Updating with early estimates from French overseas territories and turnout across France.
PARIS—The day we’ve all been waiting for…holding our collective breath over…and chronicling here since January. From 8 am to 8 pm across the nation, voters are (already) going to the polls to choose who will lead their nation and respectively set the agenda of France and its place in the world.
Those are the stakes, and then some as voters take two pieces of paper—with the name of President Emmanuel Macron or Marine Le Pen—place one (or none) in an envelope and place that, in turn, in a transparent glass ballot box. The problem is how many may, in disgust with the choices offered, choose to place an empty envelope in the box. It’s called “voting blank” and together with the outright absences could skew an election that polls suggest is an all but certain win for a second and final term for the incumbent. Polls, of course, have been wrong in the past. Still, in France, there is no Electoral College. Here, the person who wins one vote more than his or her opponent becomes President of the Republic for five more years.
At noon, the turnout was 26.41%, nearly 1 point higher than at this moment in the first round of voting two weeks ago, but a bit feebler than the 28.23% registered five years ago, the first time these two faced off. In that race, Macron bested Le Pen 66.1% to 33.9%. Especially unsettling, the early results from some of France’s overseas territories, showing Le Pen with a substantial lead—a sharp reversal in three ‘departments’ from the numbers in 2017. This report from Belgian television, RTBF (not subject to the gag-rule imposed on French radio and television while polls are open) showed both a low turnout and a Le Pen lead—neither good omens for Macron.
This time, stakes could not be higher. Here’s how Jerome Fenoglio, the editor-in-chief of the French daily Le Monde put it in the paper’s lead editorial yesterday:
“A victory for Marine Le Pen in the second round would mean an open and irremediable shift in France towards a model marked by clanism, isolation and violence, without providing answers to the climatic, social, and geopolitical crises….This election will determine the person who will lead France for the next five years, the republican framework of the debates that we will hold within our democracy, the face that we will want to present to the world around us. This vote will also determine the ways of responding to the war that is raging on our continent, to the geopolitical and social crises that are mounting, to the climate catastrophe that is taking shape. The magnitude of these issues prohibits any form of equivocation in the upcoming election…..
“On Sunday, there will be only one way to help prevent the candidate of a far-right party, Marine Le Pen, from gaining power: it is to vote for her opponent, Emmanuel Macron, whatever the mistakes he made during his first term, whatever grievances one may have against his policy, whatever his responsibility for the presence of the National Rally (RN) in this second round. Neither a blank vote nor an abstention will be of any use to preserve our country from the irremediable.
“To describe what could happen if Marine Le Pen becomes President of the Republic, the comparison with the Hungary of her inspiration, Prime Minister Viktor Orban, has often been used. In fact, the erosion of freedom of the press, the lowering of the rule of law, the weakening of institutions would be on the agenda. But the parallel with a country of 10 million inhabitants, whatever its qualities, is very insufficient to describe the global explosion that would constitute the tilting of our nation on the side of illiberalism. France, a nuclear power with a seat on the UN Security Council, a pillar of European construction, is not quite Hungary.”
Early this morning, President Macron and his wife Brigitte voted in Le Touqet in Normandy. (Yes, even the President of the Republic must verify his identity!)
And Le Pen voted in her town, Hénin-Beaumont in the Pas-de-Calais region of northern France.
At 8:00:01 pm, a moment after the polls close, the major television networks in France will come on the air showing a single photo of the winner—provided the exit polls turn out to be just too close to call. In which case, it could be an all-night, and all but unprecedented, nail-biter until in each tiny precinct across the nation, each envelope is opened, each vote counted and tabulated.
Watch this space!
Vive la France!!
An important day for the future of France, Europe and the world. Looking forward to your reports, David.
Voter ID...the horrors!