"A voté !"
Millions of people in France are voting in the first round of local elections this Sunday, with the far-right Front National looking for major gains while the Socialists are under pressure due to national disappointment with President François Hollande’s government. Paris is also set to be one step closer to having its first ever female mayor.
Polling stations opened across France at 8am local time for more than 44 million eligible voters.
By midday, 23.16% of eligible voters had cast their ballots, according to the interior ministry, a similar level to that recorded during the last local elections in 2008.
Just under a million people will stand as candidates in an election that will produce more than 36,000 new mayors across the country, from the smallest villages to large cities.
In the capital Paris, the race has been focused on two women: Socialist candidate Anne Hidalgo, who has been deputy mayor since 2001 under outgoing mayor Bertrand Delanoë, and Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, a former Sarkozy-era minister running for the right-wing UMP.
Hidalgo voted in the city’s 15th district, while Kosciusko-Morizet cast her ballot in the 14th, the next district away.
Just before official campaigning ended on Friday, Hidalgo made a plea in several languages, including English, for European foreigners to go out and vote. EU citizens living in France are allowed to vote in local elections.
They can also stand as local councillors, but not as mayors and deputy mayors.
5,954 foreign nationals from 25 EU countries are listed as candidates. British nationals are leading the foreigners’ charge with 1,186 candidates. Estonia and Malta are the only EU countries not represented.
President François Hollande voted Tulle, in the Corrèze department, where he served as mayor until 2012.
Although the local elections are not directly linked to national politics, the Socialists are facing pressure as Hollande’s popularity rating is the lowest of any French President in history.
Former President Nicolas Sarkozy, under criticism in recent days after comparing court-ordered monitoring of his phone to East Germany’s Stasi secret police, voted in Paris’s 16th district.
The far-right Front National is looking for major gains, with leader Marine Le Pen voting in the northern town of Hénin-Beaumont, where the Front National candidate is looking to unseat the Socialist incumbent.
Under electoral rules, any party that wins at least 10 percent of the vote in the first round is eligible to present candidates in the second round on March 30.
Google France created a special doogle for the elections.
