Thursday 3 May 2012

The Netherlands v Hungary


 The battle between Sarkozy and Hollande continues.

The campaign officially ends at midnight Friday, before the polling stations open on Sunday. The last votes can be made at 6.00pm when the polling booths across France close.

The votes are then counted and the results are usually available before 7.00pm. It is however, illegal to publish the results in France before they are announced on French television at 8.00pm

However,  neighbouring Belgium and Switzerland have a keen interest in the forthcoming election results and are currently looking for loopholes in the current legislation which prevents them from broadcasting these results until 8.00pm..

Add the speed of the internet to the equation, along with France's 23 million Facebook and three million Twitter accounts, and the law banning result predictions before 8:00pm appears increasingly unworkable.

On French social networks, users were discussing a variety of ways of getting around the embargo, including renaming the candidates after countries and presenting the results as sports wins.

Some suggested renaming Hollande as The Netherlands and Sarkozy as Hungary, where his father was born.

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