The results of this presidential election will be revealed from 8 pm. Four women and eight men. We now know the candidates authorized to run for the French presidential election.
12 candidates will run for the French presidency this year. This is in line with the average number of presidential elections in the last 50 years. However, the record was broken in 2002 with 16 candidates. That year, the left was so generous with its candidates that it did not qualify any of them for the second round.
In the history of the Fifth Republic, the smallest number of candidates dates back to the first presidential election in 1958. Only three candidates competed. General De Gaulle, for whom the Constitution adopted two months earlier had been tailor-made, was opposed by a Communist candidate, Georges Maranne, and a surprise guest, Albert Châtelet. Seven years later, the first presidential election by universal suffrage would pit six candidates against each other. In 2017, there were ten.
Here are the candidates in alphabetical order:
Anne Hidalgo
At 62, a first candidacy. Fifteen years after Ségolène Royal (who says she prefers Jean-Luc Mélenchon this year), the Socialist Party has again nominated a woman. Anne Hidalgo is struggling to attract attention and the polls are very unfavorable to her.
Emmanuel Macron
44 years old, second candidacy, outgoing president. A campaign that will be short, less than forty days, and during which the one who promised to be president “until the last minute” will be able to play on different boards: French president, European president, head of the army in times of war, campaigning candidate… even if it means that his opponents will not know who to attack during the coming weeks. Emmanuel Macron has named his project and his campaign site “Avec vous”.
Eric Zemmour
At 63 years old, he is running for the first time. He has created his own party, Reconquest, but remains outside the main political circles. His project: that the French “feel at home again”. In recent weeks, he has also been criticized for his pro-Russian sympathies and his past remarks very favorable to Vladimir Putin.
Fabien Roussel
At 52 years old, this is his first candidacy. Absent from the last two presidential elections (in favor of Jean-Luc Mélenchon), the Communist Party returns this year, embodied by Fabien Roussel.the last Communist candidate, Marie-Georges Buffet before, in 2007, made a score of 1.93% far, very far from the great hours of the French Communist Party.
Jean Lassalle
At 66 years old, this is his second candidacy. Béarnais songs at the National Assembly, hunger strike, walking tour of France… Long close to François Bayrou (who is now alongside Emmanuel Macron), Jean Lassalle is now running for his own party, Résistons!
Jean-Luc Mélenchon
This is a third candidacy for Jean-Luc Mélenchon, 70 years old. A former socialist minister (in the early 2000s), he is running under the colors of his own party, La France insoumise. With 150,000 signatures, a successful gamble, even if the initiative did not fundamentally make a mark.
Marine Le Pen
53 years old, third candidacy. It’s been almost two years, on January 16, 2020, that Marine Le Pen announced that she would be in the race. The heiress of the National Front, renamed National Rally, of her father Jean-Marie Le Pen (with whom she now has complex relations) is running for the third time in the presidential election.
Nathalie Arthaud
At 52 years old, she is running for the third time for the presidential elections under the colors of Lutte ouvrière. Teacher in a high school in Aubervilliers (Seine-Saint-Denis). “She is one of the few to continue her activity during the campaign,” said France Bleu in a portrait.
Nicolas Dupont-Aignan
At 61 years old, this is his third candidacy. After having collected respectively 1.79% in 2012 and 4.70% of the votes cast in 2017, he says he is still convinced to be the surprise of the presidential election. A graduate of Sciences-Po and the Ecole Nationale d’Administration (ENA), he is a civil administrator.
Philippe Poutou
55 years old, third candidacy, for the one who in 2012 declared: “this is my first candidacy, and it will be my last!” His participation this year will have been played out at the last minute, struggling to collect the necessary 500 sponsorships.
Valérie Pécresse
At 54 years old, this is her first candidacy. Moreover, never a woman had been a candidate for the party heir of Gaullism, passed between the hands of Jacques Chirac (RPR) and Nicolas Sarkozy (UMP). She currently presides over the Ile-de-France region (Paris area), which includes Paris and seven departments. It is the most populated region in France.
Yannick Jadot
At 54, this is his first presidential candidacy. In 2017, he had however been designated to represent Europe Ecologie-
After a brief passage through the campaign of Noël Mamère in 2002, he gets the direction of the campaigns of the NGO Greenpeace France and participates in the creation of the “Alliance for the Planet” and takes part in the Grenelle Environment.
Dates to remember:
- April 10, 2022: First round of the election of the President of the Republic. In Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guiana, St. Pierre and Miquelon, St. Barthélemy, St. Martin and French Polynesia, voters vote the day before to take into account the time difference.
- April 13, 2022: Decision of the Constitutional Council validating the results of the election and establishing the list of the two candidates entitled to run in the second round.
- April 15 to 23, 2022: Official campaign for the second round.
- April 24, 2022: Second round of the election of the President of the Republic. Traditionally, at 8:00 pm in Paris, time of closure of the last polling stations, the media give a result quite reliable.
- April 27, 2022: Decision of the Constitutional Council validating the results of the election and official proclamation of the new President of the Republic.
- May 13, 2022 (at the latest): Transfer of power.
