The first round of the French presidential elections has begun

At 08:00 local time, the voting tables opened, and from 20:00 the first results of the elections that started yesterday in the overseas regions will be announced.

As it happened on Saturday, electoral silence applies this Sunday, which translates into a ban on the publication of propaganda and the disclosure of polls, programs and interviews with candidates for the Elysee Palace, although the media can present to the public the moment in which politicians are exercising. suffrage.

Opinion polls conducted through Friday unanimously reflected the favoritism of the April 24 vote between President Emmanuel Macron and far-right leader Marine Le Pen, expectations that if confirmed today, a re-issue of the duel would take place in the fifth round. Since years.

La France Insumisa president Jean-Luc Melenchon closed the campaign in third place, although there are also options to advance back to the polls in two weeks, while far-right Eric Zemmour and conservative Valérie Pecres seem out of date. After it came second in the opinion polls before the competition.

The list of candidates is supplemented by environmentalist Yannick Gadot, National Secretary of the Communist Party, Fabien Roussel, Socialist Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, MPs Jean LaSalle and Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, representative of the Anti-New Capitalism Party. Philip Bhutto’s party and Labor Struggle spokeswoman Nathalie Arthod.

According to the projections of this presidential election, the abstention rate could be around 30 percent of the electoral record, threatening the absenteeism record in the 2002 elections (28.4).

Loss of purchasing power, unemployment, insecurity, immigration, climate change, peace and relations with Europe were some of the issues most addressed by the candidates during the campaign, based on the main concerns of the population.

Due to the continuing impact of Covid-19, the epidemic that has re-emerged in France since mid-March, elections are being held with sanitary measures that include disinfection of voting premises.

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