As there are 28,000 French nationals living in the Grand Duchy, the election office at Luxexpo in Kirchberg was rather busy. Five years ago, voter turnout in the first round of the French presidential election was 61% in Luxembourg. At the time, organisers opened 17 election offices to allow local French people to cast their vote.
Even though no official statistics have been published for the Grand Duchy’s turnout in this year’s election, the one in France was 25.48% at noon, three points down compared to the first round in 2017.
Since the number of French nationals living in Luxembourg has significantly increased since the last presidential elections, the number of election offices was raised from 17 to 21.
Claire Lignieres-Counathe, French ambassador to the Grand Duchy, provided insight into the organisation process of this major operation: “All our teams are working today and we managed to ensure that there is a minimum of four people per election office. To that end, we had to rely on a number of volunteers.”
Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen are favoured to qualify for the second round of the presidential election, just as was the case five years ago. The second round of votes will take place on 24 April, where Jean-Luc Mélanchon may also still play a role.
Among those seeming far away from reaching the second round are the candidates of two long-standing parties: Valérie Pécresse from Les Républicains and Anne Hidalgo from le Parti socialiste. After months of turbulent campaigning in the midst of a pandemic and a war in Urkaine, this presidential race thus may end up being atypical.
Voters in Kirchberg expressed general concerns over the parties and politicians running for office. One person estimated that this year’s election “will not be between right and left, but between globalists and nationalists, or rather patriots.”
