On Sunday (24), current President Emmanuel Macron and right-wing Marine Le Pen repeat their 2017 contest in the second round of the presidential election in France amid a climate of distrust and dismay on the part of the electorate.
In the first round, held on April 10, 26.31% of voters registered to vote did not turn up at the polls (voting in the country is not mandatory), the highest abstention in the first vote for president in France since 2002. Interestingly, that year , also reached the second round of a chief executive seeking reelection (Jacques Chirac) and a member of the Le Pen family (Jean-Marie, Marine’s father).
The no-show two weeks ago was much higher among the younger electorate. A survey by the Ipsos institute showed that the abstention rate was 46% in the first round among voters aged 25 to 34, and 42% among those aged 18 to 24.
“For the younger generations, the relationship with voting is different, it is more intermittent. Voting is seen as a less effective participation practice,” Tristan Haute, senior professor of political science at the University of Lille, told Euronews.
“You have people who don’t feel politically legitimate, who don’t vote because they don’t feel represented, or who don’t feel politically competent to have an opinion,” he added.
In an interview with RFI radio, political scientist Vincent Tiberj said that, as has happened in other countries, the French have found other ways to participate in public life, such as the Yellow Vests movement, and there is a sense of disillusionment with politics. .
“Now citizens are defying the elites and no longer follow their electoral proclamations,” he said. “Citizenship is no longer just about voting.”
Tiberj stated that this disillusionment with politics also stems from the fact that many people vote for a candidate just so that another does not win, and not because of identification with proposals and political profile.
“When you force people to choose the lesser of two evils, it puts a lot of stress on the usefulness of the vote,” pondered the expert. “If we don’t resolve this issue, in the future we will end up with fewer and fewer citizens voting.”
Mistrust about the electoral process, like what happened in the United States in the 2020 election, is another problem. A survey carried out by the Ifop institute for the Reboot Foundation, released last Tuesday (19), showed that 48% of respondents believe that the French election may be the target of some kind of fraud, while 14% were more direct and said that the claim will be rigged.
Among Marine Le Pen voters, at least 30% believe in the possibility of electoral fraud. Of those who said they voted for Macron, only 7% expressed the same distrust.
In the first round, Macron won 27.85% of the votes, and Le Pen, 23.15%. Polls released this Friday (22) show the current president with an advantage of ten to 14 percentage points for the second round.
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