French presidential election, 2022

[King of Kensington]

I don't want to get too sidetracked into Jewish voting patterns around the world, but i should point out that the "pro-Israel" swing to the right in Jewish parts of Montreal, Toronto, or Orthodox parts of Brooklyn etc...do not exactly fit the "affluence" pattern. The Orthodox Jews who support Trump are generally very low income...and ditto for the ultra orthodox enclaves in Canada that might hypothetically support extreme right candidates. The ultra orthodox tend to have large families and often times no one makes any money since the men just study the Torah all day and live off handouts. Poverty is a big problem. The enclaves where there are a lot of very affluent Jews (i.e. Beverly Hills, the upper east side etc...) won't touch Trump with a ten foot poll. In the 2014 Toronto mayoral election, the affluent Jewish areas of Toronto pretty overwhelmingly preferred John "noblesse oblige" Tory over Doug "rightwing populist" Ford.

Your perception of Beverly Hills is a few decades out of date.  It's not mostly made up of liberal Ashkenazi Jews and people in Hollywood etc. anymore.  It's about 25% Iranian Jewish and is actually very conservative and "Trumpy" by L.A. standards.

In Montreal, the Hasidim live in Outremont.  Hampstead/Cote St. Luc are where the Conservative, Modern Orthodox and traditional Sephardim live.  Westmount is where affluent, liberally minded Jews live (you'll find a similar Jewish demographic in Toronto's St. Paul's riding).

[DL]

Its hard to compare Zemmour's appeal to some high income voters in France to anything in Canadian politics. Even the most rabidly rightwing fringe party - the People's Party led by Maxime Bernier - doesn't touch the immigration issue with a ten foot pole and is more libertarian than anything else. There is really nothing in Canada quite like LePen or Zemmour. Some might argue that CAQ under Legault veers close to that - but FWIW I do not see any evidence that the Hassidim in Outremont are migrating to CAQ because they like Legault's islamophobia...one complication is that the politicians in Quebec who are most xenophobic and attacks Muslims, also tend to be Quebec nationalists who tend to attack the English community and the vast majority of Jews in Quebec identify with being anglophone and not francophone...

[King of Kensington]

Zemmour fundamentally appeals to voters who formed the core of the FN back in the 80s (and you could even go back all the way to Poujadism if you're so inclined). Basically small-business owner who are doing a decent living but hate having to pay taxes and hate immigrants, along with Pieds-noirs and people culturally affiliated with them, and a certain kind of hyper-reactionary high bourgeoisie. It is, in short, a deeply ideological far-right vote.

Le Pen's current voter base, by contrast, is much more #populist and concentrated in the lower-middle class and France's Average Jacques in mid-sized and small cities and exurbia. It's the quintessential vote of "peripheral France" which feels it's on the losing side of globalization.

Zemmour has an orthodox conservative economic program.  Rejecting that and having "populist" economics appeals more to the working class.  It's also why Zemmour overperformed among the very rich.

[Antonio the Sixth]

https://twitter.com/AntonJaegermm/status/1513809550943604741?s=20&t=pp1daymd...

I mean of course it's a good meme, but the real story here is how in a city as old  - and untouched by the wars - as Paris, the poor and rich neighborhoods remain the same even after many generations.

Yeah. This would be like looking at the 2020 election map in Alabama and making the classic, well-known connection with the types of soil where the plantation slave economy developed, and then acting like it says something about Joe Biden's personal appeal as opposed to patterns that have been around for centuries.

[parochial boy]

I'm not sure I would exaggerate the effect though - the 10th and 11th arrondissements these days are probably the two most visibly and intensely gentrified in the city - and are actually wealthier than Macron areas like the 14th and 15th.

Of course the word gentrification implies its own story about the history of these places and the social conflicts that this has caused and the who moved in and why - but those two places in particular are in a dynamic that is much more than just "urban poor = Mélenchon".

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I suspect that one explanation of the strength of Zemmour's performance in affluent parts of Paris, which goes above and beyond what we would have expected, is that French Jews voted en masse for him. Will they vote for Le Pen against Macron? No, of course not, they are self-respecting people but they would vote for a disgusting fascist bigot who is one of their own - events have radicalized them...

I would be careful with that - the correlation between 'rich urban district' and 'substantial Jewish population' is very much not absolute in France, and the Jewish populations in the most affluent urban districts will tend to be of Alsatian rather than North African descent, which is an important distinction to be aware of. Different histories,* different political inclinations, different social concerns would all add up to different levels of receptiveness to a candidate like Zemmour. Essentially there is no reason to believe that there's an ethnic dimension to Zemmour's strikingly high support in those districts.

