On May 7th, France elected its new president, Emmanuel Macron, which was a great relief to many countries who feared Le Pen becoming president, and her promise to leave the EU. Shockingly, Macron won by a landslide; a whopping 66% of the population voted for Macron, and a remaining 34% voted for Le Pen. Le Pen gave out congratulations to Macron after admitting to losing. Macron gave a speech, and said that, “Everybody was telling us that it would be impossible — but they didn’t know France.” Most of the French people were very happy with the result, but there was some voters of Macron who voted for him as the lesser of two evils.

A French voter named Deborah, age 27, and a PhD student of sociology voted for Macron, saying that, “I’m relatively happy with the result. Like many people, I didn’t vote with conviction for Macron.” This account represented many voters who oddly weren’t sure who they thought were worse, Macron or Le Pen. But how did students at DHS react to Macron’s success?

Sophomore Brian Kim admitted with relief that, “I’m glad that Le Pen wasn’t elected, because she would’ve screwed things up in France by leaving the EU, leaving Germany and handful of weak countries. But we don’t know much about how Macron will lead France either.” And it’s true. Macron is a businessman who stands behind the banks of France, and his goals aren’t too specific except we know that he’s the opposite of Le Pen, who is a strong rightist. Macron is claimed to be centrist, with some leftist beliefs.

Sophomore Sumedh V. believed that, “Le Pen was never going to win anyways. Europe was so shocked about how Trump won, that there is no way they’d let the same mistake happen to their countries.” After all, Trump’s success in winning our presidential elections was the biggest upset of the country, and international approval of Trump is quite low, holding at sub-45%.

Macron stated in a conference that he would make society “free of constraints and blockages,” which is a serious promise to attempt keeping, and start what called ‘a radical transformation’ of France’s rigid labor market and to downsize the civil service in a bid to create a more flexible economy. All in all, it was a very surprising election. Polls had predicted a majority for Macron, but no one expected Le Pen to lose by such a high amount. Most likely in the future, France will not leave the EU and the euro remains safe, and Macron has plans to change France, stating that he would ‘transform, not reform’ France.