THE FREE. For the legislative elections in France this Sunday, June 12, 2022, La Libre Belgique could once again leak estimates of results before the time, even if the configuration will be radically different…
Will La Libre Belgique again publish the results of the legislative elections in France before 8 p.m., as it had done extensively during the last presidential election? Nothing is less sure. The legislative elections, the first round of which has been launched since 8 am this Sunday morning, are indeed radically different from a presidential one. A protean ballot, organized in 577 constituencies, it is much more elusive than a presidential election where the whole country votes in unison for around fifteen candidates who are the same from Papeete in Polynesia to Eguisheim in Alsace. The legislative elections, if they take on a national dimension with the composition of the Assembly and a possible majority for the President of the Republic, are thus partly conditioned by local issues. This considerably complicates the work of the pollsters.
Polls of voting intentions at the national level and in some constituencies were indeed conducted throughout the campaign. The televisions will also need estimates at 8 p.m., which will also be worked out by the pollsters from the first counts. La Libre Belgique could therefore have access to figures during this first round. But they will probably be taken with great caution, even more so than during the presidential election, where “La Libre” had a field day, with sometimes a few biases.
On April 10 and 24, La Libre Belgique had in fact released numerous estimates of the result before 8 p.m., a time until which the French media are, conversely, subject to the greatest reservations by law. In addition to the figures corresponding to the results of the overseas departments – Guadeloupe, Martinique or even Guyana – which voted well before the mainland, the Belgian newspaper had multiplied the relays of “polls” and other “opinion polls” carried out with of “representative panels”. It also had, like this Sunday moreover, correspondents in the capital, able to access the “estimates” which circulate in the Parisian editorial offices from the end of the afternoon.
Results serialized until 8 p.m. during the last election
From 5:30 p.m. until the offices close at 8 p.m., “La Libre” thus distributed numerous estimates in his live devoted to the French election as well as on his Twitter account. Around 5:30 p.m. on April 10 in particular, she trumpeted that “according to a first exit poll”, Emmanuel Macron and Marine LePen were in the lead, tied with 24% of the votes. In reality the results of opinion polls carried out on the Internet most often, by a “recognized polling institute”.
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 false. 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. La Libre Belgique will obviously have reviewed this estimate several times in the evening during a panting series with great reinforcements of “results of exit polls”.
It will even give shortly before 8 p.m. on the evening of the first round the estimate of “an important polling institute” which, “on the basis of the first counts”, gave “Marine Le Pen in the lead”… La Libre specified all the same that “these projections will certainly be reversed by the counts in major cities, which should be more favorable to Macron”. Alas, it’s good at 8 p.m. and not before the verdict will be given that evening, like April 24 for the second round. For a ballot as complex as the legislative elections, it will therefore be necessary to be wary if Libre Belgique plays the omens again before the official hour.