PARIS —
Participation in the
French presidential election stood at 25.5 percent at 12pm
on Sunday, the interior ministry said, the lowest level since 2002, when a
far-right candidate advanced to the second-round run-off.
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Analysts have
warned that turnout this year could be the lowest since direct popular vote of
the president was ratified in 1962, injecting a high level of uncertainty into
a race where President
Emmanuel Macron is seeking re-election.
The result is
likely to prove consequential for France and Europe in the coming years.
Midday turnout was
three percentage points lower than in 2017, when Macron upended the French
political landscape by knocking out traditional parties on the left and right
with an ambitious reformist platform.
He won the run-off
against Marine Le Pen, the far-right leader who is again forecast by polls to
qualify for the second round this year, and who has seen a sharp jump in
opinion polls over the past week.
But turnout at noon
was above the 21.4 percent of April 21, 2002, when Marine’s father,
Jean-Marie Le Pen, disproved polls by squeezing past the Socialist prime minister Lionel
Jospin to advance to the second round against incumbent president Jacques
Chirac.
Chirac went on to
win re-election in a crushing defeat of Le Pen, just as Macron beat out Marine
Le Pen in the 2017 run-off with 66 percent of the votes to her 34 percent.
Polls suggest a
repeat of the Macron-Le Pen contest would be much closer this year, in line
with a rightward drift among the French electorate in recent years.
Some 48.7 million
voters are registered for the election, to be followed by the run-off on April
24.
The interior minister will
issue an update on participation levels at 5pm (1500 GMT), and the initial
projections of the results will be announced at 8pm.
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