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A red letter day: Investigating the renaissance of the French far left in the 2012 presidential election

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French Politics Aims and scope

Abstract

This article extends the current literature on European far-left parties by investigating the sociodemographic, ideological and attitudinal profile of the French far-left voter in the 2012 Presidential Elections. Particular emphasis is placed on the impact of the economic crisis on the sudden electoral rise of the French far left and factors such as economic hardship, change of economic conditions, attitudes toward economic inequality and Euroscepticism. Results suggest that explanations based purely on economic factors fall short of explaining the totality of the French far-left vote, especially if compared with the other parties of the French far left. Instead, attitudes toward Europe and post-materialism are central in the understanding of the renaissance of the French far left. On the basis of these findings we reach a number of conclusions regarding the future of far-left parties in France and Europe.

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Notes

  1. The manifesto can be accessed at http://www.jean-luc-melenchon.fr/arguments/telechargez-le-programme-lhumain-dabord/ (last accessed on 25 February 2014).

  2. Source: French TV ads data set, Legislative elections, Making Electoral Democracy Work Project. Data consists in quasi-sentences coded using the Comparative Manifesto Project coding scheme (the original material consists in the eight official TV ads issued by FDG during the 2012 official legislative campaign).

  3. For the sake of parsimony, abstainers and votes for minor candidates were excluded of the analysis.

  4. Although the question wording is not identical to the original item used by Inglehart (1990), we believe that this question adequately taps the value conflict between personal economic progress and quality of life, which is central to the materialist/post-materialist cleavage (for example, Inglehart, 2008; Dalton, 2013).

  5. The 2005 results were: 44.3 per cent Yes, 54.6 per cent No, 30.6 per cent abstention, 2.8 per cent blanks. (Source: official results, French Interior Minister, http://www.interieur.gouv.fr/Elections/Les-resultats/Referendums/elecresult__referendum_2005/%28path%29/referendum_2005/000/000.html (last accessed on 31 March 2015). The distribution of the recalled 2005 referendum vote in the present data set is as follows: 51 per cent Yes, 35 per cent No, 15 per cent abstention, 8 per cent blanks and 11 per cent who do not recall. Studies on recalled vote shows that the error varies between 15 per cent for two-party systems, and 25 per cent for multi-party systems (Himmelweit et al, 1978; Van Der Eijk and Niemöller, 2008). The proportion of yes vote in our data falls within these figures (15 per cent error: [38.5; 52.1], 25 per cent error [33.9; 56.6]). The lower share of No votes is explained by the propensity of voters to correct afterwards to belong to the majority (to reduce cognitive dissonance), by memory issue, and by the share of people who declare not recalling their vote. While keeping in mind that this recall question is not a perfect image of the 2005 actual vote, we argue that it is vote is close enough from the actual vote to be used as a valid indicator.

  6. Unfortunately our model cannot assess the impact of prospective economic evaluations on the vote as the fact that the survey was carried out after respondents were aware that Hollande was France’s new president created a strong reverse causation effect.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre de Recherches Politiques (CEVIPOF), Sciences Po Paris, 98 rue de l’Université, Paris, 75007, France

    Pavlos Vasilopoulos

  2. University of Montreal, C.P 6128, succursale. Centre-ville, Montréal, H3C 3J7, QC, Canada

    Laurie Beaudonnet

  3. CNRS – Centre de Recherches Politiques (CEVIPOF), Sciences Po Paris, 98 rue de l’ Université, Paris, France

    Bruno Cautrès

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  1. Pavlos Vasilopoulos
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  2. Laurie Beaudonnet
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Correspondence to Pavlos Vasilopoulos.

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Vasilopoulos, P., Beaudonnet, L. & Cautrès, B. A red letter day: Investigating the renaissance of the French far left in the 2012 presidential election. Fr Polit 13, 121–140 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1057/fp.2015.5

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