PARIS — France is on course for a right-wing revolution after Nicolas Sarkozy secured an emphatic victory over his Socialist Party rival, Ségolène Royal, last night to become the country’s next president.

Car horns sounded around the capital on the news that Mr. Sarkozy, 52, who heads the ruling Union for a Popular Movement party, had 53% of the vote against Ms. Royal’s 47%, according to official exit polls.

At 85%, voter turnout was the highest in 25 years — a testament to a campaign that captured the French imagination as a new generation of political leaders emerged.

As the result became clear, cheers erupted at Mr. Sarkozy’s campaign headquarters in central Paris, where the president-elect and his entourage had gathered.

From there, he was driven across Paris followed by dozens of journalists on motorcycles before making his victory speech on television.
“The French people have decided to break with the ideas, behavior and habits of the past,” he said.

“So I will rehabilitate work, merit, and morals. I want to give back to France what France has given to me.”

Reaching out to many left-wing voters who perceive him as a danger, he expressed his respect for Ms. Royal’s ideas and those of “the millions of French who voted for her.”

He added: “A president must love all French people. This is not the victory of one France against another. There is for me only one victory tonight: democracy and the values that unite us.”

He also launched an impassioned plea to his European partners to continue with “European construction.”

“Tonight, France is back in Europe. I beseech our European partners to hear the voices of people who want to be protected,” he said.
Mr. Sarkozy, who has angered France’s political elite by extolling America’s low-tax, hard-work economy, praised America but signaled future clashes over the issue of climate change.

“I want to tell them that France will always be by their side when they will need her,” he said.

“But I want to tell them as well that friendship is accepting that one’s friends can act differently, and that a great nation like the United States has the duty to not obstruct the fight against global warming but, on the contrary, to head this struggle because what is at stake is the future of all humanity.

“France will make this struggle its first struggle.”

Mr. Sarkozy also promised to fight for tolerance and democratic rights, even if it meant antagonizing some Muslims’ sensibilities: “France will not abandon women condemned to wearing the burka,” he declared. His rival, Ségolène Royal, conceded defeat in a speech to party workers in Paris but insisted she would stay on as leader.

To chants of “Merci, Ségolène,” she said: “I have given everything, and I will continue to be with and near you. You can count on me to consolidate the left beyond its normal frontiers.”

But the scale of her loss — and the third consecutive defeat for the socialists in a presidential race — was expected to lead to major fractures within the party. Senior figures who had grudgingly accepted Ms. Royal’s candidacy because of her apparent popularity are now expected to openly attack her strategy.

Mr. Sarkozy is more pro-American than any of his predecessors, recently meeting President Bush and even apologizing for French “arrogance.” But Denis MacShane, the former British minister of state for Europe, warned: “It’s a dream and a tragic error of British policy for centuries to think that there will be a France that conforms to an Anglo-Saxon vision of the world.”

His views were echoed by Dominique Moisi, the senior advisor to the French institute of international relations, who said: “First and foremost on his agenda is the domestic situation. Foreign policy is far behind in second place, and he will take no risks early on.”

Mr. Moisi said, “There is an idea doing the rounds that Sarkozy is a kind of French Margaret Thatcher. But I don’t think such a creature exists. Not least because no one in France wants a French Thatcher.”

[In related news, Senator Schumer, a Democrat of New York, told CNN: “I mean, it would be nice to have someone who is head of France who doesn’t almost have a knee-jerk reaction against the United States.”]