The first round of the presidential elections started in France today. Polling stations opened at 8 a.m. About 48.7 million voters had registered to vote.
Shortly before the official end of the election campaign in France, Emanuel Macron even tried to mobilize his supporters with a series of interviews, according to Handelsblatt.
“My mood is more victorious than defeated,” Macron said during one of his media appearances on Friday. The president has to fight, as in the polls the difference from the right-wing populist Marin Lepen had shrunk more and more lately.
Silence now prevails in French politics from Friday night to Saturday. Campaign rules prohibit candidates from campaigning until the first results are announced on Sunday night. The first polling stations in the French overseas territories opened on Saturday and the citizens of the motherland have been coming to the polls since Sunday morning.
The first round of the presidential election will decide which of the two candidates will run in the run-off two weeks later. In the latest polls, Macron leads with 25-27%, followed by Lepen with 22-24%. In third place, pollsters saw left-wing populist Jean-Luc Mélenchon with prices ranging from 16 percent to 18 percent.
As in the election five years ago, a confrontation between Macron and Le Pen is the most likely scenario – even if Mélenchon is considered to have a slim chance that the fragmented left-wing camp will rally behind him in the final stages of the campaign. According to opinion polls, the duel between Macron and Le Pen could be much closer this time around: Some polls suggest the president is just four to five points ahead. In 2017, Macron had won by 66% -34%.
The president entered the election campaign late. He had justified his wariness with the war in Ukraine, which demanded his full attention as head of state. Since his official candidacy in early March, he has held only one large rally in front of about 30,000 supporters last weekend in Paris and five campaign trips around the country.
“It’s true, I started the campaign much later than I wanted to,” Macron said in one of his last interviews before the suspension. One more reason for the president to try to attack his central opponent in the last stages of the election campaign. “Marin Le Pen is lying to the people,” he told Le Parisien newspaper.
The right-wing populist had not made any serious economic proposals for her promises in the field of social policy. Macron also accused her of being close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, from whom she was “financially dependent”. A few years ago, Le Pen’s Rassemblement National party, then known as the National Front, borrowed millions from a Russian bank.
By changing the name, Lepen tried to give the party a more modest image. He withdrew radical demands such as France’s exit from the euro. She also reduced her choice of words on the subject of immigration. In the current election campaign, he spoke mainly about the purchasing power and the concerns of the French about the rise in prices.
Almost a third of the French are undecided
“People think she is a woman representing a socialist economic program,” Macron said of his opponent. But Rassemblement National’s orientation has not changed, he said. “Lepen wants to divide our country,” he said.
The outcome of the French elections is also difficult to predict, as citizens’ commitment to the parties has weakened. The traditional political forces of the center-left and center-right, the Socialists and the conservative-bourgeois Republicans, play virtually no role. This development was evident in the elections five years ago, when Macron with his new center-right party “La République en Marche” entered the Palais des Elysées from the beginning.
A big question is how many French will stay away from the polls. Polling institutes estimate that up to 30% of the electorate may not vote. Three out of ten French people also did not know who they would vote for shortly before the election. The answers will be available tonight after the closing of the last polls at 20:00.
Source: Capital
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