Jérôme Fourquet, political scientist, director of the opinion and business strategies department of the French Institute of Public Opinion (IFOP), answered your questions on the relationship that President-candidate Emmanuel Macron maintains with the electorate of the classes popular, one week before the first round of the presidential election, Sunday, April 10. He is co-author, with Jean-Laurent Cassely, of France before our eyes. Economy, landscapes, new ways of life (Threshold).
Princess: We hear a lot of calls for a “useful vote” at the moment, whether on the left or on the far right, to be sure to qualify for the second round your candidate against Emmanuel Macron. What impact do you think polls have on voting (and therefore on the effectiveness of these calls)?
A large majority of voters are determined according to their party affiliation and their convictions which direct their choice towards such and such a candidate. But a fringe of the electorate also adopts a more “strategic” and can modify its initial choice with regard to the balance of power and the dynamics of the campaign.
In this context, the polls constitute for this fringe of the electorate a useful indicator which will sometimes lead them to decide for a candidate who is driven by a dynamic and who may have a chance of qualifying for the second round. The polls then come to maintain the dynamic. This is what is happening on the left around Jean-Luc Mélenchon and in the camp of the national right in favor of Marine Le Pen, at the end of the campaign.
Rillette: What is the share of Mr. Macron’s electorate represented by the working class? What are his arguments to make her vote for him?
In our voting intentions, Emmanuel Macron is currently at 16% among workers (against 15% in 2017) and 23% (against 18% in 2017) among employees. It is not in the popular electorate that he is the most supported (he “points” to 38% among executives for example), but he has retained a significant base there. We can think that his management of the Covid-19 with the “whatever it takes” met with an echo in part of the popular circles, some of whom no doubt also vote for him out of a legitimist reflex, amplified by the Ukrainian crisis.
Zedd: Having to work until the age of 65 for the working classes means for many that retirement will necessarily go through the unemployment box or even the RSA (and will therefore be subject to activity conditions). Mrs. Le Pen, by announcing the non-retreat of retirement, seems best placed to conquer more among the working classes. Isn’t there a fear of forming a bloc all but Macron?
Macron’s announcement of the project to raise the retirement age to 65 is certainly a bad signal sent to this electorate, which is, as all our surveys show, the most opposed to raising the retirement age. Marine Le Pen, although having evolved on this question, rushed into this breach by posing as the representative of the “France from below” and popular categories. This positioning « social » (with particular attention to purchasing power and the reduction in VAT), combined with its traditional discourse on immigration and insecurity, places it in a very favorable situation in these circles, with voting intentions of 28 % among employees and 38% among manual workers.
Snowy barbecue: Do we know how the working class perceives Mr. Macron, especially with his words and his attitude towards her?
If we said that a fringe of the working classes was preparing to vote for him, this should not hide the fact that this population is the one he least likes. Many, rightly or wrongly, perceive in him and some of his lieutenants a form of class contempt and distance. This feeling was clearly expressed during the crisis of the “yellow vests”, for example.
Some also criticize him for a policy at the service of “powerful” (this is the criticism aimed at the “president of the rich”), but when you dig a little deeper, you see a cultural divide. Emmanuel Macron and his supporters are perceived in a whole section of popular circles as “the party of good students, of those who have succeeded” and who look with great condescension “those who are nothing” where the “illiterate”, to use the terms used by the president. Anglicisms – « start-up nation », « benchmarker », etc – maintain this cultural gap and this resentment.
Scipio: Do the working classes vote proportionally less than the middle classes?
Yes, abstention is traditionally higher in popular circles than among the middle classes, and a fortiori than among CSP +. The mobilization of the working classes is, therefore, a major issue for Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, many of whose supports come precisely from these circles. The leader of La France insoumise was not mistaken and he hammers a May-68 slogan, which he has hijacked: “Abstention, stupid trap! » The frontist candidate, for her part, favors in her field trips the popular areas where she is electorally strong, to mobilize her supporters as much as possible and convince them to go to the polls.
Annso: How do you explain the new rapprochement, in any case more dynamic, of the voters of the extreme left with those of the extreme right? Which item made the boundary between these two groups porous?
