2023-12-18 15:00:11
” The French (…) very broadly support our text, (…) expect us to take strong measures to reduce illegal immigration and to better integrate the people we choose to welcome”, chanted Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne on December 12 during questions to the government. Before the National Assembly, the day after a motion to reject its immigration bill, the government tried hard to pit parliamentarians against the French.
“What a majority of deputies do (…), it means agreeing so that the French do not have the text they want”also vilified the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin. “The French want this text, they say it in all the polls”further argued the Minister of Justice, Eric Dupond-Moretti, on France Inter, December 14.
Parliament against the popular will? “Public support is always an interesting resource to mobilize, agrees Jérôme Fourquet, director of the Opinion department of the IFOP polling institute. But the government did not call on public opinion when it was largely unfavorable to pension reform or the abolition of the ISF [impôt de solidarité sur la fortune]. »
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The fact remains that on the broad outlines of its text, Macronie can boast of having the polls on its side. “86% of French people are in favor, for example, of the expulsion of foreign offenders at the end of their prison sentence”quoted on December 12 in the Hemicycle Philippe Pradal, Horizons deputy for Alpes-Maritimes, by repeating an IFOP survey carried out for the far-right magazine Black book.
“Not neutral” instruments
“The polls are almost all in the same direction, agrees Jérôme Fourquet. The general public does not necessarily have a very precise idea of the text, which itself has evolved over time, but there is a fairly majority of the population in support of two things: on the one hand, the need for better control flows and, on the other, the regularization of undocumented immigrants. » Which corresponds, originally, to the presentation of the two main lines of force of the text by the government, although it went from less than thirty to nearly a hundred articles during its adoption by the Senate, including in particular measures on access to social benefits, the tightening of family reunification or the questioning of land rights.
“We must remember that polls are not neutral instrumentsalso warns Vincent Tiberj, sociologist at Sciences Po Bordeaux. Depending on the question you ask, you can underestimate or overestimate xenophobic views. And the access panels [panels en lignes constitués d’internautes disponibles pour répondre aux sondages] tend to overestimate right-wing views. We saw it during the presidential election. »
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