According to estimates, the abstention in this first round of municipal elections is between 53.5% and 56%, a historic abstention. According to these figures, less than one in two French people therefore visited a polling station on Sunday.

With a record abstention estimated between 53.5% and 56%, the French deserted the polling stations on Sunday during the first round of extraordinary municipal elections, organized as best they could in a country shut down by the coronavirus pandemic.

A historic figure

Among the some 47.7 million voters called to elect their mayor, only less than half will have finally slipped a ballot in the ballot box, in a general surreal atmosphere after the government decreed on Saturday evening the closure of all "places receiving the public not essential to the life of the country".

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A historic figure for a generally mobilizing ballot among the French, despite a slow erosion from one mandate to another: in 2014, abstention had been 36.45% in the first round, 33.46% in 2008 and 32.6% in 2001. A strong question now weighs on the holding of the second round, next Sunday, in a country where the epidemic is still in its infancy, according to all specialists.