“Attendance is as high as in the first round.” The president of the St Roch polling station appears confident given the significant number of initial voters who have passed through his office since it opened at 8 a.m. The much-anticipated contest between the icon of the Socialist Party and the leader of the UMP is indeed underway in Nice, as elsewhere, with nearly 44 million voters acting as arbiters while waiting for the results from the ballot boxes, which will be revealed at 8 p.m.
Who will succeed Jacques Chirac, whose term ends on May 16th next? Each camp is hopeful and although polls significantly favor Nicolas Sarkozy, nothing seems determined yet as the choices of voters supporting François Bayrou and Jean-Marie Le Pen will weigh heavily in the electoral balance. Due to time differences, nearly a million voters have already cast their ballots in some overseas territories, in Canada, French Polynesia, the Antilles, and Guyana.
Join us, then, this evening at 8 p.m. to find out the identity of a new head of state whom the country has been awaiting for many months.