Be careful with this idea, often repeated, according to which “the extremes meet or merge”. When we look at the figures for voting intentions, this phenomenon must be put into perspective. In the event of a Macron-Le Pen duel in the second round, only 23% of Mélenchonist voters would vote for Le Pen, and in the event of a Macron-Mélenchon duel, 19% of Zemmour voters and 32% of Le Pen voters would vote for the candidate “rebellious”. It’s not nothing, but it’s not a majority trend.
We can think that these reports ” against nature “ would be motivated by an anti-system reflex and by a very strong hostility to Macron. In the case of Lepenist voters, the non-negligible level of reports on Mélenchon could moreover also be explained by the fact that Mélenchon’s chances of winning being low, these voters could send Macron a red card without taking too many risks.
Brujanyc: What is your definition of “popular classes”? How many voters belong to the popular classes? Are the popular classes mobilizing for the presidential election? How are the votes of the working classes divided between the different candidates?
The usual definition of the popular classes covers the social group made up of employees and workers (plus retirees who exercised these professions). Workers and employees represent a little less than 30% of the electorate, to which must be added 15% corresponding to retirees from these trades. Therefore, these popular classes weigh heavily, if indeed they take part in the ballot, because, as we have said, they tend to abstain much more than other social groups. Among those who intend to vote, Marine Le Pen is in the lead (33%), followed by Emmanuel Macron (19%) and Jean-Luc Mélenchon (18%).
Pascal: If Emmanuel Macron is re-elected, does the risk seem strong to you that we will find the “yellow vests” in September?
It is difficult and presumptuous to make political fiction! But if he is re-elected, Emmanuel Macron has declared that he wishes to present to Parliament, at the beginning of the summer, his pension reform, a highly inflammable subject. It will be recalled that his previous attempt at reform had resulted in a fifty-five-day strike at SNCF and RATP, and that this conflict had only really ended with the arrival of Covid-19, in March 2020.
The same causes can produce the same effects, knowing that the situation is extremely degraded on the purchasing power front with, in particular, a surge in fuel prices. A liter of gasoline was at 1.40 euros when the “yellow vests” crisis broke out; today it is around 2 euros.
Carmen: What is the average abstention rate of the working classes over the last fifteen years?
It’s quite variable. But on average, there is an abstention rate 10% to 15% higher in working-class circles than in the rest of the population.
X: In the context of a second round against Ms. Le Pen or Mr. Mélenchon, could Mr. Macron succeed in mobilizing a popular electorate who abstained in the first round?
According to our polls (which, we recall, are not predictive), in the event of a Macron-Le Pen duel, only 45% of employees and 33% of workers would vote for the outgoing president. To impose itself in these circles, it will therefore have to try to mobilize abstainers. The argument of a victory for the far right will no doubt be used to try to get votes, especially in popular circles with an immigrant background, who abstain a lot.
Tal974: Do you think that the red rag waved by Macron regarding the far right is an audible and effective message to voters in the popular electorate who lean towards Zemmour or Le Pen?
This “red rag”, as you say, is not intended for the electorate which today leans towards Zemmour or Le Pen. This threat of a victory for the extreme right is brandished and invoked in the direction of the very many left-wing voters who today would not consider practicing the famous “republican front” and who would rather abstain than vote for Macron.
The prospect of a victory for Le Pen, a hypothesis based on the current second-round scores, which place the Frontist candidate at 46-47% – which is very high – aims to “unfreeze” the reserves of votes on the left in favor of Emmanuel Macron, reserves which seem, this year, more difficult to mobilize.
Small sheet: I wonder about the vote of the inhabitants of the working classes in the so-called “sensitive” neighborhoods. I have often observed that they are almost never present at rallies on topics such as the climate problem, issues related to the harassment of women, or topical topics such as support for Ukraine, which nevertheless federates most of the parties. Not concerned it seems.
As we have just said, the population with an immigrant background and residing in working-class neighborhoods generally abstain massively. Jean-Luc Mélenchon tries to mobilize it for his benefit, in particular with a door-to-door campaign led by his activists, but it is difficult.
We noted a surge in participation in these neighborhoods between the two rounds of the 2017 presidential election, where the prospect of a victory for the “Kärcher candidate” (Nicolas Sarkozy) had mobilized a significant part of these voters. But it was more of a reaction than a real adhesion. We can imagine that it will be the same this year.