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French Constitutional Council publishes ballot results of first round election

26 April 2012 03:15 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. French Constitutional Council on Wednesday published the official results of the countryâ€™s first round of presidential elections, which took place last Sunday, APA reports quoting Xinhua.

Of the ten candidates in the first round, Socialist Francois Hollande came in first with 10,272,705 votes, ahead of incumbent President Nicolas Sarkozy, the candidate of the Union for a Popular Movement who collected 9,753,629 votes, according to a statement from the Council.

Marine Le Pen of the National Front took the third place with 6,421,426votes, followed by Jean-Luc Melenchon, leader of the Left Front, with 3,984,822 votes. The fifth came Francois Bayrou of the Democratic Movement with 3,275,122 votes.

It said a total of 46,028,542 French electors had registered to vote in presidential elections, and 36,584,399 voters cast their ballot in the first round. The abstention rate was 22.04 percent.

The figures were largely in line with data published by French Interior Ministry on Monday, which showed Hollande securing 28.63 percent of all votes against Sarkozyâ€™s 27.18 percent. Both of them are now locked in a head-to-head decisive runoff scheduled for May 6.

Marine Le Pen obtained 17.9 percent of all votes, while Jean-Luc Melenchon and Bayrou gained respectively 11.11 percent and 9.13 percent, according to the ministry. The other candidatesâ€™ support rates were all less than 3 percent.

The French law authorizes the Constitutional Council the power to oversee the regularity of French presidential election, to examine challenges and to announce the results of the ballot.