Valérie Pécresse, who has likened herself to Margaret Thatcher and Angela Merkel, won the primary race to become the French Republicain party’s candidate, making her the first woman to represent the party at a presidential election.

Ms Pécresse, 54, won 61 per cent of the vote in the second round of the primary race on Saturday, beating the hard-right candidate Éric Ciotti, who said he “shares” most of the polemicist Eric Zemmour’s views.

Ms Pécresse, head of the Île-de-France regional council that includes Paris, presented herself as the voice of moderation and billed herself as the only one who could unite the party, in a primary race that was dominated by the issues of security and immigration.

She was widely seen as the favourite to win, after Xavier Bertrand and Michel Barnier, who were both eliminated on Wednesday, said they would support her over Mr Ciotti, the MP who had pledged a referendum to “stop mass immigration” and set up “a French Guantánamo Bay” to combat terrorism.

Mr Ciotti accepted defeat and immediately pledged to support Ms Pécresse.

The Républicains was the last of France’s main parties yet to choose a candidate, and Ms Pécresse is now the third woman representing one of France’s traditional parties in the presidential election, along with Marine Le Pen of the hard-Right National Rally and the socialist mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo.

“The party of General de Gaulle… our political family, will have a female candidate in the presidential election,” Ms Pécresse said in her victory speech.

“I am thinking of all the women in France today. I will give everything to triumph,” she said.

Ms Pécresse, a former higher education and budget minister in the Sarkozy administration, has described herself as “two-thirds Angela Merkel and one-third Margaret Thatcher”, and as “La Dame de faire”, a play on words with “Iron Lady” and the “Lady who gets things done.”