The first round of voting to elect the French president started at 8 am local time across France.
In France, if no candidate receives a majority of the votes in the first round, the first and second place candidates face off in the second round to elect the president.
A total of 12 candidates cast their ballots in this presidential election, which is being held amid the attention focused on diplomacy due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and the exit poll results are released at 8 pm.
President Emmanuel Macron is challenging for a second term, and the far-right female candidate Marine Le Pen, who lost in the 2017 final, will face off once again.
According to the results of various opinion polls, the scenario in which President Macron and Candidate Le Pen take first and second places in the first round of voting is likely to advance to the final.
As of the 8th, the last day that the poll results can be announced, if President Macron and Le Pen are in the runoff, 52% said they would elect Macron and 48% said they would choose Le Pen, a 4 percentage point gap. It happened.
Compared to President Macron's overwhelming victory over Le Pen candidate with 66% of the vote in the 2017 presidential runoff, there are also interpretations that Le Pen chased President Macron by a narrow margin.
The two major political parties that have supported French political history, the right-wing Republican Party and the left-wing Socialist Party, are failing in this election as well.
Republican presidential nominee Valerie Pecres and Socialist presidential nominee Ahn Hidalgo Paris mayor recently recorded less than expected approval ratings.