Photograph of Marine Le Pen — Marine Le Pen (CC BY 3.0 photograph by Emmanuel d'Aubignosc, Wikimedia Commons). Macron defeated her in both the 2017 and 2022 runoffs.

2022 Election

April 2022 — re-elected, but on a narrower mandate.

The first round — 10 April 2022

Twelve candidates stood. Macron led the first round ahead of Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, in an election dominated by purchasing power and the war in Ukraine.

The runoff — 24 April 2022

Macron defeated Le Pen with 58.54% of valid votes to her 41.46% (UK House of Commons Library, briefing CBP-9522) — a clear win, but twelve points narrower than 2017, and with record abstention. He became the first French president re-elected in twenty years (since Jacques Chirac in 2002).

The mandate problem

The victory was immediately qualified: in the June 2022 legislative elections, his coalition lost its absolute majority, forcing the second term to govern by negotiation, Article 49.3, and shifting alliances — the structural weakness that would define everything after.

Source notes

Result figures (58.54% / 41.46%) and the briefing reference are from the UK House of Commons Library, French presidential election 2022 (CBP-9522). The legislative outcome is a matter of official record.