The French Voter: Before and After the 2002 Elections (French Politics, Society and Culture)

The French Voter Before and After the 2002 Elections

Edited by

Michael S. Lewis-Beck

The French Voter

French Politics, Society and Culture Series General Editor: Robert Elgie, Paddy Moriarty Professor of Government and International Studies, Dublin City University. France has always fascinated outside observers. Now, the country is undergoing a period of profound transformation. France is faced with a rapidly changing international and European environment and it is having to rethink some of its most basic social, political and economic orthodoxies. As elsewhere, there is pressure to conform. And yet, while France is responding in ways that are no doubt familiar to people in other European countries, it is also managing to maintain elements of its long-standing distinctiveness. Overall, it remains a place that is not exactly comme les autres. This new series examines all aspects of French politics, society and culture. In so doing it focuses on the changing nature of the French system as well as the established patterns of political, social and cultural life. Contributors to the series are encouraged to present new and innovative arguments so that the informed reader can learn and understand more about one of the most beguiling and compelling of all European countries.

Titles include: Jean K. Chalaby THE DE GAULLE PRESIDENCY AND THE MEDIA Statism and Public Communications David Drake INTELLECTUALS AND POLITICS IN POST-WAR FRANCE Graeme Hayes ENVIRONMENTAL PROTEST AND THE STATE IN FRANCE David J. Howarth THE FRENCH ROAD TO EUROPEAN MONETARY UNION Michael S. Lewis-Beck (editor) THE FRENCH VOTER Before and After the 2002 Elections Sarah Waters SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN FRANCE Towards a New Citizenship French Politics, Society and Culture Series Standing Order ISBN 0–333–80440–6 hardcover Series Standing Order ISBN 0–333–80441–4 paperback (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and one of the ISBNs’ quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England

The French Voter Before and After the 2002 Elections Edited by

Michael S. Lewis-Beck F. Wendell Miller, Distinguished Professor of Political Science, University of Iowa, USA

Editorial Matter and Selection © Michael S. Lewis-Beck 2004 Chapters 1–12 ©Palgrave Macmillan Ltd 2004 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2004 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 0–333–99419–1 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The French voter : before and after the 2002 elections/edited by Michael S. Lewis-Beck. p. cm. — (French politics, society, and culture) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–333–99419–1 (cloth) 1. Presidents—France—Election—2002. 2. Elections—France. 3. France—Politics and government—1995–. I. Title: French voter before and after the 2002 elections. II. Lewis-Beck, Michael S. III. French Politics, society, and culture series. JN2959.F765 2004 324.944′084—dc21 10 13

9 12

8 11

7 10

6 5 09 08

2003056410 4 07

3 06

2 1 05 04

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne

Contents

List of Tables, Figures and Maps

vii

Notes on the Contributors

xi

Preface

xv

French Election Theories and the 2002 Results: An Introduction Michael S. Lewis-Beck 1

2

3

4

1

France’s 2002 Presidential Elections: Earlier and Later Territorial Fractures Annie Laurent

12

Do Issues Matter? Law and Order in the 2002 French Presidential Election Nonna Mayer and Vincent Tiberj

33

Ideology and Party Identification: A Normalisation of French Voting Anchors? Jocelyn A.J. Evans

47

“Old Wine in New Bottles? New Wine in Old Bottles?: Class, Religion and Vote in the French Electorate” – The 2002 Elections in Time Perspective Bruno Cautrès

74

5

Strategic Voting in the 2002 French Presidential Election André Blais

6

Institutions and Voters: Structuring Electoral Choice Robert Elgie

110

7

Could there have Possibly been Economic Voting? Guy D. Whitten

126

8

Dual Governance and Economic Voting: France and the United States Michael S. Lewis-Beck and Richard Nadeau v

93

136

vi

Contents

9 Stuck between a Rock and a Hard Place: Electoral Dilemmas and Turnout in the 2002 French Legislative Elections Thomas Gschwend and Dirk Leuffen 10 Forecasting the 2002 Elections: Lessons from a Political Economy Model Bruno Jérôme and Veronique Jérôme-Speziari 11 Vote Functions in France and the 2002 Election Forecast Eric Dubois and Christine Fauvelle-Aymar

155

178 205

12 National Economic Voting in France: Objective versus Subjective Measures Éric Bélanger and Michael S. Lewis-Beck

231

Index

243

List of Tables, Figures and Maps

Tables 1.1 The evolution of the Gaullist Right, the FN and the PS in the first round in the 1982 to 2002 presidential elections (the whole of France, in percentage points of valid votes) 1.2 The spectrum of contrasts: minimum and maximum results scored by the three leading candidates in the first ballot of the 2002 presidential election (96 French departments, in percentage points of recorded votes, metropolitan France only) 1.3 The Left, then in office, in the Pas-de-Calais first ballots held over the 1998–2002 period (Socialist Party + Communist Party + Greens + various Left-wing parties) 1.4 2002–1981: the resistance of the Socialist Party’s, RPR’s, Communist Party’s and National Front’s territorial structures (correlation coefficients measured on the basis of each metropolitan France’s departments) 1.5 The second ballot in presidential elections from 1965 to 1995: the evolution of standard deviations between most – and least – Left-leaning departments 1.6 Results of the presidential election (the whole of France) 2.1 Issue saliency in first round of the 2002 presidential election 2.2 Issue saliency in first round of the 1995 and 2002 presidential elections 2.3 The best candidate for each issue in 2002 2.4 Saliency of issues by voting intention in the first round of the 2002 presidential election 2.5 Voting intentions in the first round of the 2002 presidential election by issue saliency 2.6 Logistic regression on voting intentions for extreme right, extreme left and green candidates in the first round of the 2002 presidential election 3.1 Party proximity in France (1978–1997) 3.2 Strength of closed party identification in France (1988–1997) vii

14

16

18

20

22 26 35 36 37 39 40

42 50 54

viii

List of Tables, Figures and Maps

3.3

Left–Right ideological position and political interest (1988–1995) 3.4(a) Bloc recursive model of closed party identification (OLS estimates) 3.4(b) Bloc recursive model of open party identification (OLS estimates) 4.1 Alford index of “relative class voting” (left voting among working class compared to left voting among all other occupations) – France 1967–2002 4.2 Percentages of left voting according to social class in France, 1st round 4.3 Percentages of right voting according to social class in France, 1st round 4.4 Class voting odds-ratios in France (left/right), 1967–2002, 1st round 4.5 Percentages of extreme-right voting according to social class in France (1988–2002), 1st round 4.6 Extreme-right class voting odds-ratios in France (1988–2002), 1st round 4.7 Percentages of extreme-right voting and social integration to the working class in France (1988–2002), 1st round 4.8 Percentages of right voting according to religiosity in France (1967–2002), 1st round 4.9 Percentages of left voting according to religiosity in France (1967–2002), 1st round 4.10 Religious voting odds-ratios in France (left/right), 1967–2002, 1st round 4.11 Percentages of extreme-right voting according to religiosity in France (1988–2002), 1st round 4.12 Extreme-right religious voting odds-ratios in France (1988–2002), 1st round 4.13 Binary logistic regression of left voting, 2002 presidential election, 1st round 4.14 Binary logistic regression of extreme-right voting (as opposed to both left and right voting), 2002 presidential election, 1st round 5.1 Distribution of voters’ preferences 5.2 Perceived chances of winning 5.3 Relationship between vote and preference 5.4 The implications of strategic voting