But when you look at suburbs known for having substantial Sephardic populations (not generally all that affluent it has to be pointed out), there are often elevated Zemmour percentages (though not elevated enough for overwhelming to be plausible: just more likely than average) and I think the psychology there is much as you describe. And of course he made an effort to target those voters, who can hardly easily vote for either of the other protest options: we can here make a parallel with voters of Muslim ethnicities who opted for Melenchon despite a record of crassly bigoted statements ('raghead' and so on) because all of the other options were even more tainted and because he made the effort to chase for their votes.

_{*Strange and disturbing remarks about the Dreyfus Affair would, one would assume, land much harder with the smaller, older group for certain obvious reasons.}

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Le Pen opposes sanctions on Russian gas: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61073894

[All Along The Watchtower]

Aren’t the Sephardi/Mizrahi communities known for being more um…hard-line within Israeli politics?

I suppose Zemmour’s higher level of support from them in the contemporary French context tracks…

[Vosem]

https://mobile.twitter.com/adb0wen/status/1513607356306923537
wtf lmao

REINE 😭

[Anzeigenhauptmeister]

I haven't seen here a poll for the second round yet. So, sorry if someone has already posted this.

According to French polling institute Ifop-Fiducial, Macron would win the runoff by 5%, which barely lies within the margin of error.

https://twitter.com/IfopOpinion/status/1513909653998080003

[Person Man]

https://mobile.twitter.com/adb0wen/status/1513607356306923537
wtf lmao

REINE 😭

Why do you think I have this outrageous accent you silly kid!?

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

I suspect that one explanation of the strength of Zemmour's performance in affluent parts of Paris, which goes above and beyond what we would have expected, is that French Jews voted en masse for him. Will they vote for Le Pen against Macron? No, of course not, they are self-respecting people but they would vote for a disgusting fascist bigot who is one of their own - events have radicalized them...

Zemmour's performance in affluent parts of Paris (and other affluent parts of France) is exactly what you would expect just from the crudest possible stereotypes of affluent French people.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I'm not sure I would exaggerate the effect though - the 10th and 11th arrondissements these days are probably the two most visibly and intensely gentrified in the city - and are actually wealthier than Macron areas like the 14th and 15th.

Of course the word gentrification implies its own story about the history of these places and the social conflicts that this has caused and the who moved in and why - but those two places in particular are in a dynamic that is much more than just "urban poor = Mélenchon".

...the Quinzième is actually poorer than the inner rung of Northeast Paris? Huh, that is. Not the image I had of it at all. Wild development (and interesting that its politics seem to lag far behind that shift).

[Oryxslayer]

I haven't seen here a poll for the second round yet. So, sorry if someone has already posted this.

According to French polling institute Ifop-Fiducial, Macron would win the runoff by 5%, which barely lies within the margin of error.

https://twitter.com/IfopOpinion/status/1513909653998080003

Probably good to actually transition the thread towards reporting such polls then.

https://twitter.com/EuropeElects/status/1513838012379148294?s=20&t=lcpTF6k4O...

https://twitter.com/EuropeElects/status/1513792652034064386?s=20&t=lcpTF6k4O...

[Vosem]

https://mobile.twitter.com/adb0wen/status/1513607356306923537
wtf lmao

REINE 😭

Why do you think I have this outrageous accent you silly kid!?

https://youtu.be/s4uvLXCUhVg?t=129

[Sir John Johns]

In case of a reelection of Macron, the Sarko-Macronist putative party would have to coexist inside the presidential majority with LREM, the Modem, Édouard Philippe’s Horizons, Agir (constituted by a first wave of LR dissidents; its fusion with Horizons in last January has been vetoed by Macron himself), Territoires de progrès (the totally useless left wing of Macronism constituted by former PS members), En commun (fake ecologists), the more than a century-old Radical Party and two newcomers: the Progressive Federation (constituted by the latest wave of PS sell-outs) and Republican Refoundation, the party Jean-Pierre Chevènement is trying to set up (providing the project of a ‘left-wing sovereignism for pro-EU Thatcherism’ attract enough followers). The plan seems to consolidate Macronism as the sole viable governing political organization in face of the 'extremist', 'populist' and 'unreasonable' options incarnated by Mélenchon and Le Pen/Zemmour.

