Emmanuel Macron won re-election over Putin loyalist Marine Le Pen. The margin was large, but smaller than it was four years ago. Given the economic dislocations of the past three years, this was about as good as Le Pen could hope to do, although her naked embrace of Putin probably didn't help her.
This is the brilliance and the flaw in French elections. In round one, all candidates are on the ballot. Every voice in France is allowed a chance to be heard. If no candidate gets 50% - which is always - it goes to a second round with the top two vote getters. This guarantees the president gets a majority of the vote.
Imagine if, in 2016, Clinton and Trump had gone instead into a runoff, as neither got 50% of the vote. (First, of course, we would get rid of that stupid anachronism, the Electoral College.) In this scenario, all of those Jill Stein voters or Gary Johnson voters who just couldn't stomach Trump would likely migrate to Clinton - reluctantly, as many voters cast reluctant votes for Macron today.
And that's the down side. If the runner-up is Le Pen, you really don't have much choice but to vote against her. The first round: tremendous choice. The second round: the lesser of two evils.
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