The legislative elections are no exception: once again, abstention broke a record in the first round, Sunday June 12, reaching 52.49%. And we can fear that the same scenario will happen on Sunday 19: in 2017, 57.36% of voters had not moved in the second round against 51.3% a week earlier. Since the reversal of the electoral calendar in 2002 – where the presidential election now precedes the legislative election – the abstentionists have continued to see their ranks grow. Twenty years ago, they were 35.6% to shun the ballot boxes for the election of deputies, that is to say nearly 17 points less than today.
Because the abstentionist phenomenon is massive and structural. The latest electoral events are proof of this: in 2019, nearly 50% of French people did not vote in the European elections; in 2020, they were 55.25% to stay at home for the first round of municipal elections; in 2021, for the regional ones, 66.72%. The only exception is the presidential election, with 26.31% abstention in the first round, 28.01% in the second (figures up, however, compared to 2017). Each time, the same profiles are concerned, those furthest from politics, namely: young people, non-graduates, workers and employees.
“Political desocialization”
However, in 2022, the legislative campaign was stirring, especially on the left. The creation of the New Popular, Ecological and Social Union (Nupes, bringing together La France insoumise, the Socialist Party, the Communist Party and Europe Ecologie-Les Verts) and its slogan “Melenchon Prime Minister” have made it possible to create a political stake for an election which has been, for twenty years, that of the confirmation of the results of the presidential election.
With their promise of cohabitation, the mélenchonistes pose as the main adversaries of the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron. And, above all, they give voters disappointed by the non-qualification of Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the second round of the presidential election the possibility of taking their revenge, and of winning, perhaps, the “third round”. But it was not enough.
“The hyperpolarization between Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Emmanuel Macron has left people aside, especially on the right, who said to themselves that they could not win and that it was not worth going there”, wants to believe Brice Teinturier, Deputy CEO of Ipsos. Thus, according to an Ipsos-Sopra Steria survey on the French vote (carried out from June 8 to 11, on a representative sample of 3,995 people, according to the quota method), 49% of respondents found the campaign “non-existent” ; 36 % “disappointing”and only 15% considered it “interesting”. The electorate of Nupes decides in the same way, in almost equal proportions.
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