French president-elect Emmanuel Macron hails 'new page of our history'

Projections gave Macron, leader of the fledgling centrist En Marche! party nearly 66 percent of the vote, with slightly more than 34 percent for Le Pen, who conceded defeat.

According to a poll by Ipsos, 43 percent of people who voted for Macron on Sunday did so to beat Le Pen.

Macron captured an estimated 65% of the vote on Sunday, easily defeating the far right populist Marine Le Pen, who had campaigned on pulling France out of the euro, and perhaps even the European Union.

Emmanuel Macron has defeated Marine Le Pen in the race to be France's next president.

As the extent of his resounding victory sank in, Macron told a sea jubilant supporters waving French flags outside the Louvre Museum in Paris: "Tonight, France won".

"Our task is huge", he warned.

Macron becomes not only France's youngest-ever president but also one of its most unlikely.

The muted analysis was partly based on an acknowledgment of the problems facing Macron, a 39-year-old former banker who has never held elected office.

Emmanuel Macron's election Sunday as the next president of France marks the third time in four months that European voters have declined to follow the United States in electing a populist anti-immigration leader, a development that mainstream European leaders found heartening.

At the same time, she also said that she was immediately beginning a new election campaign for the parliamentary elections scheduled for the next few months. Margot Taieb, a 27-year-old Parisian voter who works in human resources, welcomed a change in the political scenery. He also said the party first considered the changes during the campaign.

"By pushing for a stronger EU. and the revival of the Franco-German relationship, Macron should give a new impetus to the eurozone and European integration process", said Marion Amiot, senior economist at Oxford Economics.

He said: "I am delighted that the ideas you defended, of a strong and progressive Europe, which protects all its citizens, will be those that you will carry into your presidency in the debate about the history of Europe".

UniCredit SpA, which now expects the shared currency to finish the year at $1.10, is likely to revise higher the forecast if the second round passes without any surprise, strategists including Vasileios Gkionakis said in a note to clients before the vote.

France's biggest labour union, the CFDT, welcomed Macron's victory but said that the National Front's score was still worryingly high. The far-left, communist-backed candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon, who lost narrowly in the first round, refused to guide his supporters toward Macron or Le Pen. They have one scrap of data in their favor: It took Jean-Marie Le Pen three presidential elections, not to mention decades of party leadership, to become a real contender. So far, the National Front has made it to the second round of the French presidential vote only twice - in 2002 and 2017.

Then there is the question of Macron's relations with France's adversaries and friends.

"After Brexit and Trump, it's as if we are the last bastion of the Enlightenment", she said.

She said her party would be turned into "a new political force", suggesting a possible rebranding of the National Front to further distance it from its sulfurous roots in the French extreme right.

After the most closely watched and unpredictable French presidential campaign in recent memory, many voters rejected the run-off choice altogether - pollsters project there were a record number of blank or spoiled ballots. Le Pen portrayed Macron as a heartless capitalist, while he repeatedly asked her to stop telling lies and saying "stupid things". One of his most risky opponents, conservative former Prime Minister Francois Fillon, was vilified after allegations that his family benefited from cushy taxpayer-funded jobs for years.

EU Council President Donald Tusk also offered his congratulations.

"She's a good looking 64", said one young student watching.

Macron's team successfully skirted several attempts to derail his campaign - by hacking its communications and distributing purportedly leaked documents - that were reminiscent of the hacking of Democratic Party communications during Hillary Clinton's United States election campaign.