It could have been a triumph. Emmanuel Macron on Sunday managed to become the first president in decades to get elected to a second term, with the exception of elections during a political cohabitation. He expanded his lead over Marine Le Pen from four percentage points in the first round of voting two weeks ago to 17 percentage points. He thus saved France and Europe from a far-right president. And he managed to do so despite the fact that so many French people supposedly hate him. Despite the fact that, according to one survey, only 22 percent of the French are convinced that Macron understands their concerns, their daily lives – in contrast to his opponent Le Pen, whom they trust much more.

But there was no sense of triumph in these post-election hours – relief seems to be the overall sentiment, not enchantment. It is an election in which the work began immediately after the announcement of the result (58.5 percent for Macron, 41.5 for Le Pen).

Macron must now work to unite his country, which is deeply divided five years after his first victory in May 2017. The country is split into three political blocs. In addition to the ruling party in the center, there is a strong party on both the far right (Le Pen’s right-wing radical Rassemblement National) and the far left (Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s radical left party La France Insoumise).

And then there’s the fourth block. Twenty-eight percent of French voters, almost a third, simply didn’t bother to cast a ballot because they could not identify with what Le Pen or Macron offered politically. Nine percent of voters cast a "vote blanc," a deliberately invalidated ballot. For the past several years, the "vote blank" has been regarded as an ostentatious protest ballot. The 28 percent abstentions plus nine percent protest voters add up to 37 percent. In purely numerical terms, and compared with the results of the first ballot, that would be France’s strongest party: People who no longer believe in the meaning of democratic competition. A party of non-voters and protest voters.