55 66 67

78 79 80 81 82 82

84 85 85 86 87 87 89

90 97 98 99 104

List of Tables, Figures and Maps

7.1 Macroeconomic conditions and governing party fortunes in National Assembly elections (Basic Macroeconomic Model) 7.2 Macroeconomic conditions and governing party fortunes in National Assembly elections (Unexpected Macroeconomic Model) 8.1 The dual governance effect on the economics and popularity link, for France and the United States 8.2 Summary effects of economics on French executive popularity, cohabitation versus no cohabitation 8.3 The dual governance effect on economic voting in French and American national elections 8.4 The dual governance effect on economic voting in French and American elections 9.1 A logit model predicting turnout at the first round of the legislative elections 10.1 The 2002 French presidential election (1st round) Poll predictions of BVA, CSA, IFOP, IPSOS and SOFRES institutes 10.2 The 2002 French legislative elections (1st round and 2nd round) Poll predictions of CSA, IPSOS and SOFRES institutes and electoral simulations of Le Monde and Libération 10.3 The 2002 French presidential election (1st round and 2nd round) 10.4 Forecasting the 2002 presidential FN score (1st round) 10.5 The 2002 French legislative elections (1st round and 2nd round) 11.1 Vote equations (1986–2002) 11.2 Specifications of the departmental model 11.3 Specifications of the regional model 11.4 Ex post prediction (1986–2002) 11.5 Ex post prediction (1986–2002) 11.6 Seats for the 2002 elections (departmental data) 12.1 Correlations between objective and subjective economic indicators, and the vote 12.2 Objective economic voting under cohabitation, 1978–2002 12.3 Subjective economic voting under cohabitation, 1978–2002

ix

130

131 142 143 145 147 163

183

185 190 193 196 213 216 216 217 220 222 232 235 236

x

List of Tables, Figures and Maps

12.4

12.5

Subjective national economic voting and the “value-added” from objective national economic indicators National economics and the presidential popularity function

237 238

Figures 1.1

The homogenisation of electoral behaviours in France under the Fifth Republic 2.1 Proportion of voters finding no best candidate for the issue (1995–2002) 3.1 Full path model of party identification and ideology on vote 3.2(a) Path model (closed party id.) – endogenous variables 3.2(b) Path model (open party id.) – endogenous variables 3.3(a) Path model (closed party id.) – direct effects of exogenous variables on vote 3.3(b) Path model (open party id.) – direct effects of exogenous variables on vote 7.1 The accuracy of Economic voting models over time 9.1 Cross-pressure effect for supporters of the left 9.2 How strong is the cross-pressure effect on the probability to turnout?

21 37 60 62 63 64 65 132 167 168

Maps 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4

The Le Pen vote on the first ballot of the 2002 presidential election The Chirac vote on the first ballot of the 2002 presidential election The Jospin vote on the first ballot of the 2002 presidential election The abstention on the first ballot of the 2002 presidential election

29 30 31 32

Notes on the Contributors Éric Bélanger is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Science at the Université de Montréal. His research interests include political parties, public opinion, and voting behavior. He has written or co-written articles published in Electoral Studies, the Canadian Journal of Political Science, and comparative Political Studies. André Blais is Professor in the Department of Political Science at the Université de Montréal and Research Fellow with the Centre de Recherche Interuniversitaire En Economie Quantitative. He holds a Canada Research Chair in Electoral Studies, and he is the principal co-investigator of the Canadian Election Study. His research interests are voting and elections, public opinion, and methodology. Bruno Cautrès is Director, Banque de données sociopolitiques (BSDP – Socio-Political Data Bank), University of Grenoble. He has written extensively on French elections, and been involved in different French national election surveys. Eric Dubois is a Teaching Assistant in Economics and a member of the Laboratoire d’Economie Publique (LAEP – Public Economy Laboratory) at the University of Paris-I Panthéon Sorbonne. He is writing a Ph.D. dissertation on the interactions between political forecasting and economic forecasting. Robert Elgie is Paddy Moriarty Professor of Government and International Studies at Dublin City University. He is the co-editor of the journal, French Politics, published by Palgrave. He is the author of many works on France, most recently Political Institutions in Contemporary France. Jocelyn A.J. Evans is Lecturer in Politics at the University of Salford. He has authored articles on French Euroscepticism, and the Extreme Right and party system theory, which have appeared in Electoral Studies, La Revue Française de Science Politique, and Party Politics, and is the editor of “The French Party System” with Manchester University Press (2003). He is also the author of “Voters and Voting: an Introduction,” (2003). xi

xii

Notes on the Contributors

with Sage Publications. His research interests also include Northern Ireland party memberships, on which he has co-authored a number of articles, and the European Extreme Right, co-founding the EREPS (“Extreme Right Electorates and Party Success”) European research network. Christine Fauvelle-Aymar is Assistant Professor of Economics and Associate Director of the Laboratoire d’Economie Publique (LAEP – Public Economy Laboratory) at the University of Paris-I Panthéon Sorbonne. Her research is in the field of political economy. She is currently working on the subject of economic voting in Eastern European countries. She has published in Electoral Studies, Kyklos and other journals. Thomas Gschwend received his Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, in 2001. Currently, he is a Post-doctoral Research Fellow at the Mannheimer Zentrum für Europäeisch Sozialforschung (MZES), University of Mannheim, Germany, where his research focuses on comparative politics, public opinion, and political psychology, as well as political methodology. His work has been published, among other places, in the British Journal of Political Science. Bruno Jérôme is Maître de Conférences in the Department of Economics, the University of Metz, France. He holds his doctorate (Hdr) in Economics from the University of Paris-I, Panthéon Sorbonne. He is also associated with the LEP-3DI, University of Paris II. He has published articles in political economy, electoral forecasting, local economics, and political business cycles. Veronique Jérôme-Speziari is Maître de Conférences in the Department of Economics, the University of Metz, France. She holds her doctorate (Hdr) from the University of Paris-I, Panthéon Sorbonne. Annie Laurent is Chargée de Recherche at CNRS-CRAPS, at the Université de Lille 2. Among other publications, she has recently edited, with Bernard Dolez, Des roses en mars: les elections régionales et cantonales de 1998 dans le Nord/Pas-de-Calais, Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 1999. She also directs l’Ecole d’Ete de Lille, a summer training program in quantitative methods. Dirk Leuffen is currently a Ph.D. student at the Mannheimer Zentrum für Europäische Sozialforschung (MZES), University of Mannheim,

Notes on the Contributors

xiii

Germany. His dissertation project is on French European policy-making in the context of divided government. Michael S. Lewis-Beck is F. Wendell Miller Distinguished Professor and Chair of Political Science at the University of Iowa. His most recent book, which he edited, is How France Votes? He has published over 110 books and articles, many of them on French politics and economics. In 1995, he was National Science Foundation Principal Investigator for the French National Election Study. Currently, he is Data Editor of the new journal, French Politics. He has been Visiting Professor or Scholar at Sciences Po (Paris), Université de Paris-I (Sorbonne), CEVIPOF (Paris), and the Ecole d’Ete de Lille. Also, he has been Scholar-in-Residence at the Camargo Foundation, in Cassis, France, and now serves on their selection board. Among his other scholarly interests is quantitative methods. Presently, he edits the Sage Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences Series, and is an editor of the Encyclopedia of Social Science Research Methods, 2004. Nonna Mayer is Research Director at CEVIPOF (Centre for the Study of French Political Life), a research laboratory of the CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research) and Sciences Po (Paris Institute for Political Studies). She is also in charge of a Political Sociology Graduate Program at Sciences Po. Her research interests include electoral sociology, racism and anti-Semitism, and extreme right activism. Her recent works include La démocratie à l’épreuve: une nouvelle approache de l’opinion des Français (co-edited with G. Grunberg and P.M. Sniderman, Presses de Sciences Po, 2002) and Ces Français qui votent Le Pen (Flammarion, 2002). Richard Nadeau is Professor of Political Science at l’Université de Montréal. A specialist in voting behavior and public opinion, he has published extensively on these topics in professional journals, including the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, the British Journal of Political Science, Public Opinion Quarterly, Electoral Studies, the European Journal of Political Research, and Political Studies. Vincent Tiberj is Chargé de Recherche at CEVIPOF (Centre for the Study of French Political Life). He has an M.A. (1998) and a Ph.D. in Political Science from Sciences Po, Paris, and was a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University (2000–2001). He specializes in Voting, Political

xiv

Notes on the Contributors

Psychology, and Political Methodology. His current research focuses on electoral decisions of ordinary French and American citizens. Guy D. Whitten is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Texas A&M University. His research interests focus on the relationships between mass publics and governments with respect to issues at the intersection of politics and economics in Europe. His publications include articles in the American Journal of Political Science, the British Journal of Political Science, Electoral Studies, and Political Behavior.

