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2022 FRENCH PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

What changes when the official presidential campaign begins in France?

The French presidential campaign only officially begins on Monday, but many feel it has already been going on for months. We explain what actually changes.

What changes when the official presidential campaign begins in France?
Election boards go up as the campaign officially begins in France. Photo by DENIS CHARLET / AFP

Monday 28th March marks the official beginning of presidential campaign season in France. 

This may come as a surprise for those of you feel like you have been reading about the election for months on end. But the official start to the campaign always falls two Mondays before the first-round vote. 

A number of important steps have already taken place in the build up to the election. The number of candidates running has already been cut down to 12 after a number of figures failed to gather enough parrainages – or signatures of support. 

So what actually changes on Monday? 

For most people, the official beginning of the campaign makes no difference to their lives. But there are some changes you should be aware of. 

  • Airtime 

The key change over this period is to do with the division of airtime between different candidates in the media. 

From January 1st, a sort of pre-electoral period, TV and radio stations had to allocate time to candidates or their backers in accordance with the candidate’s popularity (measured by polls) and previous electoral performance. 

From March 28th however, all candidates – whether French President Emmanuel Macron who is polling at 28 percent or socialist candidate Anne Hidalgo on 2 percent – are required to receive equal airtime. 

  • Candidates send letters 

Each of the candidates will send letters to voters, known as professions de foi (professions of faith), in a bid to sell themselves as the best option. The sending of theses letters is funded by public money. 

La Croix reported that about 100 million such letters are sent out in total across the two rounds of a typical French presidential election. The newspaper estimated that the cost of sending these letters in 2022 would be about €64.5 million. 

  • Election posters go up 

The most striking thing about the official start of the campaign season is the appearance of election posters all over the place, and the election boards go up outside public buildings.

As with broadcasting rules, each candidate is given equal amounts of space – so this time boards go up in sets of 12. Posters go up outside polling stations, which include town halls, schools and gyms.

Putting up posters on non-public buildings is possible but is strictly regulated

  • Videos 

Each of the 12 presidential candidates has made a clip for broadcast on public TV. 

At least part of the cost of these clips is covered by the state, but the variation in quality between them indicates that some kind of private finance is also used

The videos themselves are limited in duration and must be broadcast and during prime time. 

How long will the election period last? 

The first official campaign season will end on April 8th in French overseas territories including Guadeloupe, French Guyana, Martinique, Saint-Barthélémy, Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, Saint-Martin and French Polynesia. People living in these areas vote in the first round on April 9th. 

But for mainland France and other overseas territories, the campaign season draws to a close on April 9th, before the first-round vote the following day. The closing of the official campaign means that broadcasters cannot show electoral propaganda from midnight on April 8th. 

After the first round of voting, the official campaign season will begin again, on April 15th – lasting until April 22nd if you live in a far-flung overseas territory or April 23rd if you live in France. 

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FRENCH ELECTIONS

French election breakdown: TV clash, polling latest and ‘poo’ Le Pen

From the polls latest to the first big TV election clash, via a lot of questions about the French Constitution and the president's future - here's the situation 17 days on from Emmanuel Macron's shock election announcement.

French election breakdown: TV clash, polling latest and 'poo' Le Pen

During the election period we will be publishing a bi-weekly ‘election breakdown’ to help you keep up with the latest developments. You can receive these as an email by going to the newsletter section here and selecting subscribe to ‘breaking news alerts’.

It’s now been 17 days since Macron’s surprise call for snap parliamentary elections, and four days until the first round of voting.

TV debates

The hotly-anticipated first TV debate of the election on Tuesday night turned out to be an ill-tempered affair with a lot of interruptions and men talking over each other.

The line of the night went to the left representative Manuel Bompard – who otherwise struggled to make much of an impact – when he told far-right leader Jordan Bardella (whose Italian ancestors migrated to France several generations back): “When your personal ancestors arrived in France, your political ancestors said exactly the same thing to them. I find that tragic.”

But perhaps the biggest question of all is whether any of this matters? The presidential election debate between Macron and Marine Le Pen back in 2017 is widely credited with influencing the campaign as Macron exposed her contradictory policies and economic illiteracy.

However a debate ahead of the European elections last month between Bardella and prime minister Gabriel Attal was widely agreed to have been ‘won’ by Attal, who also managed to expose flaws and contradictions in the far right party’s policies. Nevertheless, the far-right went on to convincingly beat the Macronists at the polls.

Has the political scene simply moved on so that Bardella’s brief and fact-light TikTok videos convince more people than a two-hour prime-time TV debate?

You can hear the team from The Local discussing all the election latest on the Talking France podcast – listen here or on the link below

Road to chaos

Just over two weeks ago when Macron called this election, he intended to call the bluff of the French electorate – did they really want a government made up of Marine Len Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party?

Well, latest polling suggests that a large portion of French people want exactly that, and significantly fewer people want to continue with a Macron government.

With the caveat that pollsters themselves say this is is a difficult election to call, current polling suggests RN would take 35 percent of the vote, the leftist alliance Nouveau Front Populaire 30 percent and Macron’s centrists 20 percent.

This is potentially bad news for everyone, as those figures would give no party an overall majority in parliament and would instead likely usher in an era of political chaos.

The questions discussed in French conversation and media have now moved on from ‘who will win the election?’ to distinctly more technical concerns like – what exactly does the Constitution say about the powers of a president without a government? Can France have a ‘caretaker government’ in the long term? Is it time for a 6th republic?.

The most over-used phrase in French political discourse this week? Sans précédent (unprecedented).

Démission

From sans précédent to sans président – if this election leads to total chaos, will Macron resign? It’s certainly being discussed, but he says he will not.

For citizens of many European parliamentary democracies it seems virtually automatic that the president would resign if he cannot form a government, but the French system is very different and several French presidents have continued in post despite being obliged to appoint an opponent as prime minister.

READ ALSO Will Macron resign in case of an election disaster?

The only president of the Fifth Republic to resign early was Charles de Gaulle – the trigger was the failure of a referendum on local government, but it may be that he was simply fed up; he was 78 years old and had already been through an attempted coup and the May 1968 general strike which paralysed the country. He died a year after leaving office.

Caca craft

She might be riding high in the polls, but not everyone is enamoured of Le Pen, it seems, especially not in ‘lefty’ eastern Paris – as seen by this rather neatly crafted Marine Le Pen flag stuck into a lump of dog poo left on the pavement.

Thanks to spotter Helen Massy-Beresford, who saw this in Paris’s 20th arrondissement.

You can find all the latest election news HERE, or sign up to receive these election breakdowns as an email by going to the newsletter section here and selecting subscribe to ‘breaking news alerts’.

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