The French Catholics voted for Emmanuel Macron, who “in the Catholic house” widely surpassed the nominee of the Front National, Marine Le Pen. This has been revealed by a survey conducted by Ifop and published today on the newspaper “La Croix” and on the weekly “Pèlerin”.

The En Marche nominee received 62% of the Catholics’ total votes. This means “regular” churchgoers, with 71% of them voting for Macron, a proportion that stops instead at 54% among “occasional” churchgoers. The French Bishops Conference had never given any direction about how to vote and had not signed any joint appeal with Muslims, Jews and Protestants to call people to vote for Macron. It’s no surprise, then, that the Ifop survey also shows that the proportion of Protestants who voted for the En Marche nominee (72%) outnumbers that of the Catholics’. The number of Muslims who voted for Macron is markedly higher, though (92%). Marine Le Pen got 38% of the Catholics’ total votes. A number that drops to 29% among regular churchgoers and rises up to 46% among occasional churchgoers. 33% of Protestants chose her, only 8% of Muslims did. The survey finds that the much-feared problem of Catholic abstentions did not happen, and the turnout, as usual, was very high. For this election, again, the number of Catholics who did their duty as citizens amounted to 78%, a figure that goes up to 80% among regular churchgoers. So, Catholics outnumber both Protestants (76% of whom went to vote) and Muslims (62%). The survey – which does not say what proportion of Catholics opted for a blank or spoilt ballot – was based on a number of interviews made from May 4^th to 7^th on a sample of 4,300 people.