PARTICIPATION. The Ministry of the Interior has just communicated the first figures for participation: at noon, the French are still few in number to have taken part in the ballot for this first round of the presidential election.
[Mis à jour le 10 avril 2022 à 12h10] The Ministry of the Interior has just officially communicated on the level of participation: at noon, the participation rate is 25.48% in France. A low level, but which will obviously increase throughout the day. In 2017, during the previous presidential election, the turnout at noon was 28.54%, which therefore shows interest at half mast at the start of the ballot. According to the OpinionWay-Kéa Partners barometer for “Les Echos” published on Monday April 4, 2022, only 66% of French people said they were sure to vote this Sunday. We were therefore heading towards a considerably low turnout for the first round of a presidential election, which is historically the one that brings together the most voters and mobilizes the most citizens in the polling stations.
According to a study by BVA published on March 21, it is especially the 25-34 who did not intend to move (44% of them). But why are so many French people sulking to go democratic? First reason, according to the polling institute, “they do not expect much from this election” and believe “that it will not change anything in their daily lives.” Second reason, specific to the 2022 ballot given the polls, “the impression that the betting is already done”, Emmanuel Macron being given a clear lead in the first round and winning in all cases in the second. Finally, “the impression that their vote does not count” discourages some voters from moving, when a certain section declares “that no candidate represents [leurs] ideas.”
Next numbers at 5 p.m.
As with every election, the services of Place Beauvau, which is in charge of the organization and the proper conduct of the ballot, gives updated rates of participation and abstention at 5 p.m. and then at 8 p.m. Later in the night, the level of participation is consolidated with final figures, once all the data from the polling stations has been tallied. Participation is one of the important data of this presidential election and this first round. Voter turnout is the percentage of voters who chose to vote rather than abstain. To perform this calculation, the Ministry of the Interior uses the base of voters registered on the electoral lists and compares it to the votes cast.
After the participation and abstention rates, it is the estimates of the results that will be communicated, from 8 p.m., on Linternaute as well as on all the major national media. The ministry also provides us with updated abstention figures and the results of each candidate throughout the evening. The editorial staff of Linternaute is mobilizing so that you are aware of the partial and consolidated results of this 2022 presidential election in real time, thanks to our major live broadcast dedicated to the 2022 presidential election.
Remember that the participation in the vote, in France, whatever its level, cannot allow the official calling into question of an election. But it decreases over the years, and this is nothing new. This Sunday, the fear of a particularly low turnout, and therefore of record abstention, hangs over this first round of the presidential election. According to certain polling institutes, approximately one in three eligible voters does not intend to move to slip a ballot into the ballot box on Sunday April 10, 2022, even if it is white: all those people who do not will not move will therefore reduce the participation rate. This rate therefore promises to be even lower than that of the first round of the 2017 election, where it was 77.77% in the first round and 74.56% in the second, but which is approaching (or even could beat) of the record for the first round of 2002, where 11,689,956 voters had not taken part in the ballot, causing the participation rate to plummet to 71.60%. He thus lost 6.8% compared to the previous election of 1995, where the participation score was 78.38% in the first round. More recently, for the regional elections of June 2021, the final participation rate in the second round was 34.69%, which is extremely low (note however that the participation in the regional and departmental elections is always lower than the participation in the presidential election).