Emmanuel Macron is announced winner of the second round of the presidential election this Sunday, April 24 according to the first results published at 8 p.m. The outgoing president obtained 58% of the vote against 42% after a day marked by leaks on numerous foreign media such as RTBF.
Presidential results near you
Emmanuel Macron is therefore re-elected at the head of the Presidency of the Republic with a difference slightly higher than what the polls had announced since the start of the campaign. The outgoing president wins with more than 58% of the vote against 42% for Marine Le Pen (58.8% against 41.2% according to the Ipsos-Storia institute for France 2), a candidate who nevertheless records a historic score for the extreme right. Follow our live below with all the numbers, reactions and what’s to come next.
The French-speaking Belgian radio and television station, the RTBF, had broadcast on its antenna results presented as estimates of the results finally published in the evening, from 8 p.m. in France. These results, which Linternaute.com could not broadcast before 8 p.m., were presented as estimates from “two polling institutes” with unspecified identities. Few sources therefore, which should have encouraged caution… If the identity of the winner of this 2nd round was good, the difference announced around 55 to 58% is actually close to the first estimates given at 8 p.m. by the French media and confident a score of 58.2% for Emmanuel Macron according to Ipsos-Sopra Steria for France 2 as for the Elabe Institute for BFM TV.
Belgian radio and television (RTBF) had already published in the afternoon results presented as “final” for several overseas departments and territories. Guyana, Saint-Pierre-en-Miquelon, Guadeloupe, French Polynesia are part of it. Like all French media, Linternaute.com cannot give you results before 8 p.m. As a reminder, Linternaute.com will make you live the whole election night with all the official results published directly from our envoys to the Ministry of the Interior.
This little game, in which RTBF has become an expert, has already been going on for a few five years in reality. Since 2007 in particular, some French-speaking media abroad, starting with public radio and television, have taken pleasure in overtaking their French counterparts by publishing figures on their websites on the results of the supreme election before 8 p.m. legal closing time of the last polling stations in France. All this in the middle of a reserve period for the French media, which is prohibited from revealing the slightest figure or the slightest trend until the complete end of the ballot.
The RTBF assumes it and thus revealed on its website this Sunday, April 24 in the morning that it would broadcast several waves of results. Before 7 p.m. this Sunday, it intended to broadcast the first polls but warns: “The main polling institutes in France have however reached an agreement this year with the polls commission to no longer carry out these soundings. The professionalism of the polls carried out this year is therefore questionable.” RTBF also recalls that these polls are only a “photograph at a time t” of the ballot and that the differences can then be significant with the final score. On the other hand, the Belgian media also specified that it wanted to broadcast first estimates of results “ around 7:30 p.m. “For RTBF, these estimates” correspond to those given at 8 p.m. by the French media.” Impatient voters could therefore have first results before 8 p.m.
Are these results published before 8 p.m. reliable?
But is RTBF a reliable source for finding out about the results of the 2022 presidential election in France? A fortnight ago, for the first round, the French-speaking Belgian Radio and Television had published estimates of the result at the end of the afternoon, violating the reserve period imposed on the French media so as not to bias the outcome of the ballot. On its website where it followed the election live, as well as on social networks, the RTBF announced before 7 p.m. “Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen neck and neck, with 24% of the vote”. She refined her estimate a few minutes later, crediting the outgoing president with 24.7% and the RN candidate with 23.5%.
RTBF then mentioned “an exit poll”, without specifying the institute that provided it with this estimate of the results. A process already used in 2017 when, from the start of the afternoon, she had designated Emmanuel Macron and Marine le Pen as the two presidential finalists. But his estimate of the first round of the 2022 presidential election is problematic in many ways. First, if she gave the duo which appears this Sunday in the second round of voting well in advance, her quantified estimate proved to be quite largely inaccurate. Emmanuel Macron finally distanced Marine Le Pen during the first round of the election with nearly 28% of the vote against just over 23% for his rival. A result far from the “elbow-to-elbow” announced.
The response of the polling committee
Undoubtedly a little scalded, the Survey Commission therefore replied without delay. On the very day of the first round of the presidential election, she announced that she had contacted the Harris Interactive institute “to ensure that the commitment made not to carry out an exit poll had been respected”. While the pollster was one of the French institutes that had undertaken not to carry out this kind of survey, questionnaires submitted to voters during the day circulated on social networks. At this stage Harris has not communicated on this issue.
The contempt of the RTBF and the Belgians, the reaction of the French authorities
The warnings or even the threats of the authorities supervising the election in France will however do nothing. The RTBF was not the only one to taunt the CNCCEP. La Libre Belgique will publish the same estimates as its colleagues on 10 April. The newspaper Le Soir for its part will announce on the morning of the first round, in an article published on its website and entitled “#RadioLondres: why the Belgian media can broadcast the results of the presidential election before 8 p.m.”, its intention to publish first trends from 6 p.m., or in any case when the information would be “cross-checked, reliable and serious”…
Another shortcoming of RTBF: the lack of source. If the French-speaking Belgian Radio Television assured stubbornly of the reliability of its figures, it will never specify where or how these were obtained. And for good reason: all French polling institutes had made a commitment to the Polling Commission not to carry out and communicate “exit polls” on polling day. If the pollsters have kept their word (which remains to be proven), then the estimates released on April 10 are “above-ground” estimates, which no credible survey seems to be able to justify. Or, to put it more trivially, “misleading information misrepresenting itself as polls”, as the National Commission for the Control of the Electoral Campaign for the Presidential Election (CNCCEP) had warned. in a press release a few days earlier, anticipating this kind of publication.
The Polling Commission had for its part also recalled, five days before the vote, that “all the figures which would be released before 8 p.m. would be false”. At the beginning of April in another press release, she indicated that she had obtained “from the 8 main polling institutes (BVA, Elabe, Harris Interactive, Ifop, Ipsos, Kantar, Odoxa, OpinionWay) the assurance that none of them will carry out polls on April 10″ out of the polls”. Consequently, “any reference, on election day, to such polls can only be the result of rumors or manipulation and therefore, […] no credit should be granted to them”, she added. In fact, history will confirm the erroneous nature of the RTBF estimates.