Paris – AFP
On Sunday, polling stations opened in France at 8:00 GMT to begin the first round of the presidential election. According to opinion polls, about 48.7 million voters were invited to cast their ballots between the 12 candidates, including outgoing President Emmanuel Macron and right-wing leader Marine Le Pen.
All the polls indicate that Macron and Le Pen, who faced each other before the second round of the 2017 presidential election, are more likely to qualify again today, but they point out that the differences between them are further narrowing. The victory of Le Pen, who is a double role model in the light of the French Fifth Republic, did not rule out polls taking into account the margin of error, which has never been ruled by a woman or a politician from the far right.
For his part, the far-left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon, who is third in the polls behind Le Pen, hopes to be surprised to qualify for the second round. For weeks, he has been calling on voters from the divided left, represented by several candidates, to vote for him. Other candidates on the left are environmentalist Yannick Gado, socialist Anne Hidalgo and Communist Fabian Russell, but a section of their constituents may be motivated by the idea of ​​”voting in favor” of Mலlenchon. On Friday, candidates dedicated limited media interventions or short visits as a last ditch effort to attract French voters. Emmanuel Macron made a short, unannounced visit to the Newly-sur-Sean market at the gates of Paris. Le Pen, for his part, visited Norfolk in southern France, where he presented himself as the “Peaceful France” candidate. He said he was not “excited” about the potential victory and would have to wait for the second round.
The boycott rate for this referendum is still shrouded in uncertainty, and the results will be highly anticipated in Europe and abroad. Many political experts fear that the province’s position in the first round will be higher than the 28.4 percent recorded in 2002, which is far higher than the 22.2 percent recorded in 2017. The first signs of the results will be released at GMT at 6pm after the last polling stations are closed, noting that overseas voters will start voting from Saturday.