Macron votes in the European elections in France amid a slight rise in provisional participation

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The main candidates, with the far-right Jordan Bardella at the helm, have already cast their ballots in a day without incidents

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The President of France, Emmanuel Macron, cast his vote this afternoon in the European elections at a polling station in Le Touquet shortly after the first provisional participation figures pointed to a slight increase compared to 2019.

The 19.81 percent registered at 12:00 is slightly higher than the 19.2 in 2019, but stands out more than the provisional result of 2014 at this time, when 15.7 percent had already voted.

Macron has not made any statements after casting his vote, nor have the rest of the candidates, with the president of the National Rally, the far-right Jordan Bardella, the favorite for victory.

Polls in recent weeks estimated that the far-right Bardella would get around 33 percent of the vote, double the predicted score for Macron’s top candidate, Valérie Hayer, of around 16 percent. The far-right leader of the National Rally, Marine Le Pen, has led the vote in the last two European elections, in 2014 and 2019, but with a much smaller margin.

The vote is taking place in relative calm in the overseas territory of New Caledonia, the scene of violent protests in recent weeks following an initiative, currently paralyzed, to extend the right to vote to French residents.

Sources from ‘Le Figaro’ nevertheless point out “specific clashes”, so far without victims, which have caused the closure of electoral centers in the municipalities of Kouaoua and Ouvéa.

On the other hand, candidates from La Francia Insumisa have denounced certain irregularities in some polling stations. The coordinator of the left-wing formation, Manuel Bompard, has assured that in a constituency of Domont (Val-d’Oise), there were no ballots for the head of his list, the candidate Manon Aubry.

“Our intervention was necessary to get everything going,” Bompard, the Bouches-du-Rhône deputy, said on his social network account X, where he issued a notice to party supporters. “Be attentive and notify us of any malfunctions!” He warned.

His colleagues from Haute Garonne, Hadrien Clouet and François Piquemal, have also denounced “first irregularities” in Toulouse as soon as the polling stations opened, while the second deplored “electoral chaos” in the city in the morning.