France rejects Le Pen and her right-wing populist tide, and turns to Macron

France on Sunday shrugged off the siren call of right-wing populism that enchanted voters in the United States and United Kingdom, rejecting anti-E.U. firebrand Marine Le Pen and choosing as its next president Emmanuel Macron, a centrist political neophyte who has pledged to revive both his struggling country and the flailing continent.

The result brought to a close a tumultuous and polarized campaign that defied prediction at nearly every turn, though not at the end. Pre-election polls had forecast a sizable Macron victory, and he delivered — winning some 65 percent of the vote.

The landslide was just the latest blow in 2017 for far-right movements that had seemed to be on the march last year, but have suffered a series of setbacks in recent months across continental Europe.

In a pointed endorsement of European unity, Macron strode to the stage at his raucous victory party in the grand central courtyard of Paris’s Louvre Museum on Sunday night to the strains of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, the European Union’s anthem.

“The task that awaits us, my fellow citizens, is immense and it starts tomorrow,” Macron said as thousands of supporters cheered and waved French flags.