Emmanuel Macron would be the youngest president in French history

By THE DATA TEAM

WHEN the French people vote in the second round of the presidential election on May 7th, polls suggest that they will choose Emmanuel Macron over Marine Le Pen as the next president of the Fifth Republic. If Mr Macron is successful, the 39-year-old would become the youngest president in France’s history since the election in 1848 of Napoléon Bonaparte’s nephew, Louis-Napoléon, at the age of 40. This would cap an astonishingly quick rise to power for Mr Macron. The former banker’s centrist, pro-European movement, En Marche! (“On the Move!”), did not exist a year ago. He himself has never held elected political office.

It would also be the first time that France—or any of the other three largest Western economies—has elected a leader younger than the median age of the population. Mr Macron is two years younger than the typical French person. The gap between the age of leaders and the median age of populations has been steadily narrowing. In 1960 this gap stood at 38 years for France, Germany, Britain and America combined, just before the baby boomers came of voting age. It now hovers at just over 20 years.

Even as developed countries have grown older, they have been more willing to elect younger leaders. In the 1950s voters plumped for older statesmen such as Winston Churchill or Konrad Adenauer. The latter was elected Germany’s chancellor in 1949 at the venerable age of 73; since then every chancellor until 1998 was younger than the previous one. Angela Merkel became Germany’s youngest post-war leader at 51 in 2005. The average age at which a French president is elected is almost 60, the oldest of the four countries. Britain, where the average stands at 56, has not elected anyone over the age 60 since the 1970s.

As with so much else, Donald Trump is an outlier: at the age of 70 he is the oldest person to be elected president in American history.

Clarification (May 3rd): The previous headline stated that Emmanuel Macron would be the youngest leader in French history. This has been changed to make clear that he would be the youngest elected leader, or president.