May 7 (UPI) — Exit polls released after polls closed in Sunday’s French presidential election predict Emmanuel Macron came out on top with 65 percent of the vote.
Far-right candidate Marine Le Pen of the National Front party called Macron to concede the election shortly after polls closed at 8 p.m. local time Sunday and exit polling data from Ipsos, Ifop and BVA indicated a strong lead for the centrist candidate.
Macron, of the En Marche! Party, is now expected to become be France’s youngest president at the age of 39.
Exit polls suggested Macron captured 65 percent of Sunday’s vote, compared to 35 for Le Pen.
The result came at the end of a tumultuous campaign that saw Macron and Le Pen come out on top of a field of 11 candidates in an initial round of voting, capturing 24 percent and 21 percent respectively.
The campaign took a further twist when an information hack led to the release of a trove of documents related to the Macron campaign, which said some of the released documents were fraudulent. The release came at the start of France’s mandated media blackout on the final day before voting.
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker congratulated Macron on Twitter.
“Happy that French voters chose a European future,” Juncker tweeted.
France’s outgoing Socialist Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve released a statement hailing the results, saying “voters have today rejected the extreme right’s dismal project, and shown their unmovable commitment to the values of the Republic.”
Le Pen congratulated Macron in a short speech and called on “all patriots to join” her party in what she described as a struggle between “patriots and globalists.”
