in the afternoon, according to what the French Ministry of the Interior announced on Sunday.
This means that the final abstention rate is estimated at 28 percent, which is unprecedented since 1969, when it reached 31.15 percent.
President Emmanuel Macron called on voters to trust him for a second five-year term despite the turmoil of his first term due to protests, the epidemic and the war in Ukraine.
Macron's rival, the far-right Marine Le Pen, went to a polling station in her constituency Henin-Beaumont in northern France to cast her vote, and Le Pen's stock appears to have seen her biggest advance ever with voters during her last campaign.
Macron's victory in this vote made him the first French president to win a second term in 20 years.