A France drowsy from a strange pre-election campaign and exhausted by crises is voting today
in elections that are predictable and at the same time uncertain
.
Predictable because everything indicates that the confrontation between Emmanuel Macron, the favorite, and Marine Le Pen will be repeated, as in 2017.
Unpredictable because the high level of abstention and indecision, as well as the progress of the far-right in the polls, could alter this scenario.
Almost 49 million French people go to the polls today in a key election for Europe.
The schools, as in Spain, open at eight and close at eight in the afternoon, which
will be when the first ballots are known
.
In France, presidential elections are held in two rounds.
In the first vote, today, the two most voted candidates pass.
In the second, which takes place in two weeks, it is decided.
Many unknowns are planned for today's session.
The campaign has been weird from the start and has been marked by the war in Ukraine.
Instead of talking about the reform of pensions, the increase in the minimum wage, education or even immigration, the debate has focused on issues that are not usually featured in the programs:
energy dependence, the increase in the cost of the shopping basket, the alliances with Russia of some candidates
...
Emmanuel Macron
starts as the favorite today, although he has focused on his role as president and has joined the electoral battle late, just in the last days of the campaign.
On the contrary,
Marine Le Pen
has turned to this process and
has been climbing dangerously in the polls for a week
.
Her latest polls already placed her just one point behind the current president.
The far-right has never been so close to touching the Elysee.
scenarios
Three scenarios
open today
:
Macron and Le Pen win at close range
, as expected .
That, against all odds, both pass but she gets ahead of him in votes, or that the leftist Jean Luc Mélenchon, third in the battle and the only leftist who has managed to come back in the campaign, overtakes Le Pen and disputes with Macron for the Second round.
This last scenario is less predictable, although, with the high level of abstention and the undecided vote, anything can happen.
A record 30% of potential voters could stay home and not go to the polls.
This has never happened before.
In addition, 22% of voters will decide their vote in the last hours.
All this could tip the balance towards any of the scenarios mentioned.
The situation of almost permanent crisis that France is experiencing (the Islamist attacks of 2015, the yellow vests, the pandemic, now the war in Ukraine...)
has tired citizens and fueled the rise of the extreme right
.
There is political disaffection.
As an Emmanuel Macron collaborator confessed to the Libération newspaper: "We know how an angry France votes, but we don't know how a tired France will vote."
traditional politics
Today's
session will measure the degree in the bump of the two traditional parties
: Socialists and Republicans.
Both have won elections and presided over the republic for decades, but they are no longer a real alternative for the French.
These elections have generated a new chessboard in which the left and the right are recomposing themselves: part of the Socialists have gone over to the side of Macron and others to that of Mélenchon.
The most serious case is that of the socialist party, with an Anne Hidalgo who, according to the polls, would hardly reach 3% of the votes.
The candidate is already preparing her departure from the party and also from the Paris mayor's office, since her defeat leaves her in a very weakened situation to continue directing the French capital.
The unknown in today's vote is to know
to what extent the French are so fed up as to leave the presidency of the Republic in the hands of the extreme right
.
France has an ambiguous relationship with this: everyone denies Le Pen, but he has two consecutive presidential elections coming second.
The far-right Éric Zemmour, who started strong but has been deflating over the weeks, has left part of his electorate in the ranks of his rival.
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