Preface Within France, the study of elections has a long and distinguished pedigree. Since André Siegfried in 1913, the electoral behavior of the French voter has been an object of serious research from French political scientists themselves. The interest of scholars from elsewhere gathered slowly, but by the 1960s leading political science departments in North America and Great Britain had given a firm place to the scientific examination of French elections. These French studies had arrived in the Anglo academies. But ideas were also flowing the other way. Ideas about party identification and the need for election surveys to test different theories crossed the Atlantic, to arrive on the French shore. Somewhat later, ideas about political economy and statistical tests on other kinds of data, besides surveys, began landing. Still later, ideas about rational choice disembarked. French political science accepted some of these ideas, rejected some, and of course made their own unique contributions to election study, such as the importance of left–right ideology, the strategic role of institutions, the changing place of social class, the evolution of religion and ethnicity as issues, the peculiar French dynamic of political participation. At international political science meetings, in North America and Europe especially, French and non-French students of elections in the hexagon have been increasingly mingling, exchanging research notions and findings. The volume at hand, which sprang from an inquiry first broached by Robert Elgie and Palgrave press, is a sophisticated product, born of this vital transcontinental debate. We have political scientists from France, the United States, Great Britain, French Canada and Germany, all writing on the French elections, albeit from different points of view. What holds them together is the language of scientific discourse, and a passion for the subject. Officially, the text is English, but the French “feel” of the text often makes felicitous breakthroughs. What the reader holds is a collection of papers by world scholars, representing the very best contemporary political science work on French elections, and on the 2002 elections especially. The authors manage to explain French voters, though not in a way that renders them dull. It is risking little to say that these chapters, by heightening our understanding of French elections, will only further the fascination of scholars for the subject. Michael S. Lewis-Beck xv

This page intentionally left blank

French Election Theories and the 2002 Results: An Introduction Michael S. Lewis-Beck

The first round of the 2002 presidential election in France put an end, at least temporarily, to politics as usual. The impossible happened. Jean-Marie Le Pen, extreme right-wing candidate, head of the xenophobic National Front party, and pariah of the French political elite, knocked off the Socialist Prime Minister Jospin, so placing himself on the final ballot. He received 16.86 percent of the valid votes, compared to 19.88 percent for Jacques Chirac, who came in first. Lionel Jospin, in third place with 16.18 percent, was suddenly no longer a contender. The result surprised virtually everyone. No politicians, pollsters or pundits, of whatever political stripe, saw the first-round defeat of Jospin, or the imminent triumph of Le Pen, as even a remote possibility. The prime minister, after absorbing the news, made a silent withdrawal from the campaign arena. President Chirac, standing embarrassed in the eyes of the democratic world, pledged a defense of traditional republican values against the extremist threat. Essential leaders on the left, quickly enough, rallied to the cause and threw their support behind Chirac. In a victory unprecedented in the history of the Fifth Republic, Gaullist Chirac garnered 82.21 percent of the second-round vote, giving Le Pen a through drubbing. The dignity of French democracy appeared restored, as well as the usual norms of electoral politics. Or were they? And why did this embarrassing, not to say dangerous, result occur in the first place? Were French election rules no longer working, or at least working in a different way? Average French citizens, informed and ready with opinions, are seldom reticent when asked about what happened. Here is a selection of accounts, based on interviews I carried with a purposeful sample of voters in cities and towns of Brittany, just after the 2002 elections.1 1

2

Introduction

Wine merchant, 40, male, La Baule: “Le Pen won because of a configuration of circumstances – low voter turnout, a moblized Le Pen vote, and people on the left who just thought they would show Jospin they disapproved of him on the first-round, then vote for him on the second. A Frenchman who works all day, leaves his shop and sees a car set fire by immigrants, he is not a racist. He just wants something done. 90% of the immigrants are OK. It’s the 10% who don’t want to work that cause trouble. If the immigrant is legal, their children get benefits even if the family doesn’t work. I think Chirac will do something. It’s his last chance. He will be in the history books as someone who did something or nothing.” Schoolteacher, late 30s, male, Fougères: “The Le Pen vote has nothing to do with anti-Semitism. Le Pen voters are ‘disconnected’ from the real world. They are lost, form another culture. Le Pen’s making it to the second round helps ‘legitimize’ his candidacy, which had been something people were ashamed to admit they supported.” Sales manager, dairy business, 30s, female, Fougères: “On the firstround Le Pen won because of the ‘vote contestataire’, people making challenges, expressing themselves, figuring they can be serious on the second round.” Bar owner, 60, female, Vannes: “I’ve worked 30 years, that’s enough. In France, retirement at 60 is obligatory. Artisans and independents like myself get much less in pensions. Teachers and bureaucrats have it much better. Who knows if Chirac will change things?” Public accountant, late 20s, female, Fougères: “Chirac says he will lower taxes by 5 percent, and he will. The tax will be fair, because it will give an equal percentage break to everyone. France has to lower taxes to remain competitive in the world.” Café server, 40s, female, Nantes: “The French government can’t do anything. It has no power. Chirac promised to give restaurant owners a break on the TVA tax but Brussels told him to wait in line.” This anecdotal evidence points to the salience of certain issues – immigration, crime, economic concerns, sovereignty – and the relevance of certain institutional mechanisms – the two-round ballot system, the centralization of bureaucracy and public services. The reasons given by these French voters for the rise of Le Pen, the fall of Jospin, and the limits of Chirac’s power serve several useful purposes. For one, they suggest that everyday folks have opinions, explanations, even theories, about why elections turn out the way they do, or have the consequences they do. Of course, because of the small sample of respondents, and its purposive design, these remarks can be no more than suggestive.