How desirable do you think it will be within LREM to win a legislative majority on they own, without any of the hangers-on or "plus" parties? They did apportion seats in such a fashion last time to win such a majority, but of course lost it because everyone and their ego needs a minor party to prove their relevance. It was also similarly notable at the time that PS did not get a majority on their own in 2012, and only won one through it's pre-election coalition partners.

I don’t think Macron particularly cares under which label candidates supportive of him are elected/re-elected because, probably a lot of voters neither don’t really care (only political nerds are aware of the existence of things like Agir or Territoires de progrès): voters supportive of Macron will vote for the candidate stamped with the ‘candidate of the presidential majority’ label, that’s all.

I slightly disagree with your assertion that ‘their ego needs a minor party to prove their relevance’ because the creation of the late Écologie démocratie solidarité parliamentary group by the furthest left-wing of LREM (about a dozen of deputies) was actually motivated by strong political disagreements with Macron and materialized the complete rupture of said deputies with the president. And some of its most visible leaders (Matthieu Orphelin, Paula Forteza or Albane Gaillot) aren’t even running for reelection, so, clearly not the best move to advance their political career.

But this led to a major problem for Macronism I think I have already discussed: there are some twenty of its deputies (among those still part of the caucus) who have already announced they will not run for reelection (mostly because of discontent with the downgraded role of the National Assembly) including some its most experimented and/or well-known faces like Hugues Renson (current the vice president of the National Assembly), Mounir Mahjoubi, Jean-Michel Fauvergue (former head of the RAID), François de Rugy (former president of the National Assembly even if his career is on the wane since revelations over his lavish lifestyle on public money), Jean-Louis Touraine, Benjamin Griveaux (who has resigned last year and whose career has been derailed by a sextape scandal) or Bruno Bonnell (star candidate in 2017 as the former CEO of Infogrames video game company who appeared quite often on TV but wasn’t actually a very active deputy).

Additionally, there have been a record number of departures from the LREM parliamentary group (over forty deputies) motivated by already mentioned political disagreements, but also because some candidates recruited in a hurry in 2017 and elected only because of the Macronist label turned out particularly ‘problematic’: Joachim Son-Forget who clearly suffers from mental health issues and has been more active on social networks than in the parliament; Martine Wonner who became a leading anti-vax/pro-hydroxychloroquine activist (publicly calling opponents to vaccine passport to invade constituency offices of parliamentarians); M’Jid El Guerrab who physically assaulted a PS member with a motorcycle helmet and sent him to the hospital (but is still, almost five years later, sitting as a deputy and as published a book titled Deconstruct Hate: Two Years in Palais Bourbon); Benoît Simian who is currently sued for having psychologically harassed his former wife (the National Assembly voted against stripping him of his parliamentary immunity); Agnès Thill, who was excluded from the party after homophobic declarations.

So in the end, LREM hasn’t much experimented and locally well established deputies (not helped by Macron himself who has chosen to totally ignored the parliament, further strengthened presidentialism and turned the National Assembly into a rubber-stamp chamber). Due to bad results in local and regional elections, it can only recruited candidates in a very limited pool of mayors and departmental presidents. So, it is attempting to compensate such weakness by relying on its Modem ally, by poaching influential deputies in other parties (Éric Woerth who defected few weeks ago; unsuccessful attempts to poach PS deputy Valérie Rabault) and now through alliances with Macron-compatible LR (Sarkozy’s group) or PS (the likes of François Rebsamen or Juliette Méadel) bigwigs who haven’t joined Macronism in 2017 (reportedly, Manuel Valls is also lobbying to get the LREM nomination for deputy of the French expats in Spain).

And, in case Le Pen won the runoff, she will face the exact same problem but at an even larger scale: the RN has only a handful of mayors (often with mixed records in office), has lost tons of departmental councilors last years (anyway a good share has defected even before the election), has traditionally (but even more pronounced under Marine Le Pen) major problems to recruit presentable candidates (even for minor offices), to groom them and to keep them (in my constituency, this is simple: at each election, a new FN/RN candidate) as demonstrated by the latest wave of defection in favor of Zemmour in the months preceding the first round. Even Le Pen herself hasn’t been a particularly remarkable deputy, in stark contrast with Mélenchon who was much more active and vocal in the legislature.

Whatever happens, we are surely doomed to have an even more powerless National Assembly populated by mostly inexperienced newbies unaware of parliamentary procedures and with little expertise who would be unable to counterbalance to an almighty president. Well, unless no majority emerges in the wake of the parliamentary elections but this seems unlikely.

