The most unpredictable presidential election campaign in the history of the Fifth Republic ended with a suitably surprising outcome: For once, the pollsters and the commentators were right. After the confounding of the experts in last June’s Brexit referendum and last November’s U.S. presidential election, the pollsters redeemed their profession by predicting correctly that Emmanuel Macron would defeat Marine Le Pen in Sunday’s second round of voting for the French presidency.

Then again, as psephological challenges go, this result was not hard to predict. The French system is designed to prevent candidates like Le Pen from winning. The first round reduces a wide field to a knockout. In the second round, le front republicain, the “republican front” against electing an extremist, gave Macron the presidency. The polls consistently predicted that strategic voting would give Macron a victory of 60 percent to 40 precent or more. By late Sunday afternoon, an exit poll gave Macron 65.1 percent to Le Pen’s 35.9 percent.