Abstention, the first party in France?
Whether presidential, legislative, municipal, regional, departmental or European, elections have seen their participation drop since the end of the 1980s. The increase in abstention is not linear over time: participation is volatile depending on the type of election, the voting method and the embodiment of the issue.
Read also: Regional and departmental elections: everything you need to know before voting
In France, voting is not compulsory in the legal sense: "
voting is a right, it is also a civic duty
", as the inscription on electoral cards reminds us.
This right and civic duty was acquired in 1848 for men and in 1944 for women.
The abstention rate is established by dividing the number of citizens who did not come during a vote to the number of those registered on the electoral lists on the date of the poll.
Persons not registered on the electoral roll are therefore not counted in the abstentions.
Blank and null votes are not
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