French Presidential | Voters abroad are voting, the metropolis is preparing

(Paris) Emmanuel Macron or Marine Le Pen? The first voters from overseas and abroad vote on Saturday, time difference obliges, for a presidential election with crucial issues, before the opening of the polling stations on Sunday morning in mainland France.

A 90-year-old resident was the first to slip a ballot into the ballot box shortly after 8 a.m. local time in the archipelago of Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, off Canada.

This overseas territory kicked off voting operations for the second round, which also began in Guyana and the other islands of the Antilles. Those of the Pacific and the Indian Ocean will follow a little later.

In Guyana, at the Henri-Agarande school in Cayenne, the voters paraded without downtime. Some, such as firefighters or technical services employees, came to vote in work clothes. Others made the trip as a couple or as a family.

“An essential right”

For Sandy Doro, an 18-year-old student: “it is an essential right that must be exercised”. Beside her, Lyvio Francius, a student of the same age, also votes for the first time, but without much enthusiasm: “It was my mother who pushed me and took me away, otherwise it wouldn’t not really interested”.

At the Palais des congrès de Montréal, long lines of voters, warmly dressed and anti-COVID-19 masks on their faces, were visible on Saturday.

In mainland France, polling stations open Sunday from 8 a.m. Since Friday midnight, the campaign is officially over. Before the results on Sunday at 8 p.m., no interviews or polls or estimates of results can be published.

Some 48.7 million French people have the choice, as in 2017, between two candidates with radically opposed programs to lead a flagship country in Europe, in a particularly tense international context with a war raging at the borders of the Union. European.

Europe, economy, purchasing power, relations with Russia, pensions, immigration: almost everything separates the two rivals, who seem to embody two Frances more than ever, after a five-year period studded with multiple crises, from “yellow vests” to the COVID-19 pandemic.

On the one hand, Emmanuel Macron, 44, who came out on top in the first round (27.85%), once again wants to transcend the left/right divides to win.

Given favorite in the polls, he hopes to become the first president of the Fifth Republic re-elected by universal suffrage excluding cohabitation. He called for blocking the far right, promising lower taxes, pension reform and more ecology.

On the other, Marine Le Pen, 53, aims to become the first representative of the far right – a term she rejects – and the first woman to invest the Elysée.

On April 10, she had arrived more than four points (23.15%) behind the outgoing president. Hardly beaten 5 years ago (33.9% of the vote), it intends to make the opinion polls lie by bringing together a broad anti-Macron front on the theme of the defense of purchasing power and the fight against immigration.

About 300 people, often young, demonstrated on Saturday in Lille against the far right, in a procession featuring flags of young communists from France, the CGT, insubordinate France or the Human Rights League. .

Risk of high abstention

“Whoever wins, the country will inevitably be more difficult to govern in the next five years,” political scientist Chloé Morin told AFP.

“If Emmanuel Macron is re-elected, the method of voting in the legislative elections should lead to (the) more radical oppositions being fairly weakly represented in Parliament. They will therefore be more in a media opposition or in the street than in a parliamentary opposition or in a culture of compromise, ”according to her.

Referee and great unknown in the ballot, abstention is likely to be high, even stronger on Sunday than in the first round (26.31%). Just like the blank and null ballots which had reached a record in 2017, attesting to the refusal of millions of French people to choose between the two finalists.

In their latest surveys, the Ifop and Ipsos Sopra Steria institutes estimate abstention between 26% and 28%, below the record for a second round in 1969 (31.1%).

Additional risk, the three school zones will be on vacation this weekend, with in particular the start of spring break for the Paris region.

The participation in Overseas will therefore give a first trend on Saturday.

Especially since the Insoumis leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, on the strength of his third place on April 10 with 21.95% of the votes at the national level, had arrived well ahead in the Antilles, exceeding the 50% mark in Guadeloupe, Martinique and Guyana.

His electorate-largest reserve of votes between the two rounds-was particularly courted by the two finalists. But many LFI supporters could be tempted to shun the ballot box.