THE FREE. Results of the presidential election are circulating on the web. As in the first round, La Libre Belgique is one of the first media to publish results via “four polling institutes” according to the Belgian media.
Presidential results near you
[Mis à jour le 24 avril 2022 à 18h34] La Libre Belgique is once again publishing the results of the presidential election in France before 8 p.m.! As the 8 p.m. gong approaches, a deadline which will allow the first results of the second round of the presidential election to be obtained this Sunday, April 24, first results are circulating on the web and present percentages for both Emmanuel Macron and for Marine Le Pen. The media presents them with caution: “Please note that a poll is not a projection based on real results, but an opinion poll carried out among a representative panel. The results that we present to you will still evolve and be refined. step by step.”
Shortly before 2 p.m., La Libre Belgique has already released figures corresponding to the results of the overseas departments. Guadeloupe, Martinique or Guyana are concerned. Like all French media, Linternaute.com is not able to give you these results before 8 p.m. French-speaking media abroad, not subject to the electoral rule which prohibits French media from broadcasting results before 8 p.m., had planned to broadcast results before this 8 p.m. deadline.
While the French press is required to respect the reserve period on these election days, foreign media, some of which publish in French, do not hesitate to reveal the estimates or figures which inevitably circulate from mid-afternoon in the newsrooms. La Libre Belgique, whose premises are located a few kilometers from Paris and which has correspondents in the capital, will have been at the forefront two weeks ago, during the first round. The “estimates” and other “polls” delivered by the newspaper will be taken up by many other French-speaking media in Belgium and Switzerland.
From 5:30 p.m. until the offices close at 8 p.m., “La Libre” thus broadcast in numerous estimates in his live devoted to the French election as well as on his Twitter account. Around 5:30 p.m. Sunday April 10, she trumpeted that “according to a first exit poll, Emmanuel Macron and Marine LePen would be in the lead. They would both collect 24% of the votes”. Where does La Libre Belgique get these figures? She will be careful not to specify it, the Survey Commission, in France, closely monitoring the polling institutes daring to communicate estimates to the pirate media.
Not an exit poll during the first round but an opinion poll. Is it reliable?
Was it really an “exit poll”? La Libre Belgique provided some details at the dawn of the second round this Sunday, April 24. “Too quickly qualified as an “exit poll” by us (as was technically the case in previous elections), it was in fact an opinion poll carried out on the Internet by a recognized polling institute from a panel of representative citizens who have already voted.” On the other hand, she did not forget to embellish her tweet with the hashtag “#RadioLondres”, which brings together all the leaks on the social network, no doubt to win some visitors.
But there is a big problem with the method of La Libre Belgique and we will notice it very quickly: without transparency on the source or on the polling method disclosed at the same time as the first scores, the estimate provided is, a minimum to be taken with precaution. It can quickly become suspicious or… completely screwed up. Because far from the equality of 24% announced that evening, Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen will end this first round with a gap of almost 5 points (27.85% against 23.15%). A straw that still represents more than 1.6 million voters. If the two finalists announced at 5:30 p.m. were the right ones, this first estimate of La Libre Belgique, so enticing but very early to be really taken seriously, therefore seems to have made a splash…
La Libre Belgique will then enhance its live with a little teasing. At 6:45 p.m., she writes in her live that “the results of a new exit poll” are “expected shortly”. And it keeps its promise: the next estimate will be given around 7:15 p.m., less than an hour from the end of the vote in France. Many polling stations have already been closed for a few minutes in France and the counting has begun. But until 8 p.m., we still vote in the big cities. Alas, the Libre Belgique continues its marathon. This time, a very slight inflection is given: “A new exit poll places Macron in the lead (24.7%), Marine #LePen harvests (23.5%)”, writes the newspaper on Twitter. We are still very far from the mark, but Macron’s totally artificial “remontada” began on the Belgian site.
La Libre Belgique will update its estimate until 8 p.m.
La Libre Belgique will however several times update its estimate of the result of the French presidential election, but will take time to realize that the first balance given at the end of the afternoon was totally erroneous. Around 6:30 p.m., the site of the Belgian newspaper gives “results at 6 p.m.” (sic) and even releases a graph. He still takes the trouble to warn: “be careful, these are results from a first exit poll”. Emanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen are then still tied with 24% of the vote each, ahead of Jean-Luc Mélenchon at 19%. In the home stretch of the ballot in France, La Libre Belgique will pick up the pace. Before 7:30 p.m., La Libre again and again calls on the famous “exit polls”. A new survey is revealed: “According to another exit poll, Macron and Le Pen follow each other closely: 25.2% for the president and 24% for the RN candidate. Jean-Luc Mélenchon would collect 20%” , can we still read on his Twitter account of the Belgian media.
A few minutes from the gong, at 7:37 p.m., the machine goes into overdrive. La Libre Belgique gave Marine Le Pen the lead in the first round. The change of gear is very clear: “Based on the projections linked to the first counts, a polling institute gives Le Pen in the lead”, writes the media in its direct, in a message still as “above ground”. “According to the projections of a major polling institute, based on the first counts, Marine Le Pen would be in the lead with 24 to 25%. Emmanuel Macron is credited with 23 to 24%, Jean-Luc Mélenchon with 20%, Eric Zemmour by 12% and Valérie Pécresse by 6%”, even details the newspaper in an article dedicated to leaks. A precaution is taken this time: “Note that these projections will certainly be reversed by the counts in the big cities, which should be more favorable to Macron”. But these “projections” will be relayed on Twitter less than a quarter of an hour before the end of the ballot, without displaying this mention. What will happen this Sunday, April 24 during the 2nd round? Reply in a few hours…
It was not until 7:48 p.m. that La Libre Belgique finally got in tune with the estimates (reliable this time) which would be communicated a few minutes later, at 8 p.m., on the major French television channels. Just in time not to be totally off topic. This “new exit poll” gave Emmanuel Macron the lead with 27.5% ahead of Marine Le Pen at 24%. Jean-Luc Mélenchon collected “according to this poll” 20% of the votes. Three figures much closer indeed to the final result.
Serious confusion over ‘exit polls’
It seems that Libre Belgique was the victim in the first round of a common confusion between “exit polls” and estimates based on the counts in the “test offices”. The first are based on the declaration of voters, questioned on the Internet or at the exit of the polling station on election day. The seconds are calculated from the first ballots counted in several hundred polling stations, skilfully selected by the pollsters because deemed representative of the electorate throughout the country. On the one hand, we are therefore dealing with a method based on the declarative, and therefore subject to serious biases, on the other with a sample of “real” ballot papers, which, placed end to end and processed by a powerful algorithm, makes it possible to produce a reliable estimate even before the end of the counting. If La Libre Belgique has consistently, even fiercely, mentioned “exit polls”, it would seem that the very last estimate, the most accurate of the evening, was in fact derived from the second method, these figures circulating in the newsrooms from 7:45 p.m. (including at Linternaute.com).
If there is no guarantee that this kind of survey has completely disappeared, polling institutes have gradually abandoned the method known as “exit polls” from the polls since the beginning of the 2000s. And this for two reasons. First, the authorities, starting with the Survey Commission, asked for a firm commitment on their part not to carry out this kind of survey. “The Polling Commission has 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” exit polls”, she wrote in a press release before the first round. Then, the method of exit polls would now be deemed by professionals to be too unreliable to allow a correct estimate of the results on election night. But it is these professionals which provide the very first figures broadcast at 8 p.m. to television channels.