Elections in France
The president maintains his advantage in the latest polls despite the fact that the far-right is on his heels and the surprising final rush starring the leftist leader
France today celebrates the first round of its presidential elections. Twelve candidates, four women and eight men, are initially vying for the keys to the Elysée Palace, but the outgoing president, Emmanuel Macron, who is running for re-election after five years in power, and the far-right Marine Le Pen lead side by side. elbow voting intention polls after one of the strangest campaigns in memory. Only the leftist Jean-Luc Mélenchon can cause an upset and prevent a repeat of the 2017 duel.
Citizens go to the polls with the feeling that the fight has not yet begun, when, in fact, it is entering the final stretch. The second round will take place in two weeks. The campaign, which had already been touched by the covid pandemic, was totally overshadowed by the war in Ukraine. The candidates and their electoral programs went into the media-political background with the return of a war to the European continent. To this it should be added that Macron, occupied more in the work of peacemaker since the rotating presidency of the European Union, belatedly announced his candidacy. He did so on March 4 in “a letter to the French” published in the regional press.
THE KEYS:
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mediated.
The pandemic and the war in Ukraine have caused an atypical campaign that has gone unnoticed -
Concept.
The tenant of the Elysee has reduced unemployment but has not achieved the promised pension reform -
Pro-Russian.
Zemmour, who had a resounding start, has lost strength by being close to Putin
In addition, there have been no electoral debates among the twelve candidates that would allow voters to compare their programs. Macron refused to participate before the second round, arguing that none of his predecessors in the post had done so.
minimalist campaign
The president-candidate, who has carried out a minimalist campaign with a single electoral rally, is seeking re-election after five years in power marked by successive crises: from the ‘yellow vests’ protests to the war in Ukraine, through due to the covid pandemic. In that five-year period at the Elysée Palace, Macron has managed to lower unemployment -which has gone from 9.5% in June 2017 to 7.4% at the end of 2021, according to official figures-, has undertaken multiple changes and has lowered taxes. But he has been forced to postpone pension reform and has failed to reduce public spending, as he had promised.
The candidate of La República en Marcha, who throughout the campaign has been the clear favorite in all the polls, has seen in recent days how the far-right Marine Le Pen has gained ground in voting intentions. The centrist leader would obtain 26% of the votes, compared to 25% for the radical, according to the latest Elabe poll published on Friday. Macron defeated Le Pen in the 2017 presidential election.
Macron, 44, played the trick of a stable president in times of crisis and reformist; Le Pen, 53, opted to present herself as the defender of purchasing power, in a context of concern about the rise in energy and food prices.
These were the major issues that marked the electoral debate which, depending on current affairs, also briefly addressed migration, the riots on the French island of Corsica and the controversial hiring of external consultants by the French government, among others. Unlike past elections, the issue of climate change was not very present. To warn of the “future”, environmental and left-wing organizations yesterday called several marches in France.
Only left option
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of La Francia Insumisa (the French Podemos), is the only left-wing candidate who exceeds the bar of 10% voting intention. He would be third 17.5% and would not be able to go to the second round. However, several analysts subscribe to the theory of sorpasso a Macron.
Both Le Pen and Mélenchon seem likely to benefit from the so-called useful vote, since, being better positioned in the polls than their opponents, voters may be tempted to support them, rather than other struggling candidates.
MAIN CANDIDATES:
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Emmanuel Macron – The Republic on the Move.
The president is playing for re-election with a drop in support to 26% -
Marine Le Pen – National Rally.
The far-right has climbed positions and almost reaches Macron, with 25% -
Jean-Luc Mélenchon – The Reluctant France.
The candidate of the populist left is in third position, with 17.5% -
Eric Zemmour – Reconquest.
The representative of the new party of the extreme right has 8.5%
The far-right leader and the far-left candidate also coincide in having focused their campaign on the loss of purchasing power, one of the issues that most worries the French, along with health and the fight against citizen insecurity and crime .
The also far-right Éric Zemmour, who stirred up the pre-election campaign this fall with his anti-immigrant and Islamophobic proclamations, has lost ground in recent weeks. He has been very touched by having maintained pro-Russian positions in the past. The leader of Reconquista would obtain 8.5% of the vote, followed by the moderate conservative candidate Valérie Pécresse, with 8% support.
The rest of the left-wing candidates are sunk in the polls. The environmentalist Yannick Jadot would add 5%; the communist Fabien Roussel, 2.5%; and the socialist Anne Hidalgo, only 2% of the vote.
overseas territories
The President of the French Republic is elected by direct universal suffrage for a term of five years, renewable once consecutively. The candidate who obtains the absolute majority of the votes cast is appointed. If none adds it in the first round, a second round will be held with the two most voted.
After yesterday’s day of reflection, when it is forbidden to broadcast polls and campaign, the polling stations will open today at eight in the morning, except in the overseas territories of America and the South Pacific, which due to the time difference have already begun to do it yesterday. Thus, the process began in Saint Pierre and Miquelon, in eastern Canada, French Guiana, Martinique and French Polynesia. Starting at 8:00 p.m., at the close, the exit polls will be published that will almost certainly reveal which two candidates will compete for the Presidency in the second round.
The results will be followed worldwide, since, as the regional newspaper ‘Ouest France’ stressed yesterday, the elections are “important” due to “the weight of France in Europe” and because “the choice of its international alliances is at stake” at a time of global uncertainty and with a war in the Old Continent.
The disinterest shown by citizens in the campaign anticipates a record abstention
The fear of a record abstention hovers over the first round. Some 48.7 million French are called to the polls, but many could stay home after a strange electoral campaign, overshadowed by the war in Ukraine and marked by the disinterest of citizens. The voting population that could stay at home is around 30%, according to a survey by OpinionWay-Kéa Partners. This would beat the numbers of 2002, in which 28.4% of the census did not go to the polls. In 2017, it was 22.2%.
The fact that all the ballots have predicted for months that the duel between the outgoing president, Emmanuel Macron, and the far-right Marine Le Pen will be repeated in the second round has not served to arouse the interest of voters. Both already faced each other five years ago. Before the first round, only 67% of the population were interested in the campaign, according to the OpinionWay poll.
School holidays
Another factor that may contribute to abstention is that the two rounds coincide -in part of the country in the first round and throughout the territory in the second- with the spring school holidays, so it is feared that many Gauls will be out of your habitual residence.
Voting by mail is not authorized in France to avoid fraud. To elect you have to do it at the polling stations. If the citizen cannot go to vote on the day of the elections, he can request the vote by proxy. That is, designate a trusted person to deposit the ballot in the ballot box in your place after presenting the necessary supporting documents. But few voters do it on time.
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