With more numbers coming from the French Interior Ministry, as of 11:31 p.m. local time Macron’s lead is growing to 23.61% as more city votes are counted, vs Le Pen 22.20%, with 41 Million votes counted, or 85.4% of the total. The gap is likely to expand as the final votes are tallied.

Earlier, in a race that was too close to call up to the last minute, Macron, a pro-EU ex-banker and former economy minister who founded his own party only a year ago, was projected to get 23.7 percent of the first-round vote by the pollster Ifop-Fiducial and 24 percent by Harris. Le Pen, leader of the National Front, was given 21.7 percent by Ifop and 22 percent by Harris. Other pollsters projected broadly similar results.

Defeated Socialist candidate Benoit Hamon, Socialist Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve and defeated right-wing candidate Francois Fillon all urged voters to rally behind Macron in the second round. A new Harris survey saw Macron winning the runoff by 64 percent to 36, and an Ipsos/Sopra Steria poll gave a similar result.

According to Bloomberg, the key takeaways are as follows:

• Winners: Independent centrist Emmanuel Macron, in his first run for office, and the National Front’s Marine Le Pen, who succeeded in detoxifying her anti-immigrant party enough to make the second round (as her father did in 2002). The runoff campaign over the next two weeks will feature a stark contrast between Macron’s pro-EU, pro-globalization world view, and Le Pen’s call to close borders and quit the euro currency. Polls show Macron winning handily.
• Losers: Francois Fillon and Benoit Hamon of the Republicans and the Socialists, respectively, the parties that have dominated French politics for decades. Fillon, the man to beat as recently as January, was undone by a scandal involving an alleged no-show government job for his wife. Hamon was a surprise winner of the Socialist primary after President Francois Hollande decided not to run again, but he never gained traction. At last count he was a distant fifth. Leftist firebrand Jean-Luc Melenchon also lost momentum in the campaign’s closing days.
• Euro soared against both the dollar – rising to the euro’s highest level since Nov. 10, the day after the results of the U.S. presidential election. – and especially the yen, as investors priced in a win for Macron and the receding threat of a far-left or far-right candidate winning the presidency…

Source: Le Pen, Macron Progress To Second Round As Establishment Parties Crash | Zero Hedge