As expected, what Emmanuel Macron tried to do in his speech this evening is not just appeal to those people who are in his supporter base.
He wanted to appeal to those who stayed at home, who voted "blank", as they say in France, to those who only voted for him to stop Marine Le Pen and indeed to Le Pen supporters as well.
Why? Well the president acknowledged that the country is divided and for any political leader a divided country is a harder country to govern.
So he talked about trying to do what he could do in order to address those divisions in society.
Another reason he wanted to reach out to those voters though, is with an eye on elections in June - where he'll want to do what he did in 2017 and secure a majority in the parliament in order to make sure he has a co-operative legislature.
So he wanted to try to heal some of those divisions and strike the right note of dignity over triumphalism.
LaFilleDuMoulinier on April 24th, 2022 at 20:23 UTC »
Fun fact: the Le Pen family has now lost a total of 8 presidential elections.
alabasterheart on April 24th, 2022 at 18:20 UTC »
Macron will be the first French president since 2002 to win re-election, in a rematch of the 2017 election with Le Pen. He will win by a smaller margin than 2017 (when he won by nearly 33 points), but it’s still pretty substantial. He’s projected to win by more than 16 points. Always happy to see Le Pen losing by a landslide.
TheAssassin777 on April 24th, 2022 at 18:05 UTC »
The Kremlin is not looking too happy right now.