Polling stations have opened for the second and final round of the French presidential election after Emmanuel Macron made a last-ditch effort to court young voters in a bid to save his presidency.
France’s presidential election has entered its final stage, with polling stations opening Sunday morning to allow voters to choose between globalist incumbent Emmanual Macron and national populist challenger Marine Le Pen.
Polling in the race has been continually tight, with Macron seemingly nervous about the prospect of an upset defeat and making a desperate last-ditch attempt at courting France’s youth vote seemingly in the hopes of securing reelection.
The sudden publicity blitz — which reportedly saw Macron talk about his love of one rap artist as well as the potential of decentralised blockchain technology — is likely the result of the fact that some polls found that Macron is to lose the election by a considerable margin among France’s youth, with it being much older voters that are likely to see the incumbent keep power.
POLITICO reports that the French president has snubbed mainstream outlets over the last number of days in the hopes of talking to more youth-orientated publications, such as rap publication Booska-P.
In the interview with the rap news outlet, Macron made commitments on the topic of “Islamophobia” in France, as well as on dealing with sexist violence in the country.
However, it remains unclear what effect, if any at all, such an interview will have on the President’s polling data, considering the interview had only been viewed a paltry 1,627 times at the time of publication — a far cry from the millions the President is looking to win over.
According to a report by Euronews, polling stations opened on Sunday morning, and will allow French voters to decide on the future of their country up until 7 p.m. local time, or 8 p.m. local time in some urban locations.
The broadcaster also noted that there is no absentee or mail-in voting in this election, with vote by mail in particular being banned in the country since 1975 over fears that the voting method could be used to rig elections.
Photo ID is also required to vote in the election.
Around 48.8 million people have the opportunity to vote in the election, while French citizens living abroad will also be enabled to vote in the election via the country’s consulates and embassies.
Preliminary results regarding the election are expected to emerge on Sunday evening, though a final official result may take a little bit longer due to the majority of votes being paper ballots which will need to be counted by hand.
Polling for the race still predicts that Emmanuel Macron is most likely to be the victor by the time the dust settles, the incumbent being expected to finish somewhere between six to ten points ahead of his populist challenger — but even this would be a much worse performance than in 2017, when Macron defeated Le Pen with some 66 per cent of the vote.
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