Monday, April 25, 2022

2022 French Election Maps

Yesterday the people of France, given a choice between a center-right candidate and an extreme right-wing candidate, decided to vote for the center-right politician. Which means that Emmanuel Macron will serve a second term as President of France. 

Two weeks ago, in the first round of voting for the French President, Macron and Le Pen finished first and second from a field of twelve. This led to yesterday's national election between the leaders of the En Marche and the National Rally parties. Macron won yesterday's election with 58.6% of the vote.

You can view a detailed geographical breakdown of the votes cast for each candidate on Le Monde's 2022 Presidential Election Map. This map (pictured above) shows the results won by each candidate at the individual commune level. If you click on a department on the map you can view a detailed breakdown of the number of votes and the percentage of votes cast for each candidate in individual communes. 

Le Monde's map shows that Le Pen was the favorite candidate across much of the north-east of the country and in parts of the south-east. Macron was popular in the west of the country and in much of central France.

The Guardian's French Election 2022 interactive map shows the level of votes cast for the two candidates at the department level. The map uses shades of orange and blue to show the percentage of the vote cast for the leading candidate in the department. If you hover over a department on the map you can view details on the turnout, and the percentage of votes and total number of votes cast for both Macron and Le Pen. 

The Guardian's map, showing results at the department level,  provides a broader brush stroke than Le Monde's map of votes cast at the commune level. However The Guardian map also shows the same geographical pattern of support for both candidates. With Macron faring particularly well in the west and in central France and Le Pen proving popular in the north-east and parts of the south.

Liberation's Results of the Presidential Election includes a cartogram map of the results. This cartogram colors each department by the candidate who received the most votes and scaled by the size of the population.If you click on the 'territoire' button on this cartogram you can view a more traditional map view of the results.

Le Parisien in Six Maps to Understand the Presidential Election attempts to explain the election result in terms of geography and social history. The newspaper points out the Le Pen tended to be more popular in rural areas, while Macron did particularly well in large cities. Another map is used to show where voter turnout was good and bad. The 2022 French Presidential election had the lowest turnout since 1969.

One of the biggest stories of this election is revealed in an Economist map showing the change in support for Le Pen and Macron since the 2017 French Presidential election. In 2017 the election was also a contest between Le Pen and Macron. This means it is possible to compare where in the country support has risen and fallen for the two candidates over the last five years. Despite Macron's victory the Economist's Change Since 2017 map shows that the extreme right candidate gained in popularity across nearly the whole of France. The obvious corollary of this is that support for Macron fell in most areas of France.

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