Appstention 2027 Independent citizen project, unaffiliated with the French state
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Understanding abstention: why 13 million in 2022

In the first round of the 2022 presidential election, nearly 13 million registered voters stayed home. That is more votes than any single candidate received. Abstention has become France's largest political bloc — and the only one that has never had a spokesperson, never had a map, never had documented reasons.

The 2022 figures

First round (10 April 2022):

Second round (24 April 2022):

Source: Interior Ministry, official results.

Abstention rose between the two rounds, and blank voting quadrupled. More than one in three registered voters (34.24%) cast no choice between the two finalists in the second round.

Abstention is not indifference

The media reflex is to say that "the French are losing interest in politics". That is false. Non-voters are not distracted citizens: they are voters who have chosen not to endorse the offer. Their reasons are political, not apolitical.

The most frequent reasons:

  • No candidate represents me
  • Voting changes nothing
  • Distrust of the institutions
  • I do not consent to endorsing the system as it stands
  • Politics does not interest me (minority)

These reasons are political. They express a judgment on the offer, on the voting method, on the representativeness of the system. They are not non-votes by oversight: they are deliberate withdrawals.

Abstention vs. blank ballot: what is the difference?

Blank voting and abstention are often confused. They do not say the same thing:

The blank ballot

Voting blank means going to the polling station to slip an empty envelope or a blank ballot into the box. By doing that, you reject the candidates on offer, but you endorse the procedure: you recognize the legitimacy of the ballot, you take part in the democratic ritual. The blank ballot is counted separately, but it does not enter the calculation of votes cast and has no legal effect.

Message: "No candidate suits me, but I support the method of election."

Abstention

Abstaining means not going to the polling station. You withdraw your consent not only from the candidates, but from the electoral game itself. Abstention costs the system nothing — that is precisely its problem: a voter who abstains in silence disappears from the count without leaving a trace. No official breakdown of motives, no recorded voice, no pressure on the parties.

Message: "I withdraw my consent from the system as it operates."

Both gestures are respectable. They express different political positions. This site does not campaign for either: it records non-voters because they are the ones who have never had a spokesperson.

→ Read the dedicated article: Blank vote or abstention, what's the difference?

A steady rise over 20 years

Second-round abstention in the presidential election was 15.97% in 2007, 19.65% in 2012, 25.44% in 2017 and 28.01% in 2022. In fifteen years, it has almost doubled.

This is not an accident, a fad or a generational quirk. It is the signal of an electoral system that is progressively losing its ability to represent a growing share of the electorate. As long as this abstention remains muted, it costs the established parties nothing. That is why this site exists: to make it audible, with reasons.

Why abstention is invisible by design

A candidate can be elected in the first round with 20% of registered voters and then wield all the power. The arithmetic of legitimacy structurally ignores those who have stopped playing: abstaining in silence costs the system nothing, so the system has no incentive to listen.

The only studies of abstention are post-ballot opinion polls, on samples, unsourced and unverifiable. No public data, no corpus, no documented base of reasons. Compare with ballots: every vote is counted, verified, published by polling station. Abstention remains a faceless percentage.

What this site changes

Appstention 2027 records non-voters before the election, one declaration per validated email, with their reasons and, if they wish, their testimony. Everything is public: the counter, the reasons, the testimonies quoted verbatim. No rewording, no poll, no synthesis that betrays.

The goal: that in April 2027, abstention is no longer just a percentage read out at 8pm, but a documented, sourced corpus, reusable by journalists, researchers and citizens themselves.

Declare my abstention for 2027 Learn more about the 2027 presidential election See the minority mandate of 2022