Election results alert
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Like 84% of their fellow citizens, candidates for the presidential election have a smartphone. Real campaign tools, they never separate from them and manage their professional and personal messaging systems, and sometimes their social accounts, at their fingertips. Without this being a barometer of their technophilia, here is a review of the forces involved.
First observation: there is not really a right/left divide. iPhones are popular in all camps, nine out of twelve candidates have one. A panel very far from being representative therefore, since 73% of smartphones in circulation in the country run on the Android operating system against 27% on Apple’s iOS, according to data for 2021 from the Kantar World Panel.
Samsung and Huawei in alternatives
If the President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron uses an ultra-secure Samsung smartphone for state affairs, the LaREM candidate juggles with two smartphones marked with a bitten apple, as his official portrait of 2017 already suggested. Very active on encrypted messengers like Telegram, the head of state communicates every day with his supporters through these two models which would have been the target of the Israeli spyware Pegasus.
Valérie Pécresse (LR) is not parting with her iPhone 11, a device released in 2019 and more financially accessible than the Pro versions. The Reconquest candidate, Éric Zemmour, has kept his iPhone 8 released in 2017. Yannick Jadot (EELV) is also fighting against planned obsolescence by keeping his old iPhone X up to date despite some small storage problems. The mayor of Paris and socialist candidate Anne Hidalgo, Philippe Poutou (NPA), and Nicolas Dupont-Aignan (Debout la France) also strum on an iPhone, the latter also qualifying his “preferred work instrument and incomparable tool of communication” with his supporters.
On the other side of the chessboard, Nathalie Arthaud (Lutte Ouvrière) and Fabien Roussel (PCF) opted for the Samsung A52, a mid-range model compatible with 5G. Jean-Luc Mélenchon (La France Insoumise) favored a smartphone from the Chinese manufacturer Huawei, which he would be replacing with a Samsung.
When they potentially enter the Élysée Palace, they will all have to partially give up their private use of a smartphone and switch to devices that are much more sealed off from the outside world and above all safe from prying ears. Clearly, they will have acquired the right to use a Teorem telephone and to write via the Tchap messaging application reserved for state agents, in particular the national police. Here is the theory, but none of the last presidents had managed to part with “his” telephone and his old habits despite the risks involved.