Emmanuel Macron has won the French presidency by beating far-right Marine Le Pen amid a historically low turnout of voters.

Pollsters projected that Macron won 65 percent of the votes Sunday. Le Pen's projected 35 percent score was lower than her polling numbers earlier in the campaign.

Many French voters backed Macron reluctantly, not because they agreed with his politics but simply to keep out Le Pen and her far-right National Front party, still tainted by its anti-Semitic and racist history.

After the most closely watched and unpredictable French presidential campaign in recent memory, many voters rejected the choice altogether: Pollsters projected that voters cast blank or spoiled ballots in record numbers Sunday - a protest of both candidates.

Abstention in France's presidential election is set to be around 26%, the highest since 1969, says polling firm Ipsos Sopra-Steria. It would also be the first time abstention has increased between two rounds of the election. The estimation is based on figures from the interior ministry showing turnout stood at 65.3% at 5 PM, compared with 71.96% at the same time of the second round in 2012.

In a first for postwar France, neither of the mainstream parties on the left or the right qualified in the first round of voting on April 23 for Sunday's winner-takes-all duel between Macron and Le Pen.

There is a sigh of relief across the EU as Macron is pro-European former investment banker who believes in strengthening France's place as a central pillar of the European Union.

France's presidential election was held amid unprecedented security measures. The Interior Ministry deployed 50,000 police officers and gendarmes to secure polling stations during Sunday's vote.

Earlier French police evacuated the iconic Louvre in the center of Paris after a bomb threat.