Who won the French presidential election?
At first glance, the answer to this question seems obvious: the winner was the incumbent, Emmanuel Macron, who was re-elected with 58.5% of the vote in the second round of the election on Sunday. But you could be forgiven for thinking that the loser — the far-right candidate, Marine Le Pen — also won. On Sunday night she announced that her defeat was a “spectacular victory”.
Even more confusingly, one of the candidates who did not make it to the second round at all — Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who represented a coalition of far-left movements — claimed victory on Sunday as well. When he appeared on television, shortly after the results were announced, he explained that he represented the “Third Estate”. This historical reference to the group that initiated the French Revolution in 1789 was a way of saying that, even if he had not won this time, he would win very soon.
