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The first round of the 2022 French presidential election will be held between 8 and 23 April 2022, with the second round held two weeks after the first. Should no candidate win a majority of the vote in the first round, a runoff will be held between the top two candidates two weeks later. The incumbent president is Emmanuel Macron of La République En Marche!, who won the 2017 presidential election and whose term lasts until 13 May 2022.
The two-round system is a voting method used to elect a single winner, where the voter casts a single vote for their chosen candidate. However, if no candidate receives the required number of votes, then those candidates having less than a certain proportion of the votes, or all but the two candidates receiving the most votes, are eliminated, and a second round of voting is held.
Emmanuel Jean-Michel Frédéric Macron is a French politician serving as President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra since 2017. He previously was Minister of the Economy, Industry and Digital Affairs from 2014 to 2016.
La République En Marche!, sometimes called En Marche!, is a centrist, liberal and social-liberal political party in France. It was founded on 6 April 2016 by Emmanuel Macron, a former Minister of Economy, Industry and Digital Affairs, who was later elected President of the French Republic in the 2017 election with 66.1% of the second-round vote. Macron considers La République En Marche! to be a progressive movement, uniting both the left and the right.
The President of the French Republic is elected to a five-year term in a two-round election under Article 7 of the constitution: if no candidate secures an absolute majority of votes in the first round, a second round is held two weeks later between the two candidates who received the most votes. [1] Per the constitution, the first round of the presidential election must be held between 20 and 35 days before the transition of power at the end of the five-year term of the incumbent president. Because Emmanuel Macron took office on 14 May 2017, the transition of power is slated to take place on 13 May 2022, meaning that the first round of the presidential election will be held between 8 and 23 April 2022, with the second round held two weeks after the first. [2]
The current Constitution of France was adopted on 4 October 1958. It is typically called the Constitution of the Fifth Republic, and replaced that of the Fourth Republic dating from 1946. Charles de Gaulle was the main driving force in introducing the new constitution and inaugurating the Fifth Republic, while the text was drafted by Michel Debré. Since then the constitution has been amended twenty-four times, most recently in 2008.
To be listed on the first-round ballot, candidates must secure 500 signatures (often referred to as parrainages) from national or local elected officials from at least 30 different departments or overseas collectivities, with no more than a tenth of these signatories from any single department. [3]
In the administrative divisions of France, the department is one of the three levels of government below the national level, between the administrative regions and the commune. Ninety-six departments are in metropolitan France, and five are overseas departments, which are also classified as regions. Departments are further subdivided into 334 arrondissements, themselves divided into cantons; the last two have no autonomy, and are used for the organisation of police, fire departments, and sometimes, elections.
The French overseas collectivities, like the French regions, are first-order administrative divisions of France, but have a semi-autonomous status. The COMs include some former French overseas colonies and other French overseas entities with a particular status, all of which became COMs by constitutional reform on 28 March 2003. The COMs should not be confused with the overseas regions and overseas departments, which have the same status as Mainland France but are just located outside Europe. As integral parts of France, overseas collectivities are represented in the National Assembly, Senate and Economic and Social Council. Only one COM, Saint Martin, is part of the European Union and can vote to elect members of the European Parliament (MEPs). The Pacific COMs use the CFP franc, a currency pegged to the euro, whereas the Atlantic COMs use the euro directly. As of 31 March 2011, there were five COMs:
Valérie Pécresse is a French politician. She has been deputy of the Yvelines since 16 May 2002, Minister for Higher Education and Research from 18 May 2007 to June 2011 and Minister of the Budget from then until May 2012. She was also the Government's spokeswoman.
A regional council is the elected assembly of a region of France.
Île-de-France, often called the région parisienne, contains the city of Paris, and is the most populous of the 18 regions of France. It covers 12,012 square kilometres, or two percent of the national territory, and has official estimated population of 12,213,364 as of January 1, 2019, or 18.2% of the population of France. The region accounts for nearly 30 percent of the French Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Following the 2017 presidential election, The Republicans (LR) sent its members a questionnaire on the topic of the "refoundation" of the party; of the 40,000 respondents, 70% voted against an open primary to determine the party nominee. [7]
The Republicans is a centre-right, Gaullist, conservative political party in France.
In a document dated 17 October 2017, the Socialist Party (PS) noted that the financing of the 2022 presidential campaign was not assured despite "economic restructuring" but still planned to spend €12,000,000, the maximum permitted before the first round. According to the report, the leadership of the party seriously considered the possibility of not presenting a socialist candidate in 2022. [15]
Polling firm | Fieldwork date | Sample size | Abs. | Arthaud LO | Poutou NPA | Mélenchon FI | Hamon Génération.s | Macron REM | Lassalle Résistons! | Wauquiez LR | Fillon LR | Dupont-Aignan DLF | Le Pen RN | Asselineau UPR | Cheminade S&P |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Ifop-Fiducial | 12–16 Apr 2018 | 1,201 | – | 0.5% | 1% | 16.5% | 7% | 36% | 1% | 8% | – | 6% | 23% | 1% | <0.5% |
0.5% | 1% | 16.5% | 6% | 33% | 1% | – | 12% | 6% | 23% | 1% | <0.5% | ||||
Ifop | 13–18 Oct 2017 | 1,908 | – | 1% | 1.5% | 18% | 7% | 28% | 1.5% | – | 15% | 5% | 21.5% | 1% | 0.5% |
2017 election | 23 Apr 2017 | – | 22.23% | 0.64% | 1.09% | 19.58% | 6.36% | 24.01% | 1.21% | – | 20.01% | 4.70% | 21.30% | 0.92% | 0.18% |
François Bayrou is a French centrist politician and the president of the Democratic Movement (MoDem), who was a candidate in the 2002, 2007 and 2012 French presidential elections.
