The New Zealand public broadcaster, RNZ, reported that about 2,500 police were deployed to secure and monitor polling stations.
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An anti-independence coalition has come out ahead in New Caledonia’s long-delayed provincial elections, but has failed to secure a governing majority, leaving a small minority party to decide who will run the French-ruled territory in the southwest Pacific.
Provisional results released on Sunday evening gave the main loyalist coalition 24 of the 54 seats in New Caledonia’s Congress, the body that passes local laws and appoints the territory’s government.
That left the grouping four seats short of an absolute majority and dependent on others to govern.
Pro-independence parties took a total of 26 seats but these are divided among three blocs.
A party representing one of the archipelago’s smaller communities won the remaining four.
The outcome matters far beyond the seat count, as it sets the terms for fraught negotiations with Paris over the territory’s long-term future. The election was the first major test of opinion since deadly unrest convulsed the islands two years ago.
At its heart, the contest pits two camps against each other – loyalists who want New Caledonia to remain part of France, and a pro-independence movement, rooted in the territory’s Indigenous Kanak population, that wants it to break away.
The winning loyalist alliance, known as Les Loyalistes-Le Rassemblement and led by outgoing Southern Province president Sonia Backes, owed its lead to a strong showing in the south, the most populous province and the centre of the local economy, where it won just over half the vote.
Backes told cheering supporters in the capital, Noumea, that voters had sent “an unambiguous message” that they wanted to stay within France.
The pro-independence side is led by the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front, known by its French initials FLNKS.
Its parties actually won slightly more seats than the loyalists between them, but they ran on three separate lists rather than as a single force, which has weakened their hand.
“The key will be to be united,” said Laurie Humuni, a newly elected FLNKS member, appealing to the different independence groups to pull together.
Turnout fell to 63.7 percent, down from 66.5 percent at the last provincial vote in 2019, and the day passed off peacefully with around 2,400 police and gendarmes deployed across the islands.
The election had been due in 2024 but was postponed after riots erupted that May over a plan to widen New Caledonia’s tightly restricted electoral roll, which had been frozen since 2007 to cover only longer-term residents and their descendants.
The violence left 14 people dead and caused more than two billion euros ($2.3bn) in damage.
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