Polls open for 1st round of French presidential elections

By Shweta Desai

PARIS (AA) - Polling stations across mainland France opened their doors to the voters at 8.00 a.m. local time (1800GMT) for the first round of the key presidential elections.

Most polling stations will close at 7 p.m. local time (1700GMT), except in big cities in Paris, Lyon, Bordeaux, Strasbourg, Nice, and Marseilles, which will remain open until 8 p.m.

Nearly 48.7 million registered voters will have a choice to cast their votes for one among the 12 candidates. The preliminary results will start trickling in from 8 p.m. when voting ends.

In all but a rare scenario of a tie, the top two candidates with the most votes will advance to the second round to be held on April 24.

To ensure maximum participation, the government has relaxed pandemic measures. Those who have tested positive a week before can cast their votes in the polling station, along with contact cases, using a mask.

There will be no vaccine pass requirement and masks are not obligatory, though their use is recommended.

In the overseas territories, where voting is already underway, the participation rate has been low so far. Nearly 37.08% of people had voted in Guadeloupe, 34.6% in Guyana, 35.1% in Martinique, 44.4% in St-Pierre-et-Miquelon, and 12.34% in Polynesia, according to the official data by the prefecture, BFMTV news reported. There is an unusually large rate of abstention, with more than half of eligible voters staying away from polling for a president seated in Paris, thousands of miles away from their territories.

In mainland France, candidates and top politicians headed out early to slip their ballots into the box.

Prime Minister Jean Castex, Finance Minister Bruno le Maire, Paris Mayor and socialist candidate Anne Hidalgo, former President Nicolas Sarkozy, and former premier Edouard Philippe were among those who already voted.

Opinion polls have predicted outgoing President Emmanuel Macron of the Republic on the Move party, Marine Le Pen of the right-wing’s National Front, and Jean-Luc Melenchon of the left-wing Unsubmissive France party to be the top three candidates in the first round.