Nicolas Jacques André Hulot is a French journalist and environmental activist. He is the founder and president of the Fondation Nicolas Hulot, an environmental group established in 1990.
Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, sometimes referred to by his initials NDA, is a French politician serving as President of Debout la France since 2008. He has been the member of the National Assembly for Essonne's 8th constituency since 1997 and was previously Mayor of Yerres from 1995 to 2017.
French presidential debates, broadcast on TV, traditionally occurred only between the two rounds of the presidential elections.
In 2017, for the first time, a presidential debate took place prior to the first round.
François Henri Goullet de Rugy is a French politician serving as Minister of Ecology since 2018. Since 2007 he has represented the Loire-Atlantique department, originally as a member of the Democratic and Republican Left, a parliamentary group that includes his former political party Europe Ecology – The Greens. In 2015 he joined the Ecologist Party and later La République En Marche parliamentary group.
The 11th constituency of the Pas-de-Calais is a French legislative constituency in the Pas-de-Calais département.
The 2017 French presidential election was held on 23 April and 7 May 2017. As no candidate won a majority in the first round on 23 April, a run-off was held between the top two candidates, Emmanuel Macron of En Marche! and Marine Le Pen of the National Front (FN), which Macron won by a decisive margin on 7 May. The presidential election was followed by legislative elections to elect members of the National Assembly on 11 and 18 June. Incumbent president François Hollande of the Socialist Party (PS) was eligible to run for a second term, but declared on 1 December 2016 that he would not seek reelection in light of low approval ratings, making him the first incumbent president of the Fifth Republic not to seek re-election.
Popular Republican Union is a French political party, founded in 2007 by François Asselineau. The ideology of the party is a hard Eurosceptic, and seeks the withdrawal of France from the European Union, the euro and NATO.
The 2012 leadership election of the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), a political party in France was held on 18 November 2012. It renewed the leadership structures of the UMP following Nicolas Sarkozy's defeat in the 2012 presidential election and the party's defeat in the subsequent legislative election. The disputed results led to the first open crisis in the UMP since its creation in 2002.
The Union of Democrats and Independents is a centrist, liberal political party in France founded on 18 September 2012 on the basis of the parliamentary group of the same name in the National Assembly. The party was composed of separate political parties who retained their independence. As most of them have been expelled or have left, the Democratic European Force is the last founding party to participate in the UDI.
Legislative elections were held on 11 and 18 June 2017 to elect the 577 members of the 15th National Assembly of the French Fifth Republic. They followed the two-round presidential election won by Emmanuel Macron. The centrist party he founded in 2016, La République En Marche! (REM), led an alliance with the centrist Democratic Movement (MoDem); together, the two parties won 350 of the 577 seats – a substantial majority – in the National Assembly, including an outright majority of 308 seats for REM. The Socialist Party (PS) was reduced to 30 seats and the Republicans (LR) reduced to 112 seats, and both parties' allies also suffered from a marked drop in support; these were the lowest-ever scores for the centre-left and centre-right in the legislative elections. The movement founded by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, la France Insoumise (FI), secured 17 seats, enough for a group in the National Assembly. Among other major parties, the French Communist Party (PCF) secured ten and the National Front (FN) obtained eight seats. Both rounds of the legislative election were marked by record low turnout.
The French Socialist Party held a two-round presidential primary to select a candidate for the 2017 presidential election on 22 and 29 January 2017. It was the second open primary held by the center-left coalition, after the primary in 2011 in which François Hollande defeated Martine Aubry to become the Socialist nominee. Hollande went on to defeat incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy in the 2012 presidential election. However, because of his low approval rating, he announced that he would not seek re-election, becoming the first president of the Fifth Republic to decide not to run for a second term. The primary was contested by seven candidates, four from the Socialist Party and three representing other parties part of the left-wing electoral alliance.
Christophe Castaner is a French lawyer and politician who has been serving as the Minister of the Interior since 16 October 2018 and as the Executive Officer of La République En Marche! since 2017. From 17 May 2017 to 16 October 2018, he was Secretary of State for Relations with Parliament under Prime Minister Édouard Philippe; until 24 November 2017 he served as Spokesperson of the Government. He was also spokesperson for Emmanuel Macron during his campaign for the presidential election of 2017.
A leadership election for the presidency of The Republicans (LR) was held on 10 December 2017, the first since the refoundation of the party in 2015, before which it was known as the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), and seventh overall including the UMP congresses.
The 2019 European Parliament election in France will be held on 26 May 2019, electing members of the 9th French delegation to the European Parliament as part of the European elections held across the European Union. The election will feature two major changes since the 2014 election, with the abolition of regional constituencies and return to national lists in addition to the increase in the number of French seats from 74 to 79 after the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union.
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