In Bangkok, Rio de Janeiro and Baghdad too, we voted in April to elect the President of the French Republic. More than half a million French people living abroad went to one of the 210 consular polling stations, installed in embassies and consulates, to take part in the presidential election. With a very different voting pattern from the rest of French voters in mainland France and overseas.
Macron largely in the lead, Le Pen outdistanced
In the first round of the election, the French abroad placed Emmanuel Macron very largely in the lead, with 45.1% of the vote, well above his national average. The outgoing president comes first in 82% of consular offices.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon obtains almost the same score as in the rest of the country (21.9%), but is well ahead of all the other candidates. It is in the lead in most countries of Saharan Africa, Turkey, Laos and Iceland. Marine Le Pen only comes in fifth, behind Yannick Jadot and Eric Zemmour (who is well ahead in Thailand, Russia and Israel).
In the second round, Emmanuel Macron was well ahead of his competitor, Marine Le Pen, in the vast majority of polling stations. The National Rally (RN) candidate is only in the lead in Moscow, Saint Petersburg and Almaty (Kazakhstan). The massive vote of the three Israeli polling stations for Eric Zemmour in the first round did not transfer to the RN candidate in the second round, where she scored (40.4%) close to her national score.
A very strong abstention
This election was marked by a very strong abstention from French people living abroad: barely 35% of registered voters voted in the first round, and 39% in the second. This is almost 30 points less than in the rest of France, and 10 points less than in 2017.
At the top of the ranking of abstainers, we find unsurprisingly territories with a deleterious climate: Damascus, in Syria (2 voters for 471 registered); Kabul, Afghanistan (1 voter for 46 registered); and of course kyiv, Ukraine (18 voters for 453 registered).