Update, May 6, 20112: Socialist candidate Francois Hollande captured the presidency in the second and decisive round of the French Presidential elections. Internauts followed the results live on Sunday evening from 8pm CET on www.google.fr/elections ."
The Internet plays a central role in citizens’ search for information about elections. Polling company Opinionway published a study at the end of last year that showed 52% of French citizens follow the electoral campaign online compared to 38% for the written press and 27% for the radio.
In order to help satisfy this growing demand, we developed www.google.fr/elections , an information hub to study, watch, discuss and participate in the French presidential campaign. Google tools such as Google News, Google+ YouTube and Google Maps were integrated to present information from a variety of sources on the campaign and its results.
This French presidential site is the latest edition of our Google election websites. After being rolled out in the United States to cover the Republican primaries, they now have expanded internationally to include presidential elections in Senegal , Egypt and Mexico .
When the polls closed last night at 8 p.m. in France, French internet users discovered the election results in real-time on Google Maps. Viewers could see each candidate’s performance for each of France’s 106 departments as well as for each of the country’s 33,844 towns.
By clicking on a candidate on the side-bar, users were able to visualize the nuances in a candidate's performance. The brighter the colour, the more votes a candidate obtained.
Socialist candidate Francois Hollande and incumbent president Nicolas Sarkozy finished first and second respectively. The two front-runners now face off for the next two weeks until French voters again go to the polls. Google will be there to five the results in real time - and in great detail. See you on May 6th for the 2nd and decisive round!
Posted by Florian Maganza, Policy Analyst, Paris
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