[parochial boy]

Part of a thread of Nantes results (the post in question is a comparison of Mélenchon's 2017 and 2022) votes, probably indicative of lots of big towns

https://twitter.com/Jean_Riviere_/status/1513918802735546372

Essentially Mélenchon's best scores in the city centre, in the social housing/grands ensembles neighbourhoods and on the once down at heel but now very artsy-gentrified Île de Nantes

Macron's electorate has visibly moved towards the up markets neigbourhoods - essentially the inverse of the Mélenchon map, but especially the swanky areas around Montselet.

Jadot's map looks like the Hamon 2017 one - the cool parts of town

Pécresse and Zemmour also concentrated in the beaux quartiers and Le Pen strongest on the edges of the city, which are more "Upper working" class.

Worth bearing in mind though is that Nantes - in contrast to other cities - is not really somewhere you could honestly accuse of being particularly diverse. In particular the immigration that it has had in principally from sub-saharan Africa, so a much smaller Arab population.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Okay, so I tried to overcome an autism and made a map using the (probably incorrect) Data.gouv results. Hopefully we'll soon get accurate ones and they will show the same patterns.

Anyway, back in 2017 I made a map showing the top-two leading candidates by Department. The results were quite fascinating, as there was a lot of geographic variation across the country. Macron, Le Pen, Fillon and Mélenchon all made it through in specific parts of the country, and in a variety of combination (except Fillon-Mélenchon, lol - nowhere put both candidates ahead, understandably):




Well, I made the same map for 2022, but unfortunately it's far less interesing:



Obviously because there are only 3 candidates within runoff distance instead of 4, that means there were only 3 combinations this time (well, except for Wallis & Futuna which hilariously put Pécresse second - we stan our Queen of the wide Pacific). But still, with Mélenchon coming so tantalizingly close to qualifying, you'd expect a lot of Departments to vote for a Macron-Mélenchon or Le Pen-Mélenchon runoff. Unfortunately, that wasn't really the case: geographically speaking, France overwhelmingly voted for a Macron-Le Pen runoff, and Mélenchon actually came in the top 2 in fewer Departments than in 2017. Partly, this is due to Macron doing better - while the gap between Mélenchon and Le Pen went down slightly, the gap between him and Macron was significantly larger (6 points instead of 4.5), which ate into the number of Le Pen-Mélenchon Departments. But in addition, Mélenchon's improvements were largely concentrated in Ile-de-France (as well as DTOMs, where he did indeed qualify for the runoff almost everywhere). Elsewhere, in non-Parisian metropolitan France, he stagnated, allowing Le Pen to overtake him in much of the Southwest where he had come second in 2017. The result is, sadly, a more boring map, with IdF sticking out like a sore thumb and not much else going on.

Oh well. I'll try to find other map concepts that reveal more interesting patterns.

[Sir John Johns]

https://twitter.com/jeanlassalle/status/1513627819225591816

In the face of the financial difficulties of the PS, LR and EELV, Résistons has decided to make an equivalent donation at each of them in order to respect the principle of equality that is so precious to me and that has prevailed all along this campaign. ‘One often needs smaller than oneself’.

Also, Le Pen said this morning on radio that ‘Bourguiba prohibited [Islamic] headscarf in Algeria’...

[Oryxslayer]

In case of a reelection of Macron, the Sarko-Macronist putative party would have to coexist inside the presidential majority with LREM, the Modem, Édouard Philippe’s Horizons, Agir (constituted by a first wave of LR dissidents; its fusion with Horizons in last January has been vetoed by Macron himself), Territoires de progrès (the totally useless left wing of Macronism constituted by former PS members), En commun (fake ecologists), the more than a century-old Radical Party and two newcomers: the Progressive Federation (constituted by the latest wave of PS sell-outs) and Republican Refoundation, the party Jean-Pierre Chevènement is trying to set up (providing the project of a ‘left-wing sovereignism for pro-EU Thatcherism’ attract enough followers). The plan seems to consolidate Macronism as the sole viable governing political organization in face of the 'extremist', 'populist' and 'unreasonable' options incarnated by Mélenchon and Le Pen/Zemmour.

How desirable do you think it will be within LREM to win a legislative majority on they own, without any of the hangers-on or "plus" parties? They did apportion seats in such a fashion last time to win such a majority, but of course lost it because everyone and their ego needs a minor party to prove their relevance. It was also similarly notable at the time that PS did not get a majority on their own in 2012, and only won one through it's pre-election coalition partners.

