DIRECT. Regional and departmental elections: first ballots in the ballot box

The essential

• 17 regional councils and 95 departmental councils are subject to the renewal of the ballot boxes, in metropolitan France and overseas this Sunday.

  The polls, which were due to take place in March, have been postponed for three months because of the coronavirus.

• The presidential election is in many heads: those of the parties, who face the puzzle of alliances between the two rounds at 307 days before the poll for the supreme magistracy, but also those of certain candidates, such as Xavier Bertrand , already a candidate, or Valérie Pécresse.

• The National Rally hopes to do a double blow: win at least one region and perhaps departments, and sow a little more discord within the Republican right.

Follow the events of the day live:

9:52 a.m.

Intense negotiations in sight.

The in-between round promises intense negotiations, until the filing of the lists Tuesday at 6 p.m.

The psychodrama in Paca, where the rapprochement between the outgoing LR president Renaud Muselier with LREM has precipitated the right into an open crisis, gave a foretaste of the clashes to come.

9.40 a.m. Castex has voted.

A long day awaits Jean Castex and Emmanuel Macron. The Prime Minister started it by going to vote in Prades (Pyrénées-Atlantiques), while Emmanuel Macron will accomplish his civic duty in Touquet (Pas-de-Calais). The two men will return to Paris then to follow the results, one at the Elysee Palace, the second in Matignon surrounded by ministers.

9:25 am. Quirks in the distribution of electoral materials.

In many municipalities, candidates' professions of faith and ballot papers were not distributed to voters. The prefects will have to supervise from Monday the putting in envelopes and the distribution of this electoral propaganda, after the "major dysfunctions" noted for the first round of the elections, "more particularly on behalf of the new Adrexo service provider which serves part of the territory. national ”. The Secretary General of the Ministry of the Interior, Benoît Albertini, sent this Sunday a letter to this effect to the prefects, with extremely precise instructions.

9:10. Offices turned upside down by the weather.

The storms on Saturday have somewhat upset the organization of the elections in some municipalities whose offices were flooded. This is the case, for example, in Villiers-sur-Marne (Val-de-Marne). Displaced by the floods, the offices of the Renon de Villiers school were able to open normally, only a few minutes late.

9 hours.

Eric Dupont-Moretti has voted.

He went to vote in Cousolre, a town in the north of Hauts-de-France.

The Minister of Justice is engaged in this regional battle against the outgoing Xavier Bertrand.

This is a first for the lawyer, who has never rubbed shoulders with universal suffrage and who has expressed his desire to block the RN, led in Hauts-de-France by Sébastien Chenu, who in turn went vote in Denain.

8:30 am.

Policy and practice.

Many skills close to everyday life fall to the regions and departments which will be renewed this Sunday.

Transport, education, social assistance… but what are we really voting for?

8:20 am.

Edouard Philippe from early in the morning.

Several political figures did not wait to go to the polling stations.

This is the case of Edouard Philippe, who went to a nursery school in Le Havre to slip his ballot into the ballot box.

8 hours.

The polling stations are open.

Will they be there?

In some municipalities, on Friday, there was still a lack of assessors, essential to hold the polling stations.

7.45 a.m.

Numerous proxies.

Between April 6 and June 17, 228,852 dematerialized proxy requests were filed on the maprocuration.gouv.fr site, including 183,780 for the month of June alone.

7:30 am. Hello and welcome.

We will bring you this electoral Sunday, the first round of departmental and regional elections, which precede the presidential election by 307 days. 47.9 million people are registered on the electoral rolls (excluding New Caledonia), ie 94% of the population of voting age.