As it had in 2018, the “no” vote for independence prevailed, this time 53.3% to 46.7%, according to unofficial results declared by the French president, Emmanuel Macron.
But a significantly improved “yes” vote, up from 43% last referendum and now approaching the simple majority needed for secession, has given a massive fillip to the independence campaign, and laid the foundations for a third and final referendum on the question in two years’ time. [...]
Sunday’s poll was the second of potentially three national referendums agreed under the 1998 Nouméa Accord, a carefully negotiated de-colonisation plan brokered to end a deadly conflict between the mostly pro-independence Kanak population and the descendants of European settlers, known as Caldoches, in the 1980s. [...]
While the yes/no divide is regularly cast as a contest between separatist Kanaks and loyalist Europeans, New Caledonia’s 180,000-strong voting roll also includes descendants of indentured Indochinese labourers, as well as more recent migrants from France, Wallis and Futuna, Vanuatu and other French dependencies.
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