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Patrimony and French presidential vote choice: Evidence from the 2012 election

French Politics Aims and scope

Abstract

Studies of French voting behavior have pioneered the inclusion of patrimony in explanations of vote choice in presidential elections. Patrimony, as measured by the number of assets that an individual owns, has been found to matter to vote choice in recent French presidential elections. Can we say that its influence has continued with the latest 2012 presidential election, which took place in the context of the European economic crisis? We explore this question using TNS Sofres survey data. We find that patrimony continued to matter in 2012, that it clearly distinguished supporters of Nicolas Sarkozy from those of François Hollande, and that its effect on second-round vote choice was distinct from that of other socioeconomic determinants. These findings provide further support for the idea that capital income needs to be taken into account when assessing the relationship between individual wealth and voting behavior.

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Notes

  1. These limitations have to do with either the number of available asset items (much smaller than usual) or with the dependent variable (lack of a reported vote variable, forcing the authors to rely on alternative measures of candidate preferences).

  2. For more information about the TriElec group and the researchers involved in it, please consult the group’s Website at: www.trielec2012.fr/

  3. The first four items in this list can be considered as low-risk assets and the last two as high-risk assets (on this distinction, see Nadeau et al, 2011). Given the very limited number of high-risk assets available in this survey, we preferred to lump them all together into a single patrimony variable. In any case, the more assets an individual owns, the greater the probability that these assets include high-risk ones.

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Correspondence to Éric Bélanger.

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A previous version of this article was presented at the 2013 annual meetings of the American Political Science Association, Chicago.

Appendix

Appendix

Table A1

Table A1 Description of the variables and codification

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Bélanger, É., Nadeau, R., Turgeon, M. et al. Patrimony and French presidential vote choice: Evidence from the 2012 election. Fr Polit 12, 59–68 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1057/fp.2014.3

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