The first round of voting begins, with an eventual winner expected to be decided in a runoff two weeks later. Polling stations across mainland France have opened for the first round of a fiercely contested presidential election. Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen are the frontrunners among the 12 candidates to win through to the second round in two weeks but analysts have suggested that the presidential race will be a very close one.
Macron, who resides in the northern French seaside town of Le Touquet, voted near his home. The president and his wife Brigitte greeted the crowds standing outside under the sun as they made their way to the poll centre. They spent some time taking selfies with youngsters, kissing babies and shaking hands with those in the crowd.
Among the first to cast their vote was former president Nicolas Sarkozy. Anne Hidalgo, the socialist candidate, followed shortly afterwards at about 8.30 am at a polling station close to her home in Paris’s 15th arrondissement. Mélenchon, the leader of La France Insoumise (France Unbowed) cast his vote at an infants’ school in Marseille, where he has been the local MP since 2017. The presidential candidate for the Communist party, Fabien Roussel, voted in the north of France. Nathalie Arthaud, of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers’ Struggle), also voted on Sunday morning with this being her third presidential election.
Le Pen turned up at a polling station in the northern French town of Hénin-Beaumont, where she scored 46.5% of the vote in the first round of the 2017 presidential election. Le Pen, who is poised to be in the second-round vote, was welcomed by a crowd and took photographs before proceeding to vote. Other presidential candidates cast their votes in their respective centres.
Currently, 48.7 million people are eligible to vote in the presidential contest. The winner of this presidential race will lead the European Union’s second-largest economy and the EU’s only nuclear power. In French Polynesia, it was estimated that 12.34% turned out to vote, compared with 22.24% at the same time in the 2017 presidential election. With rising prices of food, fuel and the generally high cost of living caused by the war in Ukraine, voters are angry and uninterested in the election process. Employment health and environmental concerns were among the main topics in the candidates’ manifestos.
In the run-up to Sunday’s vote result, candidates were cautioned to stop campaigns to avoid influencing the decisions of the voters, hours before the ballot. The result indicating the two candidates who will be in the runoff will be announced at 8 pm French time and this will be based on partial counts from a given number of polling units in towns and cities selected as a representative mix of France. Until then, no results are expected, and France’s election rules state that no estimates are allowed, except for the rate of abstention.
“Compared to other presidential elections, we are experiencing a strange campaign,” Frédéric Dabi, director of the opinion pollsters Ifop, told Le Monde. “The Ukrainian war, lack of interest and absence of the usual presidential debate where candidates argue their manifestos had left the voters uninterested.”
Macron, one of the favourites to enter the second round, kicked off his campaign very late with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine playing a major part. Le Pen ended the week just a few percentage points behind him. The polling company Harris Interactive suggested 70% of French voters considered the presidential campaign “disappointing”. About 20% of voters who said they had decided who they would vote for admitted they could change their mind, adding to the uncertainty.
Although facemasks are no longer compulsory in France except on public transport, voters have been advised to wear a facemask if their polling station is crowded or even busy.