SSilence, let’s vote! The first voters began to go to the polls on Saturday, overseas and abroad for the first round of the presidential election, while the metropolis will have to wait until Sunday to decide between the 12 candidates of a poll which is announced. tight.
Huge unknown of this 11th presidential election by universal suffrage of the Fifth Republic: the abstention rate.
Many political scientists fear that the record of April 21, 2002 (28.4%), the highest level ever recorded for a first round of a presidential election, could be beaten, which is much more than in 2017 (22.2% ) which was already not a good vintage.
The new element is the high rate of undecided voters, which poses “significant” uncertainty on the ballot, according to political scientist Pascal Perrineau.
Pending the first results on Sunday at 8:00 p.m., public meetings, distribution of leaflets and digital propaganda are prohibited.
The polling stations will open at 8 a.m. Sunday in mainland France and no interview, poll or estimate may be published before the results.
Two candidates, Yannick Jadot and Jean-Luc Mélenchon however went to the march organized on Saturday in Paris for the climate and social justice.
To take into account the time difference, some overseas voters vote on Saturday.
Disenfranchised in Shanghai
St-Pierre-et-Miquelon got the ball rolling at 8 a.m. (noon in Paris), followed by Guyana, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Saint-Martin and Saint-Barthélemy.
The Pacific then takes over, with Polynesia which started voting when it was 8:00 p.m. in Paris, Wallis and Futuna and New Caledonia.
In Polynesia, the turnout was 12.34% at noon compared to 22.24% at the same time in 2017, according to estimates by the High Commission.
“It’s important to vote, it’s the moment when you choose whether you want good or bad, it’s still the president who manages your life”, testified Annette Tehariki, a 57-year-old Polynesian who came to vote. in a wheelchair.
In the Indian Ocean, where the time difference is less, Reunion will vote on Sunday at 6 a.m. Paris time and Mayotte at 7 a.m.
Some French people living abroad are also ahead, but those residing in Shanghai will not be able to vote, the largest city in China being confined in the name of the Chinese zero Covid strategy.
“What struck me this morning was finally telling me that in the context of what is happening in Ukraine and Russia, the chance we have as French people to be able to vote in a democracy, to have a choice,” Antoine Jounet, a voter who has been living there for three years, told AFP in New York: “It reinforced me in the idea that it was an obligation to go and vote because it It’s a chance that we have and that others don’t have”.
In France, surgical masks will be available in all polling stations. Wearing them will not be compulsory, but “strongly recommended” for fragile people and those who have recently tested positive for Covid-19.
“Rupture”
“We experienced a strange campaign which took place in rupture with all the imagination of the presidential elections”, explains Frédéric Dabi, director of Ifop.
An “unprecedented” campaign for several reasons: the war in Ukraine which “anaesthetized” it, “low interest” which contrasts with the previous elections, and the absence of “the usual confrontation of projects” between the candidates in run.
“We have a sort of archipelization of the debates with small duels”, in particular between the far-right polemicist Eric Zemmour and the LR candidate Valérie Pécresse or between the Insoumis Jean-Luc Mélenchon and the other candidates from a fragmented left , the ecologist Yannick Jadot, the communist Fabien Roussel, the socialist Anne Hidalgo or the Trotskyists Philippe Poutou and Nathalie Arthaud.
The sovereignist Nicolas Dupont-Aignan and the Béarnais deputy Jean Lassalle regretted a campaign without debate.
– Republican Front “eroded” –
To ward off indecision and abstention, the candidates multiplied the last week of the campaign: last major meetings, media exposure, final field trips.
The outgoing president, who has always remained at the top of the polls, entered the campaign late, prevented first by the health crisis, then by the invasion of Ukraine by Russia.
He concentrated on a single major national meeting, Saturday April 2 at La Défense, but gave a boost at the end of the week, with several interviews, even making an impromptu visit to a market in Neuilly-sur- Seine.
Marine Le Pen, who made her last trip to Aude on Friday, started an upward momentum after being worried by her far-right rival Eric Zemmour, consolidating in second place and then gradually closing the gap with Emmanuel Macron .
Jean-Luc Mélenchon gradually rose to third place.
But political scientists do not exclude that a surprise could shake up this trifecta given by the polls.
Even before the end of the first round, several candidates projected themselves in the perspective of a Macron-Le Pen duel in the second round, revealing cracks in the “republican front” against the far right.
“The Republican front hasn’t been what it used to be for a while now. It has been eroded from above and below,” the director of the Jean-Jaurès Foundation, Gilles Finchelstein, told AFP. “It remains a spring”, but to think that this spring “will suffice is an illusion”.
10/04/2022 01:36:46 – Paris (AFP) – © 2022 AFP