RTBF. The French-speaking Belgian Radio-Television has a habit during the French presidential election of issuing estimates on the final result, grilling priority to its French colleagues…
[Mis à jour le 10 avril 2022 à 14h28] This Sunday, April 10, well before 8 p.m., the first media to reveal the result of the first round of the 2022 presidential election may not be French! Several foreign media announce this Sunday to be able to give trends before the deadline. The site of the RTBF, the French-speaking Belgian television radio, thus assures in its live that it will give “first trends from 6 p.m.”, two hours before the closing time of the last polling stations. For several years and in particular since 2007, the French-speaking media abroad have taken pleasure in overtaking their French counterparts by publishing on their websites estimates of the result of the supreme election before 8 p.m., the 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.
Already in 2017, figures had circulated…
During the first round of the previous presidential election, 5 years ago, the French-speaking Belgian Radio-Television, the RTBF had already particularly distinguished itself in the exercise by publishing, from 3 p.m., initial estimates based on a survey “exit ballot boxes”. The famous Belgian media was careful not to communicate the name of the institute at the origin of this survey supposed to reflect the result of the vote, which was however still in progress in France at the time of publication. Anyway, Emmanuel Macron was then given the lead in the first round of the presidential election with 24% of the vote, a result, according to the estimate of RTBF, just above that of Marine Le Pen credited with 22 %.
The source of the RTBF will be tracked down for a long time, some French journalists will report having received themselves, without being able to communicate it, an investigation carried out by the OpinionWay institute at the time. Questioned by Liberation after this umpteenth scandal, OpinionWay had confirmed that it had carried out, like other institutes, a survey, first on the Internet then in the field on the day of the presidential election to “analyze the sociology of the electorates and the motivations for voting” . This work, which began at noon, had collected data on nearly 10,000 people. But the institute firmly denied being at the origin of the RTBF leaks and also indicated that its work did not consist of “an exit poll”, in other words a poll conducted among voters leaving their polling station. Commenting on the estimates of the RTBF, Bruno Jeanbart, general manager of OpinionWay supposed that it was “probably a bogus poll or an intox”.
For this first estimate, the RTBF, which had revised its figures several times, giving Marine Le Pen, Jean-Luc Mélenchon and François Fillon a time “in a pocket handkerchief”, was not very far from the final result. The latter will finally give Emmanuel Macron winner of the first round with 24.01% of the vote ahead of the candidate of the FN (now National Rally) with 21.30%. Enough to enrage the French media all the more.