Bloggers are reporting that French presidential candidates Nicolas Sarkozy and Ségolène Royal are headed for a second-round election run-off. Sarkozy, the rightist, polled 30 percent and Royal, the socialist, 25 percent of the overall vote today. As predicted, voters turned out in record numbers, so candidates at the ends of the political spectrum did less well than in previous years. In other words: crazy race-baiting Jean-Marie Le Pen finished with only half the percentage of votes he received in 2002, when he shocked the country and Europe by coming in second place.
Bloggers have had a field day, webcasting projections and garnering crazy hits in this first-ever blogged French election. Have a look here and here. The immediacy, borderlessness and popularity of blogging has set off debate over legal restrictions that prevent journalists in France from reporting voting data before polls throughout the country officially close. Blogger Jean-Marc Morandini has called the threats the government has made to bloggers hypocritical. “Years past, French papers like Le Parisien and Le Figaro have reported data before the polls closed… Thousands of people are looking to my site for information, people at the LA Times and at the Guardian in London, who would then disseminate that information to readers around the world… In the second-round, in ten days, I refuse to be held responsible for how the French people will vote.”
Tags: blogging, french elections, runoff