Michael S. Lewis-Beck 3

But they do serve to introduce us to many of the concerns that receive systematic treatment in this compendium. Each chapter offers an electoral theory, applied to the 2002 elections and, commonly, to French national elections generally. A broad question the volume tries to answer is, Why do French voters act as they do? Within that context, there is the specific question of why 2002 turned out as it did, and what implications that may have for explaining future elections. Below, I consider these questions, and in the course of this explication, I highlight each of the chapters. The most venerable tradition in the study of French voting patterns is electoral geography, begun by André Siegfried in 1913. The essential idea is that the geographic context, directly or indirectly, shapes the vote choice. Generations of French political scientists have assembled choropleth (shaded) maps exhibiting the faithful transmission of left (or right) party votes in a department or region, from election to election. Certain patterns have shown remarkable persistence, for example, the bastions of right strength in the West and, the bastions of left strength in the South. Annie Laurent (Chapter 1), drawing on this tradition, explores such patterns in recent Fifth Republic national elections. Certain things still hold true, such as the high correlation of party voting by department across elections. For example, from the 1981 to 2002 presidential elections, the correlations, respectively, of the Communist, the Socialist, and the Rassemblement pour la République (RPR) votes are 0.83, 0.54 and 0.85. However, some important changes can be observed. In particular, the departments have become less and less different from each other in their vote preference over time (1965–1995), suggesting a nation-wide homogenization of the electorate. Also, with respect to the 2002 presidential election specifically, the electoral maps indicate break-up more than continuity for the key traditional right- or left-voting regions in the country. An interesting geographic pattern that does emerge is that of higher Le Pen support in the departments bordering the frontier, where immigrants are more likely to come and stay. The strong implication is that the Le Pen vote is an issue vote, based on attitudes toward immigration. That sort of question, of course, cannot be answered directly with the aggregated geographic data, which risks the ecological fallacy. But it can be explored with survey data, which Nonna Mayer and Vincent Tiberj do in Chapter 2. According to the polling results they report from their 2002 presidential election survey, the top issues were unemployment and crime, followed at some distance by social inequalities, pension funds, and immigration,

4

Introduction

in that order. When asked, voters declared that Jospin was “the best candidate” on the issues of unemployment and pensions. Chirac was not declared the best candidate on any of these five issues. However, remarkably, Le Pen was declared the best candidate on the questions of crime and immigration. Mayer and Tiberj go on to conclude that it was candidate preferences on these two law and order issues that brought success to Le Pen on the first round. The French voter is moved by short-term forces, such as the issues of crime and immigration, and by long-term social-psychological forces, such as party identification and left–right ideology. Jocelyn Evans, in Chapter 3, aims to lay bare the relative impact of party versus ideology. After the discussion of the special difficulties of measuring party identification in the French context, he concludes from a path analysis of survey data that, at least for the first-round legislative vote choice, party identification holds more sway than ideology. He ends with the speculation that much of Le Pen’s 2002 support came from a strong sense of party identification with the National Front. Another long-term force acting on the French voter is social cleavages, “the heavy variables,” as they have been called, of class and religion. In Chapter 4, Bruno Cautrès presents a through analysis of the effects of these variables over time, examining national surveys from the 1967 legislative elections thru the 2002 elections. The strength of traditional class voting – working class tending to vote left, middle class tending to vote right – is limited, with some indication of decline over the period. Indeed, in the 2002 presidential elections, first round, it all but disappeared, only to bounce back to its more normal pattern in the 2002 legislative elections, first round. Religion, in contrast to class, exercises a strong and persistent influence across the period. For example, in the 1967 legislative elections, 84 percent of regularly practicing Catholics expressed a vote for the right, compared to only 38 percent who were non-practicing or who had no religion. In the 2002 legislative elections, the numbers were not dissimilar, at 72 percent versus 38 percent, respectively. For the 2002 presidential election, religious practice was not related particularly to the Le Pen vote, according to a logistic regression analysis that Professor Cautrès performed. He concludes that class and religion continue to play their fundamental role in orienting the French voter and that, while Le Pen may have shaken these moorings a bit, he still did not create the “big bang” he was seeking. The foregoing arguments for Le Pen’s unexpected showing – issues, party identification, and perhaps social class – assume that the vote choice is sincere rather than strategic. That is, that the Le Pen supporters

Michael S. Lewis-Beck 5

really support his party and what he stands for, and are not voting for him for other reasons, such as the desire to “teach Jospin a lesson,” or “clear the playing field for Chirac.” In the chapter by André Blais (see Chapter 5), the possibility is raised that a substantial number of voters on the first round were voting strategically, in particular abandoning strong candidates such as Jospin or Chirac. For example, a voter might favor Jospin but vote for Laguiller (of LO, the Worker’s Struggle) to send a signal, perhaps that Jospin was drifting too far to the center. In another example, a voter might favor Chirac but vote for Le Pen, perhaps from the idea that Le Pen on the second round would be easy for Chirac to defeat (compared to Jospin). Blais estimates that 18 percent who preferred Jospin, and 15 percent who preferred Chirac, made such strategic defections. Taken together, these strategic defections cost Jospin the strong lead over Le Pen he would otherwise have had on the first round. Blais concedes that this is an unusual result, based on the widespread conviction, encouraged by the opinion polls, that Jospin and Chirac were destined to be on the second ballot. Robert Elgie, in Chapter 6, gives special emphasis to the role of the two-ballot system in shaping the French vote choice. He observes that the traditional logic – party identification dominates choice on the first ballot, ideological identification dominates choice on the second ballot – was not followed in the 2002 presidential election. Instead, in that contest ideology seemed to drive the vote on the first ballot as well, with Socialist Party identifiers going for candidates of the extreme left, and a significant share on traditional right party identifiers bolting for Le Pen. These breakdowns in party identification, coupled with the unusually large number of candidates (16), especially on the left, helped account for the Jospin defeat. Another institutional feature that Elgie debits against Jospin is cohabitation, where the prime minister and the president are of different party coalitions. Under cohabitation, it is the prime minister, rather than the president, who shares primary responsibility for the direction of the economy. Unfortunately for Jospin, heading into the 2002 election there were signs of economic deterioration, which many voters appeared to lay at his feet. The influence of certain institutional features on the French voter, such as the number of parties in the ruling coalition, has been neglected, according to Elgie. He argues that perceived responsibility for the economy should diminish, as the number of coalition parties increases, thereby blunting the effect of any economic vote. For example, Jospin’s government at election time was a four-party coalition of the Socialists, Communists, Left Radicals, and Greens. (It had been a five-party coalition,

6

Introduction

until Chevènement withdrew his Citizens’ Movement in 2000.) It may be that the hypothesized economic vote in 2002 was actually not that great, because of the diffusion of government responsibility under this large coalition. Guy D. Whitten, in Chapter 7, answers to this question, in an institutional, comparative, model. He poses the provocative question, Could there possibly have been economic voting in 2002? in the face of the issues of crime, immigration, low turnout, and the first-round Le Pen surprise. To answer this question, he predicted the 2002 first-round National Assembly election outcome from a previously built comparative voting model, estimated on 135 elections from 19 industrial democracies, including France. The equation holds incumbent vote to be a function, among other things, of macroeconomic indicators (growth, inflation, unemployment) and institutional features (clarity of responsibility, minority government status, number of parties in government). Note in particular that the model takes into account the institutional issue raised by Elgie, that is, the number of parties in the government coalition. Whitten plugged in the 2002 French scores on these institutional variables along with the 2002 French economy scores. In addition to the higher number of parties in the ruling coalition, he reports the economic variable scores for 2002, as well as for the nine French election years already in the analysis (1967–1997). Looking at this total of ten French election years, one sees that the 2002 inflation score ranks second best, but the unemployment and growth rank only sixth and seventh best, respectively. These 2002 values, along with the other 2002 independent variable values, yield the prediction that the ruling Socialist-led coalition would lose 4.1 percentage points on the first round. In fact, they experienced a net loss of 5.7 percentage points, yielding a prediction error of 1.6 points. That error is actually below the median error for all the French elections in the sample. Whitten concludes that, contrary to popular expectations, these 2002 elections were no more than politics as usual, including with that the usual amount of economic voting. The evidence that economic voting exists in France seems clear. Hence, the more lively questions relate to concerns about what conditions, especially institutional conditions, influence its strength. The 2002 national elections occurred under cohabitation, as have those of 1988 and 1995. Lewis-Beck and Nadeau, in Chapter 8, argue that cohabitation diffuses responsibility, ultimately diluting the impact of the economic vote. They attempt to extend this argument to the United States, asserting that the same effect should occur there, under divided government. Their comparative analysis, in which they test the same model

