French voters in Montreal turned out in large numbers to vote in the second round of the presidential election on Saturday at the Palais des Congrès.
Posted at 12:54 p.m.
Updated at 3:50 p.m.
“We have a great turnout, with many voters who mobilized very early this morning,” said the Consul General of France in Montreal, Sophie Lagoutte.
The wait could reach up to 1:45 a.m. in the morning, while many voters arrived before the polls opened at 8 a.m. The traffic, however, became more fluid during the morning.
PHOTO DOMINICK GRAVEL, THE PRESS
“We have worked to improve the circulation of voters within the Palace, and it is bearing fruit since people are indeed arriving much faster at their polling station this week”, welcomed Ms.me Drop.
“It’s going better, it’s much more fluid” than in the first round, said Maude Pidou, who waited about thirty minutes before voting shortly before noon. She came to “block the extreme right”, like many other voters who spoke to The Press on the spot.
The presidential run-off pits centrist incumbent President Emmanuel Macron against Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, a far-right party, in a rerun of the 2017 election.
PHOTO DOMINICK GRAVEL, THE PRESS
“I haven’t decided who I was going to vote for yet,” admitted Cyril Beraud on his arrival. He voted for Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the first round. The most important thing for him is “the state of French society, geostrategic questions. The Ukrainian war has a lot of effects on me,” he explained.
Ruth Simon forgot to vote in the first round. She would have liked to see change, so that “there is more of a future for young people”, but she resigned herself to voting for Emmanuel Macron. “Because Marine, we have no choice. This is not what we want, racism and its ideas”, she explained, “but we will not have the change”.
“The priorities for me are continuity, of course”, argued on the contrary Pierre-François Kouyami, who will also vote for the outgoing president. “I don’t want to suddenly change the system. I know what I have now, I don’t know what they offer me. »
The polling stations at the Palais des Congrès are open until 7 p.m. Saturday. More than 67,000 French people are registered in Montreal. They had placed Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the lead in the first round two weeks ago. In 2017, they voted overwhelmingly for Emmanuel Macron in the second round.
Saturday is also voting day for French expatriates elsewhere in North America, including some 130,000 in the United States. The French archipelago of Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, off the coast of Canada, kicked off the overseas vote on Saturday, before Guyana and the other French islands of the Antilles, then the Pacific and the ‘Indian Ocean.
In mainland France, voting day is Sunday and the name of the winner will be announced at 8 p.m. local time (2 p.m. Montreal time).
With Agence France-Presse