An unprecedented electoral phenomenon has occurred in the suburbs of Lyon. For the first time in decades, the abstention rates have stopped climbing, in several working-class cities on the outskirts of the capital of Gaul, on the occasion of the 2022 presidential election. Regularly referred to as the national bad student of participation citizen, the municipality of Vaulx-en-Velin recorded an abstention of 40.45% of registered voters on April 10, against 41.70% in the first round of 2017 (26% at the national level in the first round in 2022, 22, 2% in 2017). This fragile decline in abstention can be seen in Vénissieux, falling from 33.84% to 31.50% between 2017 and 2022, in Rillieux-la-Pape, but not in Bron, Saint-Fons or Saint-Priest, where the However, the increase in abstention remains limited to one to three points between the two presidential elections.
This progress in participation is accompanied by another striking fact: the pre-eminent position of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, clearly ahead in all the cities of the Lyon suburbs. The candidate of La France insoumise (LFI) obtains 54.94% of the votes in Vaulx-en-Velin, 53.65% in Saint-Fons, 48.79% in Vénissieux, more than thirty points ahead of Emmanuel Macron, and scores around 32% in other cities, such as Bron, Rillieux or Saint-Priest, keeping five to eight points ahead of the Head of State.
“Jean-Luc Mélenchon is at the origin of the citizen outburst of the suburbs. He was able to raise awareness and move the electoral power of the inhabitants who had felt excluded from the political game for too long. His speech touched on the emotions of minorities. He is the only candidate who has spoken of their real concerns, by denouncing racism, by defending the respect of identities”, believes Abdelaziz Chaambi, 64, participant in the March for equality and against racism, part of the Minguettes district, in 1983, in Vénissieux. For this historic activist from the Lyon suburbs, “Mélenchon embodied the fight against the stigmatization of working-class neighborhoods”.
“We see a perspective”
The Mélenchon vote signs “the reopening of the political field in the neighborhoods”according to Samir Hadj Belgacem, lecturer at Jean-Monnet University in Saint-Etienne. “Abstention in the neighborhoods has long served the interests of all the political parties, which have developed clientelist logics to secure the elections, without it being necessary to mobilize the population.he continues. His participation in the demonstration against Islamophobia, as well as the debate on police violence have positioned Jean-Luc Mélenchon on themes that affect the inhabitants of working-class housing estates. » For this specialist in the electoral springs of the suburbs, the civic revival of the cities of Lyon testifies “of the pragmatism and political realism of the new opinion leaders”who saw in the LFI candidate “the one who least badly represents their interests”.
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