Michael S. Lewis-Beck 7

against both nations, reveals the expected effects in France, but not in the United States. They resolve this paradox by arguing that in France, dual governance really does bring about a shift in political economic leadership, away from the president and to the prime minister. In the United States, by way of contrast, political economic leadership remains with the president, regardless of the partisan complexion of the congressional majority. The 2002 French elections are viewed as a challenge to the generality of their model, because of the Le Pen surprise, and because that cohabitation was the first ever with a prime minister from the left and a president from the right. Nevertheless, as it turns out, these presidential and legislative election outcomes are quite well predicted once they are incorporated into the model, yielding within sample errors that are small. The implication is that, after all, the 2002 results were product of the normal rhythms of the French electorate. While Lewis-Beck and Nadeau look at the effect of cohabitation on the economic vote, Thomas Gschwend and Dirk Leuffen, in Chapter 9, look at the effect of cohabitation on turnout. This is an especially important question in 2002, since first-round turnout for the legislative elections set a Fifth Republic record, with a 35.6 percent abstention rate. Might part of this have come from voters who were cross-pressured, with a regime preference (e.g. unified government) that worked against their partisan preference (e.g. left)? Going into the first round of the 2002 legislative elections, voters knew that Jacques Chirac was elected President. Therefore, they also knew that a left legislative win meant cohabitation. These authors formulate a carefully specified model of turnout, and test it against survey data gathered between the presidential and legislative elections. They find that failure to turn out was determined by usual suspects, such as low political interest or efficacy. But in addition, they show that left partisans who favored the principle of unified government (over cohabitation) were more likely to abstain. However, a comparable sort of cross-pressure on the right (for those favoring cohabitation) was not found. Thus, this asymmetric demobilization, coming from the threat of cohabitation and affecting only the left, helps explain the magnitude of the left defeat. To this point, all the chapters have tried to explain elections. Bruno Jérôme and Veronique Jérôme-Speziari, in Chapter 10, have a different focus, for they wish to forecast elections. While good forecasting of course involves good explanation, it does tend to dictate different research design, and different measures. In particular, the research design is aggregate, in order to account for national-level election

8

Introduction

outcomes, rather than individual-level vote choices. Further, measures on the independent variables are available well before the election itself, so that the forecast not be made trivial by a lack of lead time. They propose models for presidential and legislative elections, and estimate them on a pooled time series of French regions, 1974–2002. The presidential model holds first-round vote for the government coalition to be a function of, among other things, past legislative vote, unemployment change, regional strength, the popularity gap between the prime minister and the president, and the absolute popularity of the prime minister. The model forecasts that the first-round combined vote share for left candidates, who represent the government coalition, would be only 42.39 percent, not far from their actual share of 42.89 percent. The accuracy of this forecast is especially noteworthy in light of the poor forecasting performance they report for the polls. Before the presidential election, first round, the poll estimates were grossly biased toward the left, consistently giving it between six to nine percentage points more than it finally won. Further, a left bias in poll projections persisted throughout the campaign for the legislative races. Forecasting is also the theme of Chapter 11, by Eric Dubois and Christine Fauvelle-Aymar. They take a somewhat different tack from Chapter 10, aiming more to resolve some general issues of data and measurement in the French vote function literature. They restrict analysis to legislative contests, and make the suggestion that the preferred dependent variable should consistently be left-party coalition support. This proposal recognizes the ambiguities of where to place the National Front when the dependent variable is incumbent-coalition and that coalition is headed by a traditional right party. A further innovation comes in the measurement of one of the independent variables. Political influences are to be captured by the popularity of the ruling parties. The importance of economic voting is also acknowledged, and unemployment selected as the key indicator, in part because of data availability. A new question that is thoroughly explored is whether national, regional, or departmental data are to be preferred. After a series of different pooled time series procedures, on elections from 1986 to 2002, the conclusion is that departmental data models, with adjusted R2 of 0.83, yield the least prediction error. Considering the 2002 result in particular, a conclusion is that neither the errors from the ex poste prediction nor the ex ante forecast indicate that this legislative contest was special compared to others. The forecasting models, and French popularity and vote function equations generally, have in common a political economy approach to the

Michael S. Lewis-Beck 9

explanation of the French voter. Two conceptual variables are central – national political performance and national economic performance. The former is measured usually by the popularity of the president or the prime minister, while the latter is usually measured by the macroeconomic indicators of growth, unemployment, or inflation. Dubois and Fauvelle-Aymar remind us that political performance might be better measured by examining the popularity of the leading parties, rather than the popularity of the leaders themselves. In Chapter 12, Eric Bélanger and Michael Lewis-Beck suggest that economic performance might be better measured by subjective rather than objective economic indicators. According to their analyses, subjective indicators, such as aggregated citizen perceptions of national business conditions, account for the French election outcomes more satisfactorily than traditional macroeconomic indicators, such as economic growth. They do not actually include these subjective indicators in any forecasting models. The implication, however, is that subjective indicators might replace objective indicators of the economy, in forecasting models, and in vote functions generally. After reading this chapter review, one sees that the current study of French elections can be organized in different ways. First, it can be organized in terms of whether the primary unit of analysis is micro or macro. Is it the individual voter? Or is it the nation as a whole? With the former, the natural dependent variable is vote choice, and the data are survey. With the latter, the natural dependent variable is the overall election outcome, and the data are aggregate. The studies are balanced in terms of level of analysis, with six at the macro level (Chapters 1, 7, 8, 10, 11 and 12), and six at the micro level (Chapters 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 9). Micro and macro approaches are useful in their own right, but do dictate to some extent the theory up for test, pointing to the second way these chapters can be organized. In the micro chapters, the following theories of vote choice are emphasized: issues (Chapter 2); partisan or ideological identification (Chapter 3); social cleavages (Chapter 4); strategic voting (Chapter 5); institutions (Chapter 6); preferences (Chapter 9). In the macro chapters, the following theories of election outcome are emphasized: geographic context (Chapter 1); institutions, especially cohabitation (Chapters 7 and 8); political economy (Chapters 10 and 11); economic voting (Chapter 12). Given each chapter features a different electoral theory, one might be tempted to call them rival theories. I would instead call them complementary theories. No one model, no one chapter, fully explains the French voter. Rather, each adds a piece to the puzzle. This

10

Introduction

perspective rides a contemporary wave of methodological thinking in political science and econometrics. The notion that there is one unique true model, to be correctly specified and estimated, is coming to be replaced by the notion that there may be alternative models of equal validity, worthy of support as long as they fare well in competitive, rigorous testing. These chapters show the value of that view for the understanding of French elections and, by their very range and variety, point to scholarly challenges that remain. How do the varied theories help explain the strong, decisive, showing of Le Pen, on the first ballot of the 2002 presidential elections? First, a number of things directly helped Le Pen. Issues of law and order had unusual importance in that election, and Le Pen was seen as especially capable in that policy area. Further, party identification with the National Front, and ideological identification with the extreme right, appeared to exhibit more pull than usual. In addition, there was some strategic defection to Le Pen on the part of Chirac supporters. Second, a number of things indirectly helped Le Pen, in that they cost Jospin votes. The proliferation of candidates, who were disproportionately from the left, led Socialists away from Jospin. Often, these Socialist defections to an extreme left party were strategic, based on the belief that a message was being sent to Jospin, who would hear it on the second round. Further, the year before the election saw rising unemployment and declining consumer confidence, conditions for which Prime Minister Jospin received much blame, given his cohabitation role as economic chief. Indeed, the poor showing of the left on the presidential first round appears predictable, once the conjunction of cohabitation and economic conditions are taken into account. The 2002 legislative results, where the left also did badly, are similarly predictable, with economic forces looming large there as well. Interestingly, the failure of the left here, unlike the presidential race, did not benefit the extreme right. The National Front received 11.3 percent of the first-round vote, with the Megret faction receiving an additional 1.1 percent, for a total of 12.4, comparable to the 13 percent share the National Front received in 1997. The usual balance of partisan forces in France seems pretty much restored, with the classical right in power. Soon enough, alternance will occur, and the classical left, headed by the Socialists, perhaps even Jospin himself, will return to govern. The fundamental rhythms of the French political system appear back to normal. When the 2002 elections strained the system, its institutions and its citizens responded with resiliency. The ballot returns can be explained

