French voters choose a new president

Voters in France and its territories voted on Sunday to decide whether the right winger Marine Le Pen or the centrist Emmanuel Macron will become their president.

Forecasters estimated a relatively low turnout, which could favor Le Pen. Three polling companies predicted the turnout to be from 73 percent to 75 percent. In 2012, the turnout was 80.35 percent, it was 83.97 percent in 2007, and 79.71 in 2002.

The French Ministry of the Interior confirmed the reduced turnout, stating that by 5pm local time, 65.3 percent of voters had turned out, compared to 71.9 percent at that stage of the day in 2012 and 75.1 percent in 2007.

The low turnout could be explained by the intention of some voters, such as the supporters of Jean-Luc Melenchon, to abstain because they donot feel either candidate represents them.

The most recent polls, published on Friday, predicted that Macron will win,getting 62 percent of the vote to Le Pen’s 38 percent.

France is the world’s sixth-largest economy and an important member of the European Union, NATO and the United Nations Security council. A victory for Le Pen, who argues for France to leave the EU and NATO, would send stock and money markets into chaos on Monday because investors would fear for the future of the EU and the euro.

It appeared that hackers had tried to influence the result of the election by posting millions of documents hacked from the computers of Macron’s En Marche movement. The party said it looked as if some of the documents posted online were real while others looked to be fakes.

French media said they would not publish any articles based on documents from the hack until after the election and French police have announced an investigation into the apparent hack.

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