PARIS, April 24. /TASS/. The second round of the French presidential elections will be held on Sunday. Following its results, the winner will be determined, who will lead the country for the next five years. According to the results of the first round, which took place on April 10, the French will have to choose between the incumbent President Emmanuel Macron, who is running for a second term, and National Rally leader Marine Le Pen.
According to the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies, more than 48.7 million French people are registered in the voter lists. Macron and his wife will vote on a site in the northern resort town of Le Touquet, where the family villa of the presidential couple is located. Le Pen will visit a polling station in the commune of Henin-Beaumont (Pas-de-Calais department), which she represents in Parliament.
Polling stations in the European part of the country and in Corsica will open at 08:00 local time (09:00 Moscow time). In most communes, they will close at 07:00 pm (08:00 pm Moscow time), but in large cities, including Paris, Marseille, Bordeaux and Lyon, voters will be able to vote until 08:00 pm (09:00 pm Moscow time). In France’s overseas departments and diplomatic missions on the American continent, voting started on Saturday. The preliminary results of the elections will be announced simultaneously in France and in the French territories in the western hemisphere.
Earlier, government spokesman Gabriel Attal said that the final results will be announced by the Constitutional Council on Wednesday, April 27, or Thursday, April 28. The inauguration of the new French president will take place until May 14.
The first round of elections took place on April 10. After processing 100% of the ballots, Macron (27.84% of the vote) and Le Pen (23.15% of the vote) received the right to enter the final round.
Previously published polls predict the victory of the incumbent head of state, but the difference in percentage of votes between the two candidates turned out to be noticeably smaller than in the 2017 election final, when they also competed in the second round. Then 66.1% voted for Macron, 33.9% voted for Le Pen.
The outcome of the current elections largely depends on the voters of Jean-Luc Melenchon, leader of the leftist party La France insoumise (France Unbowed), who ended up third in the first round, receiving a fifth of all votes. Sociologist do not rule out a rather low turnout for such elections - 72%. Fewer voters in the second round of presidential elections in the Fifth Republic were recorded only once - in 1969, when the turnout was 68.9%.