Michael S. Lewis-Beck 11

within a traditional framework for the understanding of French political behavior, especially when coupled with an appreciation of their institutional interactions. Even the lack of a leading left alternative on the second presidential round is not unprecedented, having also happened in 1969. In that contest, as in 2002, the Gaullist presidential candidate went on to an overwhelming second-round victory. Under the Fifth Republic, the attitudes and behavior of the French electorate appear to have changed remarkably little. Some twenty years ago, I wrote that “the 1981 election results do not undercut the conclusion that the French electorate is ‘stalled’ in past habits” (Lewis-Beck, 1984: 446). It is still not far off the mark to conclude, in the aftermath of the 2002 elections, that the French electorate is stalled. While the workings of French electoral politics is obviously not the same now as twenty years ago, the continuities are much more impressive than the changes. Note 1. The author wishes to thank the college of Liberal Arts & Sciences of the University of Iowa and its F. Wendell Miller Research Grant to me, which made possible this field work. The translation of the interviews is my own.

Reference Lewis-Beck, M.S. 1984. “France: The Stalled Electorate,” in Russell J. Dalton, Scott C. Flanagan and Paul Allen Beck (eds), Princeton University Press, pp. 425–448.

1 France’s 2002 Presidential Elections: Earlier and Later Territorial Fractures Annie Laurent

Twenty-first April will long remain a day to remember for the French who watched in shock as election returns appeared on their TV sets: the Left had been voted out of the second round of balloting in the presidential election, the two contenders for the run-up being Jacques Chirac and Jean-Marie Le Pen. Two weeks later, the incumbent who benefited from the support of practically all political forces was re-elected with the Fifth Republic’s highest results ever (82 per cent of recorded votes). Odd as it may have seemed, this presidential election saw two dramatically different ballots which the media encapsulated with phrases taken from the geographical lexicon: ‘political earthquake’ to refer to 21 April and ‘electoral tidal wave’ for the 5 May returns. Though these phrases are first and foremost metaphors coined by the media, they amply illustrate the vocabulary of electoral geography, born with André Siegfried’s soon-to-become famous founding book on electoral behaviours in Western France under the Third Republic (Siegfried, 1913). This writer, who based his analysis of votes on real results collected on a territorial unit basis such as departments or ‘cantons’, endeavoured to typify the reasons of voters’ behaviours according to the area in which they lived. In this book, as in the ones which he was to publish later on, the cartographic approach was paramount. It enabled him to highlight two major factors: on the one hand, the territory-based relation of voters’ behaviours and, on the other hand, the permanence over time of territorial contrasts which, as he put it, pointed to ‘political 12

Annie Laurent

13

temperaments’. Later on, François Goguel and Alain Lancelot, just to mention two leading authors, would take over the systematic research into each ballot from a territory-based approach (Goguel, from 1945 until 1985; Lancelot, from 1965 until 1985). Both writers are part and parcel of the ‘Siegfried tradition’. Yet, the former also focused on the specificities of territories and on the fact that the significance of a vote differs from one place to the next (Goguel, 1969), while the latter conducted an in-depth research on the political conditions of the different ballots, thus raising the question of the effects caused by a wide range of candidates on electoral behaviours. Nowadays, in spite of the vast amount of work based on survey-data which tends to smooth out the territorial dimension of the vote, most ballots are the subject of geography-based analyses.1 The latter, whether based on a nationwide or a European scale (Delbos, 1994), bear witness to the twofold perspective highlighted by André Siegfried: in other words, the geographical vote gap as well as the existence of long-lasting territorial patterns. Still, whenever these analyses are based on a long-time period, the permanence of electoral territories has to be put into perspective, as witness among other works, the comparison of maps drawn over a long-time period (Salmon, 2001). Therefore, the vote distribution based on the territory is not set once and for all. The territory-based grassroots support of the different forces is deeply rooted but this does not preclude territorial vote reconstructions. While electoral territories are eroding, or even at times disintegrate, others are born or gain a foothold. Such an evolution cannot be assessed in terms of percentage points only, as recorded in result-maps; it can also be measured in terms of structure. Over the years, a hypothesis could even be raised, that territorial reconstructions, at least in the second round of balloting in presidential elections from 1965 until 1995, had taken precedence over permanence (Dolez and Laurent, 1996). These transformations are due to several factors, among which is the emergence of new political forces on the electoral scene. They are also the fruits of a homogenisation process of votes triggered in the 1965 presidential election and which are generalised to all types of elections (Lancelot, 1969; Dolez and Laurent, 2001). The 2002 ballot provides us with a fresh opportunity to analyse the results from a geographical perspective. As will be examined later on, the electoral map has remained contrasted and relatively stable since 1995. Still, this election contributed to the transformation of France’s political landscape. At the end of the series of ballots in 2002, new territorial fractures emerged, which may be a harbinger of things to come.

14

France’s 2002 Presidential Elections

21 April–5 May, 2002: from a ‘political earthquake’ to an ‘electoral tidal wave’ To begin with, the first ballot returns are an apt illustration of the wide spectrum of candidates and of the way votes are scattered: 16 candidates entered the fray, 7 of whom made it to the 5 per cent mark of valid votes.2 The proportional representation (PR) logic therefore dominated in the first round, characterised as it was by the lack of any meaningful political issues. Moreover, the results also highlighted the credibility gap between major political parties since abstention had never been that high in this type of ballot (28.4 per cent). The Rassemblement pour la République (RPR), which had backed Jacques Chirac since 1981, enjoyed its former results of 1988 and 1995 (Table 1.1). Yet, its Republican allies made quite a poor showing with pretty low results: less than 7.0 per cent for François Bayrou’s Union pour la Démocratie Française (UDF) and less than 4 per cent for ‘Démocratie libérale’ led by Alain Madelin. The Socialist Party (PS), led by Lionel Jospin since 1995, made its poorest showing ever since 1969 (16.2 per cent). This drop was all the sharper as the Communist Party and the Greens did make poor showings as well (with respectively 3.4 and 5.3 per cent). The ‘gauche plurielle’ (L. Jospin, R. Hue, N. Mamère, Ch. Taubira, to whom one might add, though arguably, J.-P. Chevènement)3 garnered only 32.4 per cent of recorded votes. But the first round also bore witness to the ever-increasing grassroots appeal of the far Right and of the far Left. Jean-Marie Le Pen made his party’s greatest showing ever in a presidential election (16.9 per cent). Since the 1984 European Parliament elections in which he had garnered 10.6 per cent of recorded votes, the far Right had steadily improved its showing, even though some observers had first thought that the breakthrough could be nothing but short-lived. They were to be proved wrong in spite of the split within the far Right movement itself in the

