PARIS (AP) – Voting in the French presidential runoff has begun in France’s overseas territories amid a nationwide blackout on campaigning and media coverage that could sway voters’ views. It moves to the mainland on Sunday.
The first French territory involved in the early voting was Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, an archipelago located near the Canadian island of Newfoundland, where polling stations opened Saturday morning.
Early voting in other far-flung French overseas territories and French embassies abroad was expected later in the day.
In the presidential runoff, voters are choosing between centrist Emmanuel Macron’s business-friendly, pro-European vision and far-right Marine Le Pen’s protectionist, closed-borders view that resonates with workers left behind by globalization.
The French presidential campaign has been unusually bitter, with voters hurling eggs and flour, protesters clashing with police and candidates insulting each other on national television – a reflection of the widespread public disaffection with politics.
Marine Le Pen, 48, has brought her right wing National Front party, once a pariah for its racism and anti-Semitism, closer than ever to the French presidency, seizing on working-class voters’ growing frustration with globalization and immigration. Even if she loses in Sunday’s runoff, she is likely to be a powerful opposition figure in France’s parliamentary election in June.
On Sunday she faces 39-year-old former Socialist minister Emmanuel Macron, who also helped upend France’s traditional political structure with his wild-card campaign.
In an interview with The Associated Press on Friday, Le Pen said, win or lose, “we changed everything.”
Many voters, however, don’t like either Le Pen or Macron. They fear her party’s racist past while worrying that his platform would demolish worker job protections.
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