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President Emmanuel Macron’s snap election gambit has caught everyone by surprise, not least French holidaymakers rushing to sign up for proxy voting in order to save their summer plans.
At a police station in Paris’s 11th arrondissement earlier this week, a steady stream of citizens were registering their friends and family members to cast ballots in their place so they could still escape the city on June 30 and July 7 — the two consecutive Sundays when the parliamentary vote takes place.
“I’m privileged to have a place to go to outside Paris,” said Thierry Vila, a 76-year-old novelist who is sticking to his plan to go to his second home in Toulon for a writing retreat. “But there is a political imperative for me to vote,” he said, adding that he was determined to oppose the far right from coming to power.
The run-off vote will be the first legislative election to be held in July since France’s Fifth Republic began in 1958, and comes a day after the start of the country’s school holidays.
French citizens who live abroad can vote online but there will be no postal vote in these elections because of the shortness of the campaign.
According to France’s interior ministry, which oversees elections, more than 700,000 people registered for a proxy vote in just over a week after Macron’s shock announcement — more than six times the number of people requesting this form of voting over a similar period in 2022, when elections were held in mid June.
“There could be a record number of proxy votes,” said Anne Muxel, deputy director of Cevipof, a think-tank at Sciences Po.
Although some can go through the process entirely online, most voters “have to go to a police station or the town hall to verify their identity so they need to be motivated”, Muxel added. “I don’t think many will cancel their holidays to vote.”
So-called juilletistes, French people who take their holidays in July instead of the more common period in August, face difficult choices when designating their proxy: choosing someone they can trust and who is not also on holiday.
Valentine, a charity worker and leftwing voter, said she found a friend to vote on her behalf — as she was sticking to her Alpine holiday plans for both election Sundays. She said the process had been “simple” though her proxy will have to travel across Paris to get to Valentine’s designated voting station.
To meet the growing demand, parties offer online services to match voters with like-minded potential proxies. Among their users is Philippe, a software engineer based in La Réunion, one of France’s overseas territories, who is relocating to the mainland but has been unable to change his voting residency.
“My friends in La Réunion are people I adore but I can’t particularly trust to do a proxy vote because they don’t have the same political convictions as me,” he said.
In an attempt to galvanise the youth vote, French football star Kylian Mbappé — who risks being in Germany at the time of both rounds if his team performs well at the Euro 2024 championship — told his fans to carry out their democratic duty and warned “the extremes are at the doors of power”.
Turnout will be key because of the format of the two-round election: the top two vote winners qualify, but if another candidate also clears the bar of 12.5 per cent of registered voters they advance, too.
The high stakes of the election should also raise turnout, which was 52 per cent for the recent European parliament elections.
If the participation rate is high, it lowers the percentage of voters that a party needs to qualify. For Macron’s centrist alliance, which is running third place in polls, the participation rate will help determine their fate.
But those not on electoral lists for the European elections at the start of the month will not be able to register on time, a factor that could hit support for both the leftwing Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) and Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National party.
“We know that in general, the highest abstention rates are among the working class and young people,” said Antoine Bristielle, a director at the Jean Jaurès Foundation, significant voters for the far right and the left’s NFP.
“The key for the parties will be mobilising these electorates,” he added.