Table 1.1 The evolution of the Gaullist Right, the FN and the PS in the first round in the 1982 to 2002 presidential elections (the whole of France, in percentage points of valid votes)

J. Chirac F. Mitterrand–L. Jospin J.-M. Le Pen

1981

1988

1995

2002

18.0 25.9 –

19.9 34.1 14.4

20.8 23.3 15.0

19.9 16.2 16.9

Annie Laurent

15

1999 European elections with the founding of the MNR (Mouvement pour la France) set up by Bruno Mégret. The latter then garnered 3 per cent of recorded votes to 6 per cent for Jean-Marie Le Pen. He was to get 2.3 per cent of the votes in April 2002. The far Left, represented by three contenders, Arlette Laguiller for ‘Lutte Ouvrière’, Olivier Besancenot for the ‘Ligue communiste révolutionnaire’ and Daniel Gluckstein for ‘le Parti des travailleurs’, in all garnered 10.4 per cent of recorded votes. These results are an apt confirmation of the showing made by the far Left over the last few years. But, up to then, these had been PR-based elections or elections with at least a measure of PR 4 which traditionally favour the far Left. Jean-Pierre Chevènement, the leader of the ‘Pôle républicain’, a movement set up in January 2001, who had for some time been regarded as ‘the third man’, 5 came in only sixth with 5.3 per cent of votes, just beyond the mark to have his campaign expenditure reimbursed. Despite the high hopes he had entertained, he did not manage to ‘give the system a good shake’ 6 although the latter was to come out of the process in quite a bad shape. The second round exemplified the passage from a ‘political earthquake’ to an ‘electoral tidal wave’. The incumbent, who was to capitalise on the republican anti-Le Pen reflex, was re-elected with 82.2 per cent of recorded votes to 17.8 per cent for his far Right opponent. Elated as he was by his showing after the first round, the latter had declared on TV on the election night: ‘Economically, I am a right winger, socially, I am a left-winger, and nationally I am an all-out Frenchman.’ Accordingly, the outcome of this election was paradoxical: Jacques Chirac became the Fifth Republic’s best-elected President although his electoral basis was the weakest. Contrary to what had occurred in the first ballot, voter mobilisation was especially high on 5 May: over 81 per cent of voters (that is an increase of more than 8 percentage points). Compared with 21 April, the National Front (FN) dropped in percentage points in almost 30 departments but significantly it made a better showing in some of its strongholds: in the Somme department in the ProvenceAlpes-Côte d’Azur region, in Pyrénées-Orientales and in Corsica. It also improved its results noticeably in northern France and in many areas in southwestern France. Jacques Chirac improved his score most dramatically in traditionally Left-leaning areas, places where Lionel Jospin had scored his best results in the first ballot. He made a more than 70 points increase in Hautes-Pyrénées, Jean Glavany’s (then Lionel Jospin’s campaign manager) current home constituency: 16.3 per cent in the first ballot compared with 86.6 per cent in the second. The same also occurred in Loire-Atlantique, home constituency to Jean-Marc Ayrault,

16

France’s 2002 Presidential Elections

President of the Socialist group in the National Assembly (respectively 18.8 per cent and 88.8 per cent). The Left’s mobilisation in support of republican values was also very strong (more than 65 per cent) in Ariège and Haute-Garonne, an area where Lionel Jospin had also held a seat in the General Council Assembly. Just after the 5 May ballot, all eyes were set on the general election scheduled one month later. Eight thousand four hundred and forty four candidates were to enter the fray to be elected to one of the 577 seats of Members of the French Parliament, 555 of which are located in metropolitan France (that is, an average of 15 candidates per constituency).

2002: a still sharply contrasted electoral map The first ballot returns of the presidential election were not identical all over France’s national territory, far from it. The magnitude of the contrasts variously affected all political forces but the very nature of the election also has to be taken into account. The geographical disparities of the vote The department by department analysis of the maximum and minimum results garnered by the first three leading candidates at the end of the first ballot of this presidential election makes it possible to gauge the scale of territorial disparities (Table 1.2).7 They are especially sharp for Jean-Marie Le Pen and Jacques Chirac while Lionel Jospin enjoys a somewhat more even grass-roots support. Jean-Marie Le Pen garnered only 8.9 per cent of votes in Corrèze but 26 per cent in Alpes-Maritimes, thus highlighting a 17-point gap and a 4.3 standard deviation. Le Pen’s vote map illustrates a wide gap between western France and eastern France, with a stronger appeal in the latter region. He made his best showing in the Mediterranean area

Table 1.2 The spectrum of contrasts: minimum and maximum results scored by the three leading candidates in the first ballot of the 2002 presidential election (96 French departments, in percentage points of recorded votes, metropolitan France only) National score J. Chirac J.-M. Le Pen L. Jospin

Minimum score

Maximum score

Deviation

Standard deviation

14.2 8.9 9.9

34.2 26.0 23.7

20.0 17.1 13.8

3.4 4.3 2.5

Annie Laurent

17

(Alpes-Maritimes 26 per cent, Bouches-du-Rhône 22.4 per cent), in Alsace (23.4 per cent), in Picardy (20.3 per cent) as well as in the RhôneAlpes area (19.8 per cent). The National Front’s President made it beyond the 10 per cent mark in practically all metropolitan France’s departments, three excepted, Paris being one of the hold-outs. Likewise, Jacques Chirac got only 14.2 per cent of the votes in Ariège and the ‘territoire de Belfort’ but 34.2 per cent in Corrèze, his home department (a 3.4 standard deviation). His strongholds are essentially located in Corsica (27.6 per cent), in the Limousin area (26.9) and in the ‘Pays de Loire’ area (23.4 per cent). His following remains low (near 17 per cent) in the Midi-Pyrénées region, in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais or in Rhône-Alpes. The differences in results between departments are less noticeable, though appreciable for Lionel Jospin: 9.9 per cent in the ‘territoire de Belfort’ to 23.7 per cent in Ariège (a 2.5 standard deviation). He made his greatest showing in western and southwestern France, more specifically in the Midi-Pyrénées region (Ariège, 23.7 per cent; Aveyron, 22.2 per cent), in the Aquitaine area (Landes, 21.9 per cent; Dordogne, 21.7 per cent), in Limousin (Haute-Vienne, 19.7 per cent) and in Brittany (Côte-d’Armor, 19.3 per cent). But the Socialist Party’s showing remained poor in the entire Provence region, the Southeast Rhône valley and in Alsace. It came in first in the first ballot in only one out of twenty-two regions, in Midi-Pyrénées. In 16 departments, its results were even lower than 13.5 per cent of recorded votes. Broadly speaking, the parties that were in office incurred voter discontent less in the west east than in the east where the Le Pen vote and abstention were definitely more marked. Nature of the election and the geographical disparities of votes Still, the geographical disparity of votes is not specific to the presidential election, far from it. Thus, the more fragmented a territory is, in other words, the more locally based an election is, the more sharply contrasted electoral behaviours are. It must be underlined that such a trend is beneficial to the prevailing political force. The effects of such territorial fragmentation on electoral behaviours can be illustrated with the example of the Pas-de-Calais ‘department’, located in Northern France and which is one of the Left’s strongholds. The research is based on the results of the Left, then in office, during the elections in the 1998–2002 period (Table 1.3). In the 1998 cantonal elections which enabled voters to elect local ‘department’-based administrators, there was a 16-point gap between the incumbent Left and the nationwide average. In the 2002 general election, the gap was narrower: 9.4 per cent. It was narrower still in the 1998 regional election which was held within the ‘department’

18

France’s 2002 Presidential Elections

Table 1.3 The Left, then in office, in the Pas-de-Calais first ballots held over the 1998–2002 period (Socialist Party + Communist Party + Greens + various Left-wing parties) Regional elections 1998 Pas-de-Calais Metropolitan France P-d-C – France

Cantonal elections 1998 1er t

European election 1999

Presidential General election election 2002 1er t* 2002 1er t*

45.3

60.1

39.6

33.1

46.6

39.3 +06.0

43.9 +16.2

38.5 +1.1

32.6 +0.5

37.2 +9.4

*In 2002, the results of the incumbent Left take the results garnered by the ‘Pôle républicain’ into account.

framework with the PR system. In the election to the European Parliament in 1999 and in the 2002 presidential election in which the territory was not fragmented, the gaps were narrow, not to say residual, respectively 1.1 and 0.5 point.

