the essential
As expected, the turnout for this first round of early legislative elections is sharply higher at midday compared to 2022 in the department.
At 12 p.m., the participation rate in the first round of the legislative elections was 25.73% in the Ariège department. Although it is slightly lower than the national average – the participation rate for mainland France stands at 25.90% – it increases by more than 6 points compared to the first round of voting in the June 2022 elections which, at the same time, had recorded a participation of 19.09%. Similarly, in the European elections held only three weeks ago, only 19.55% of voters had turned out by midday.
This increase in participation is not a surprise. The explosion in the number of proxies registered in the department suggested that participation would be significant from the first round of voting. In the department’s polling stations, voters queued up a lot this morning.
In Saurat, in the canton of Sabarthès, more than 40% of people registered on the electoral lists had already gone to the polls at 12 p.m. At polling station No. 1, in Laroque-d’Olmes, around 10:30 a.m., while Emilienne, 101 years old – accompanied by Fabienne, her granddaughter, and Emma, her great-granddaughter – slipped her ballot in the box, the other voters behind her were patiently waiting for their turn.
