Voters in metropolitan France have been casting their ballots since 8:00 a.m. this Sunday to elect the 577 deputies for these early legislative elections, which are shaping up to be a historic vote in many ways. Turnout for this first round is already up sharply at midday: 25.9%, compared to 18.43% for the legislative elections on June 12, 2022 at the same time, and 19.24% in 2017.
Some political figures also went to the polls as soon as they opened. Marine Tondelier, the leader of the environmentalists, voted in Hénin-Beaumont in Pas-de-Calais, the former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, a stakeholder in the Ensemble de la majority list, in his town of Le Havre. Jordan Bardella, leader of the RN, voted on Sunday morning in Garches, in the Paris suburbs.
The outgoing rebellious deputy Alexis Corbière, who campaigned under the banner of the New Popular Front against an official candidate of La France insoumise, voted in Bagnolet, in Seine-Saint-Denis.
As expected, participation increased sharply at midday.Les Echos/template Fourish
Pollsters are counting on a continued trend throughout the day. For example, Ifop is counting on a final turnout of 64% in this first round, some institutes are predicting it at 67%. This last figure would be a record since 2002 for legislative elections (64.4% turnout), an additional rate would beat that of 1997 (67.9%). Above all, it would be much higher than just two years ago during the previous legislative elections in June 2022 (47.5%).
Several signals had suggested a strong turnout, even before this Sunday. This growing mobilization was already reflected in the vote of French people abroad: 410,000 of them voted on the online platform, open from Tuesday to Thursday. According to the Ministry of the Interior, this is a record.
The first elements from Overseas then go in the same direction. The estimated participation rate at 5 p.m. (local time) in Guyana was 28.8%. On X, the prefecture specified that this rate was 26.7% in 2022.
Record number of online votes and proxies
Finally, the number of proxies has reached very high proportions since Emmanuel Macron’s surprise announcement of a dissolution of the Assembly. It has finally also exploded, and has exceeded the 2.6 million mark, a record again, and a figure four times higher than that of 2022 at the same stage of the election.
This increase in participation should lead to an increase in triangulars, when three parties having obtained at least 12.5% of the votes remain in the second round. If this was a rather rare situation during previous elections – eight constituencies were concerned in 2022 – the polling institutes expect that the triangulars will multiply for these elections.
The thorny question of voting instructions for the second round will then arise for the different parties.
