2023-10-02 23:06:18
Throughout Europe, from Italy to Hungary, through Finland and Greece, the far right is rising in the polls, governments are tilting to the right, and the left is sinking. Are we entering a new political era? Can the left return to power? In other words, is the rightward drift inevitable?
We have reviewed the historical data of the vote going back to the French Revolution and the conclusions, collected in our latest book (A history of political conflict), They offer a more optimistic outlook on what may happen in the coming years. It highlights the potential of the left-wing voter base and suggests that turning right on immigration to win back the working-class vote is a political dead end.
We have studied voting patterns using data collected at the municipal level, covering all legislative and presidential elections held between 1848 and 2022, as well as the main referendums that took place between 1793 and 2005. The main advantage of examining such localized data is the breadth of electoral profiles that exist in the 36,000 French municipalities, with very poor and very rich districts, a great variety according to the type of industries and occupations, and variable proportions of graduates, immigrants, etc… Having this data allows a very detailed knowledge of long-term voting patterns.
Furthermore, we have been able to study the interaction between different factors. Not just people’s income, wealth, education and profession, but the size of their city or town, as well as the type of geographical area in which they live. This is something that cannot be done reliably with surveys due to the small sample sizes they necessarily work with.
In recent years, the idea has prevailed that the popular classes have completely abandoned the left. Some even claim that the left in France has become a vote Stew. In other words, the support for the left comes mostly from the wealthiest bourgeois-bohemian class. But this is a perception largely invented by conservative elites and right-wing media. We not only demonstrate that the working class has not moved away from the left, but that it never has.
When reviewing the data from all legislative and presidential elections since 1848 (almost 50 elections), we discovered that systematically the richest municipalities have always voted much less for left-wing parties (historically represented by the Communist Party and the Socialist Party). , increasingly by La Francia Insumisa) than by the right-wing, center-right and extreme right parties. Likewise, in the poorest municipalities the vote has generally been much more to the left, and especially in the cities. A trend that continues to be demonstrated today.
The confusion, often deliberate, comes from the association that commentators tend to make between the working class and industrial workers. They are forgetting that the average salary of people who work in supermarket checkouts, restaurants, cleaning and care companies, as well as that of many other people employed by the service sector has been several decades below that of industrial workers.
The French political landscape can be described like this: low-income urban voters, who live in rent and generally work in the service sector, vote overwhelmingly for the left; while working-class voters who live in their own homes on the outskirts of big cities and generally work in industry are more likely to vote for far-right parties.
This division between the low-income voter in the city and the low-income voter in the country or small town has not always been so stark. But, as also happened at the end of the 19th century, political conflict in France has been determined mainly by two factors since the 1990s: the urban-rural divide and socioeconomic status (income, wealth, education, home ownership). . In other words, the left has kept the votes of the poorest in urban areas, but solo that of the poorest in urban areas.
And perhaps more importantly, we demonstrate that the weight of what we call “geosocial class” has never been more relevant than now. In the last French presidential elections, the size and socioeconomic character of a municipality explained more than 70% of the voting differences between municipalities. These factors only explained 30% of the vote differences in the 1848 elections; and 50% in 1981, when François Mitterrand beat Valéry Giscard d’Estaing. And even more surprising, when we add identity and immigration measures, the relevance of these factors remains almost identical, increasing slightly to 72%-73%.
What does this imply? Firstly, and contrary to what is usually stated without much empirical support, that citizens do not vote mainly on immigration issues, nor do those of the far-right National Regrouping (RN). It is mainly socioeconomic factors that determine the vote.
If in recent years workers have leaned towards the extreme right, it is, above all, because they have suffered disproportionately from the globalization of trade, deindustrialization, and the lack of access to public services. From this point of view, they have felt abandoned by the left that has occupied positions of power in France for the last 40 years. Of course, it is a lesson in understanding what is happening now in other European countries. The left across Europe needs to convince its voters that it can effectively protect them against unfair competition in social, fiscal and environmental matters, taking unilateral action when necessary.
Our conclusions leave room for optimism: both the lack of public services in rural areas, deindustrialization, difficulties in accessing housing, or the increase in inequalities are problems that can be addressed with appropriate measures. Identity politics, on the other hand, only serves to increase tensions and conflicts within a society.
Left parties should also take heart in realizing that it is possible to expand their electoral base and return to power if they do more for the poorest in peripheral areas and small towns. Most importantly, we have documented how the poor in rural areas and those in big cities have much more in common than is often thought, especially when it comes to opportunities and deficiencies in access to public services, as well as the increase in divergences in relation to the richest municipalities.
Contrary to what we show, there are those who measure the proportion of immigrants in the municipalities where voters reside to argue that voters do care about immigration when they are asked about it. Is there a contradiction? We have at least two reasons to believe not. Firstly, due to the limited historical perspective that the surveys offer. That’s why we chose to rely on municipal voting data in our book. The bottom line is that it is difficult to reliably say that people care “more” about immigration today than in the past.
Secondly, it is important to see that in a country like France there have been historical moments in which people on the extreme right voted on immigration (this happened in the 1965 presidential elections, with the candidacy of Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour ; and in 1974, with that of Jean-Marie Le Pen). But the relationship between the far-right vote and the proportion of immigrants has varied over time, and that has stopped happening. Therefore, it seems that in the last twenty years there has been a change in the motivations of voters, an issue that has been overlooked.
That does not mean that there are no far-right anti-immigration voters. There are some who undoubtedly are, especially among Éric Zemmour’s electorate in the case of France. But before belonging to the working class, this electorate is one of the most “bourgeois” that the history of France has had (measured by the income or assets of the voters). Nor does it mean that the issue of immigration is simple, nor that the refugee crisis can be easily resolved.
Can these conclusions be applied to other countries? Or should we limit our optimism to France’s new left alliance? Our methodology should be extended to other electoral democracies, of course, and we hope to do so. But we see no reason to think that poor voters in France behave differently from those in other Western democracies. Especially considering that many of the threats they face are similar, from deindustrialization to unemployment, inflation and climate change.
It is possible that political parties and the media in Western countries are giving too much importance to immigration policy and, in doing so, have lost sight of what really matters to voters. Hopefully our research contributes to reorienting the debate.
#Europes #drift #inevitable