Despite the polls that predicted the FN would lead in this first round, turnout was indeed higher in the regions where its lead was announced, but to a rather small extent. 52% of the French are not worried about the FN leading a region.
In PACA, abstention dropped by 7 points compared to the previous regional election in 2010, which did not prevent the FN from achieving a historic score there.
3 scenarios for the second round:
(i) The fear of the FN mobilizes more voters, the abstention rate would be below 42%;
(ii) Voters, regardless of their opinions, transfer their votes to Christian Estrosi’s list, without mobilizing other voters, the abstention rate would be between 42% and 48%;
(iii) Voters not represented in the second round abstain. Even though this scenario is unlikely, it is conceivable in the current context.
Reasons for abstention
The French are very poorly informed about the stakes of regional elections and a significant proportion use it as an opportunity to judge national politics.
In the abstentionist vote, we find both voters who do not know the stakes of the election and those who are disinterested in political issues and increasingly those who are fully aware of the stakes but no longer identify with traditional parties, yet do not want to vote FN.
Among the abstentionists, there is a higher proportion of voters in great precariousness, women, and people without diplomas.
The FN, a protest vote or hope?
For this analysis, we measured the real weight of the FN vote compared to the number of registered voters on a base of 100 (1986) in the PACA region.
This analysis offers another interpretation of the real weight of the FN in the electorate.
Contrary to what is said, the FN vote has not increased in previous elections. Nationally, in 2012, the FN obtained 6.4 million votes compared to 6.1 million in this regional election.
In PACA, the increase is indeed very noticeable in the first round and benefits from the party’s makeover by Marine Le Pen, the attacks, a degraded economic situation, but not only…
Indeed, beyond conjunctural effects, the FN is increasingly considered not as a means of protesting or expressing fear but increasingly as an alternative to the policy carried out on the left and the right.
The FN’s electorate comes both from young, less educated individuals who hope the FN will help them access employment, employed adults and workers who have jobs but fear falling into precariousness, and also a significant proportion of senior executives.
The FN’s strength comes from the fact that, for many elections, other parties like Les Républicains or the PS presented themselves as bulwarks against the FN without offering a clear societal project.
The FN is perceived, by its electorate, as the only one proposing a project with a vision of a sovereign Republic, unconstrained by a Europe perceived to threaten their identity in an anxiety-inducing world in full upheaval.
Who will win the PACA region?
The proportion of protest votes within the FN electorate tends to decrease in favor of the hope represented by this alternative to the traditional political landscape. As such, the FN electorate is often strongly mobilized in both the first and second rounds.
In 2004, the FN lost only 1.28% between the two rounds, and in 2010, the FN electorate even increased by 30.74% between the two rounds in PACA.
So what about the second round?
Christian Estrosi’s campaign has often been seen as sometimes more extreme right than that of Marion Le Pen. Marion Le Pen achieved a historic score and should not be able to benefit from a reserve of votes to improve her first-round score. She should lose part of her electorate that saw this vote as a rejection of the PS and Les Républicains.
While right-wing voters are expected to go vote for Estrosi in large numbers, what about the left-wing voters?
A majority will follow the PS’s guidelines and vote for Christian Estrosi, but it is feared that some will abstain in the second round, creating uncertainty about the outcome of the election.
Even if numerically it is very likely that Christian Estrosi will be elected, the FN’s momentum will eventually prevail if both the left and the right do not acknowledge that the French need a societal project rather than a technocratic or purely technical vision in developing their platforms and arguments.
by Frédéric Ganneval (ArteNIce)
