This is one of the highlights of the results of this presidential election: 28.01% of French people registered on the electoral lists, i.e. approximately 14 million voters, did not come to vote on Sunday April 24, according to the final results communicated by the Ministry of the Interior

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To find a higher abstention rate in a presidential election, you have to go back to 1969. This ballot opposed two right-wing candidates: Georges Pompidou and Alain Poher, returned back to back by the communist Jacques Duclos through the famous expression "Bonnet blanc and white bonnet".

At the time, 31.15% of voters shunned the ballot box.

A figure that remains difficult to compare with the 2022 election insofar as the French electorate has continued to grow and change since.

However, as in 1969, the absence of a left-wing candidate largely explains this massive abstention.

"There has always been a very strong abstention when there is no left-wing candidate in the second round. This was already the case in 2017 with more than 25% abstention", notes the political science professor at the University of Nantes, Arnaud Leclerc, interviewed by France 24.

According to a poll by our partner Ipsos Steria, the voters of France Insoumise abstained almost twice as many as all the others (43%).

In departments such as Val-d'Oise or Seine Saint-Denis, which largely placed Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the lead, abstention was logically higher than in the first round.

In general, the abstention rate increased between the two rounds of this presidential election.

After 1969 and 2017, this is only the third time this has happened in the history of the Fifth Republic.

A blank vote less strong than expected

The French were therefore more numerous than in 2017 to apply the slogan "neither Le Pen, nor Macron", popularized in this interval between the two rounds, a sign of the trivialization of the far right within a large part of Readership.

"The trend observed in the last presidential election, which was an exception under the Fifth Republic, is confirmed: many French people did not want to participate in this second-round debate", analyzes pollster Frédéric Dabi of Ifop.

"The logic of the Republican front and the anti-extreme right reflex is still there", tempers Arnaud Leclerc.

"Simply, this republican front does not have the same power as 20 or 30 years ago", adds the political scientist who underlines the lack of enthusiasm aroused by this campaign marked by the war in Ukraine and the late entry of 'Emmanuel Macron in battle.

>> To see: How Emmanuel Macron will govern a "divided" France?

On the other hand, if abstention has increased in five years, the record for blank and invalid ballots of 2017 - more than 3 million blank ballots and one million invalid ballots in the second round - has not been equaled.

"It's a small surprise that we haven't had more abstentions and blank and invalid ballots than in 2017

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given the anti-Macron climate, with part of the left who really hate him, and do that there have been five years of mandate in the meantime”, assures AFP the political scientist Anne Jadot.

"The electorate who votes blank has a powerful civic norm. For them, voting is a duty, explains Arnaud Leclerc. "However, this duty was rather expressed by a vote in favor of Emmanuel Macron given the presence from the far right in the second round.

We can see that there was indeed a mobilization of voters worried about the leap into the unknown that the election of Marine Le Pen would have represented.

A new legislative record?

Widely documented, this massive abstention represents a basic trend and reflects a growing lack of interest among voters for political parties and electoral events.

"It is a recurring phenomenon and this presidential election confirms a process of disaffiliation of the French", analyzes on France 24 the political scientist Arnaud Benedetti, that is to say of voters who do not recognize any proximity with a party or a tendency Politics.

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"There is a breathlessness in the relationship to representative democracy which is confirmed by very many surveys", abounds Réjane Senec Slawinsky, researcher at CEVIPOF, according to whom this abstention will last as long as the political parties continue "a logic of electoral battle which takes little or no account of the voice of citizen mobilizations".

A particularly flagrant lack of interest among the youngest: 41% of those under 25 abstained during this second round as well as more than a third of 25-34 and 35-49 year olds.

According to this Ipsos Sopra-Steria poll, 24% of those who abstained say they did so because they "refuse to choose between two candidates" whom they "totally reject", like 49% of those who voted blank or null.

After the presidential election, the June legislative elections will be a new test to assess the weight of the abstentionist camp.

"It is certain that the abstention will be very high because it is an election infinitely less mobilizing than the presidential one. Traditionally, the abstention represents the double of that observed during the presidential election", recalls Arnaud Leclerc.

In 2017, nearly 57% of registered voters did not come to elect the deputy for their constituency, setting a record since 1958 for a second round of legislative elections.  

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