Macron the overwhelming favorite of French citizens who voted in Lebanon

Clear victory in France, overwhelming victory in Lebanon. Emmanuel Macron received 79 percent of the votes cast by French residents of Lebanon, compared to only 21 percent for Marine Le Pen, twenty points more than in France, where the incumbent president won with nearly 59 percent of the votes cast.

According to official figures published by the French Embassy in Lebanon, 5,942 voters cast their ballots for Macron against 1,585 for the candidate of the National Rally party. The turnout was higher than in the first round, where 37.6 percent of registered voters cast their ballots. It reached 41.2 percent for this second round, with 7,634 registered voters out of the 18,510 people registered on the consular electoral lists. Finally, there were 89 blank votes and 18 invalid votes.

The abstention rate was 58.76 percent for the second round in Lebanon, against 62.32 percent for the first round, a figure higher than that of France, where 28 percent of voters abstained, a record since the French presidential election of 1969.

Compared to 2017, the gap widened

In the second round of the 2017 presidential election, which also pitted Emmanuel Macron against Marine Le Pen, 17,674 French citizens residing in Lebanon were registered on the consular electoral rolls. 44.19 percent of them had voted, according to official figures.

At the time, Macron had gathered 68.63 percent of the votes cast by French citizens residing in Lebanon, against 31.37 percent for Marine Le Pen. This represented 5,064 votes against 2,315 respectively, and the gap between the two candidates, therefore, widened even more in 2022.