SNIP

Thanks for the good summery. I have already noted in this thread, but it bears repeating I feel that a national top-two runoff system in the modern age - when the executive has any power rather than simply being a figurehead for the legislature of course - increasingly favors the personalization or "caudillo-ization" of politics. The first round vote becomes increasingly fragmented because there is no thresholds, limited barriers to running, and one can easily inform voters across the internet. Essentially duverger's in action. The fragmentation is however different from say the Dutch fragmentation that is resulting in multitudes of minor parties with pet issues. A single powerful seat for a single individual means that fragmentation multiplies the personalities, backgrounds, identities, who run - the things that can be represented by a person and not an ideological parliamentary party. We see this increasingly in countries across the world.

I mean look at the result. Both in 2017 and now we have most/all the major candidates effectively running with limited or irrelevant party apparatus. Now it is just more apparent since the parties that could once command almost every voter in France got a combined result under 10%. The setup for how legislative elections are contested simply means that the legislature becomes just as personalized and aligned with the executive's identity. This also is not unique to France. If Melenchon or Le Pen won last time or (could) win this time, the legislative results would no doubt be just as similar, just with a different cast of former nobodies. In my eyes, the only thing preventing France politics from fully personalizing is France's rich tradition of Ideological politics.

To this end, separation of the local and national political systems will be somewhat beneficial. It will allow the personalistic parties to pull in experienced councilors elected under a different and more ideologically-defined label into their government freely, without any stigma on either side of the deal, simply because both side's values and aims align. If there is a deeper motive to Sarkozy's maneuvers it might be this, to get LREM to run a bunch of people were LR or conservative-aligned locally. However, the only way to truly counter personalization is through electoral reform: either fully changing the system, or clearly differentiating the manner, time, and circumstances the executive and legislature are elected. The trap though is that if reform is attempted from above the voters will see it as an extension of the personality pushing it, and likely reject reform based purely on approvals. Change has to come from below.

[angus]

I came across this today, from Le Monde:

"Selon des projections de l’IFOP pour Paris Match et Sud Radio publiées lundi 11 avril, 39 % des électeurs de Jean-Luc Mélenchon au premier tour seraient prêts à voter pour le président sortant au second, mais 41 % préféreraient voter blanc, ou s’abstenir. Ils seraient enfin 20 % à glisser un bulletin Le Pen dans l’urne. Les proportions sont similaires parmi les électeurs de l’écologiste Yannick Jadot..."

Basically it says that only about 4 of 10 Mélenchon voters will support Macron in the second tour, 4 in ten will tender null ballots, and 2 of 10 till vote for Le Pen.  Similar results are found with Jadot voters. 

I cannot vouch for the reliability of this polling organization.  Here is the article, if you are interested in reading further. 

[Hash]

Expat vote results are out by consular constituency and they're hilarious. Zemmour won in Israel, Russia (minus Yekaterinburg constituency) - no comment - Thailand and the Almaty constituency. He also won 31% in the Bahamas and 25.4% in Miami. I will just say one thing about this: LOL.



There's no embassy in North Korea, the embassy in Yemen is closed but the consular constituency still exists and reported 0 votes, the embassy in Syria is closed but 2 votes were cast (one each for Zemmour and Pécresse), 1 vote was cast in Afghanistan and it was for Macron and the election couldn't be held in Shanghai because ZeroCovid disenfranchises people.

Some constituencies are non-contiguous (Malawi is with RSA, Nunavut is with Montreal, Jamaica is with Panama, PR is with Miami etc.)

Full details here: https://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/IMG/pdf/elections_pr_1er_tour_2022_-_pourcentages__cle0f9d7c.pdf

[MaxQue]

Putinists, Jews and pedophiles for Zemmour?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

When France sends it people to Israel, Syria, the Fergana Valley, Russia, North Korea, the Shanghai area, or Thailand...

ETA: Antonio informs me that the Shanghai-based overseas constituency/precinct/whatever is the correct term is not, in fact, a narrow Zemmour win, but blank because the Chinese government imposed a lockdown and nobody was able to vote. So French Shanghainese might well be right-wing extremists, but We Just Don't Know because of hyperauthoritarian Chinese forever-COVID ridiculousness. If that's not the zeitgeist, I don't know what is.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

To clarify what I meant when I said that Zemmour had done better than we might have expected in the Paris metro area, it's pretty clear that his base were LR/UMP partisans who preferred Le Pen to Macron in 2017 in the 2nd round i.e. the type of voter that Sarkozy aimed his candidacy at in 2007. While some of these people exist in affluent areas outside of Paris, it seems pretty clear that plenty of Zemmour voters supported Macron over Le Pen there - this is actually quite puzzling!