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00:00 Hi Will, so I'm just outside the Ministry of the Interior in central Paris and we
00:04 are expecting a midday announcement of the voter turnout across the country so
00:10 far. Now of course this figure will change throughout the afternoon before
00:13 the official results tonight but if we look back at five years ago during the
00:18 2019 European Parliament elections the voter overall voter turnout in France
00:24 was 50.12% and this time five years ago at midday it was just above 19% so in
00:33 the morning of voting day the participation rate tends to be low. Of
00:38 course this will vary from town to town, neighborhood to neighborhood depending
00:42 on the voter demographics. For example this morning we were in the northern
00:45 suburb of Saint-Denis and the local mayor there said the participation rate had
00:49 only just surpassed 3% but then there will be other neighborhoods in central
00:53 Paris where more people are coming to vote. Now we mustn't forget we are a
00:57 Sunday and a lot of voters tend to come to the polling stations from midday
01:02 onwards so the figure is likely to change but overall France as a country
01:07 has always had a voter turnout that's slightly less than the average EU wide
01:12 voter turnout and the Paris region itself in 2014 and 2019 elections also
01:18 had a relatively low participation rate so we'll just have to see how the
01:24 results play out but speaking to polling station staff they do not seem to they
01:31 seem quite doubtful that the voter turnout will be any higher than it has
01:36 been in the previous parliamentary elections.