A fairly stable electoral map Even though the emergence of new political forces on the electoral scene has contributed to changing France’s political landscape over the last ten years, such a reconstruction has dealt a bigger blow to the level of traditional political forces than to their geographical grassroots support structure. Over the different ballots, the latter has remained fairly stable even if, in the long run, it is likely to change. From the 1995 to the 2002 presidential election At the end of the first ballot of the 2002 presidential election, the ‘department’-based electoral structures of the RPR, Socialist and National Front votes remained extremely stable, as witnessed by Pearson’s correlation coefficient, measured on the basis of the 1995 and 2002 election results: 0.83 for Jacques Chirac; 0.85 for Lionel Jospin and 0.94 for JeanMarie Le Pen. Accordingly, each of these three forces increased or fell back in relation to its traditional strongholds. This did not hold true for ‘great’ political forces only. Even the smallest ones also capitalised on a fairly steady permanence of their territorial grassroots support structures (Boy, 1997). All political forces then abide by such a pattern, whether they be enjoying greater popular support such as the far Left or suffer

Annie Laurent

19

a downward trend like the Communist Party. Between 1995 and 2002, the far Left enjoyed a 5 per cent increase (respectively 5.4 per cent and 10.4 per cent). 8 Its growth is not even but hinges on its territorial structure back in 1995 (with a 0.66 coefficient).9 In the same way, even though the Communist Party did collapse (− 5.2 points compared with 1995), its degree of structuring remains extremely strong (a 0.96 coefficient between the 2002 and 1995 ballots). Despite that drop, the Communist Party has remained firmly entrenched in its traditional support areas. Besides, this was to allow it to make a come-back one month later in the general election since it was to retain 22 constituencies, thus enabling it to maintain a group in Parliament.10 In terms of electoral geography and in comparison with 1995, Jacques Chirac fell back in 61 out of 96 metropolitan France’s departments. He held his ground in his strongholds, all located in rural areas,11 especially in western and central France where he kept strengthening his following. On the other hand, his grassroots support remained weaker in the north, the east and the south-east. Lionel Jospin fell back in all departments and his drop exceeded 10 percentage points in about 10 departments that were once regarded as his traditional strongholds.12 Conversely, Jean-Marie Le Pen’s party enjoyed a boost in almost all French departments (91 out of 96) but such an upsurge does not make it necessary to reassess the National Front’s vote map which is characterised first and foremost by its permanence. It kept scoring its best results in its strongholds: in Alsace, in industrial north eastern France, in the Rhône valley and on the Mediterranean coast. It has also made a breakthrough in rural areas. 13 Still, Brittany, central and western France, not to mention Paris, kept resisting the temptation of a far Right vote. From the 1981 to the 2002 presidential election In their 1986 study of the communist vote from 1967 to 1981, François Platone and Jean Ranger underlined that the time-span between two ballots contributed to the weakening of the scale of such territorial structures, as measured with correlation coefficients (Platone and Ranger, 1986). The 2002 election still proved their findings for the Communist Party, whose coefficients tend to decrease slightly over the years: 0.96 for the 2002–1995 period but 0.83 over a longer period, 2002–1981 (Table 1.4). This relation also holds true, though more markedly and more regularly, for the Socialist Party whose correlation coefficients steadily decrease as the reference time-span between two ballots gets longer: 0.85 (2002–1995); 0.63 (2002–1988); 0.54 (2002–1981). The same pattern applies to the

20

France’s 2002 Presidential Elections

Table 1.4 2002–1981: the resistance of the Socialist Party’s, RPR’s, Communist Party’s and National Front’s territorial structures (correlation coefficients measured on the basis of each metropolitan France’s departments)

Presidential 2002 → Presidential 1995 Presidential 2002 → Presidential 1988 Presidential 2002 → Presidential 1981

PC

PS

RPR

FN

0.96 0.96 0.83

0.85 0.63 0.54

0.83 0.87 0.85

0.94 0.83 –

National Front, but over a shorter time-span since Jean-Marie Le Pen did not run in the 1981 election: 0.94 (2002–1995) and 0.83 (2002–1988). On the other hand, such an erosion of the territorial structure does not affect Jacques Chirac’s party which remains surprisingly stable over the 1981–2002 period: 0.83 (2002–1995); 0.87 (2002–1988); 0.85 (2002–1981). Even though territorial structures resist quite well from one ballot to the next, they often tend to erode over a longer period, which entails a territorial reconstruction of votes.

An ever-changing territory Such changes are due to several factors, one of which is the emergence of new political forces on France’s electoral scene. But they are also the fruits of the homogenisation process of votes. The latter factor, which started with the 1965 presidential election (Lancelot, 1969), now affects all types of elections (Dolez and Laurent, 2001). The 2002 ballot did not put this pattern into question. On the contrary, it tended to reinforce it even further. Over a longer period, 1965–1995, such homogenisation went along with a restructuring of grassroots territories, a process which could also be confirmed in 2002 by the emergence of new space-related fractures between ‘dynamic’ areas and economically depressed ones. An ever-more homogeneous territory Over the years, voter behaviours have kept homogenising owing to the erosion of local specificities, in other words, owing to the narrowing gap of contrasts between the strong areas and the weak ones of the different political forces. Even though those contrasts live on, as witness the abovementioned data, their intensity tends to decrease regularly. This evernarrowing gap is obvious, be it assessed on the basis of the scale of the vote gap (i.e. the difference between the departments where the Left obtained their best scores and the one where they collected their poorest scores)

Standard deviation (by department)

Annie Laurent

21

14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 P

65 19

P

02 20

19

L

20

99

79

02

67

L

E

19

E

19

98

86

R

19

R

19

Figure 1.1 The homogenisation of electoral behaviours in France under the Fifth Republic.

or on the standard deviation (Figure 1.1). In the first round of balloting in the 1965 presidential election, the Mitterrand vote standard deviation was twice as high as the one concerning the overall vote garnered by Robert Hue, Lionel Jospin, Christiane Taubira, Noël Mamère and Jean-Pierre Chevènement in 2002: 8.3 and 3.8 (per ‘department’ standard deviation). An identical pattern can also be observed during general elections since the standard deviation for Left-wing votes (to which the votes garnered by the different Green candidates can also be added) between 1967 and 2002 went from 11.7 down to 6.414 (on a per ‘department’ basis). A similar pattern, less markedly though, can also be observed in the elections to the European Parliament (6.6 in 1979 and 4.3 in 1999), for what came to be known as ‘the Plural Left’, and in regional elections (6.4 in 1986 and 5.6 in 1998). Such a homogenisation process must not conceal the fact that contrasts are not always sharp from one ballot to the next. Local elections, such as the ‘canton’-based ones provide us with more contrasted results than other types of ballots in terms of territories. In the 1994 and 1998 cantonal elections, standard deviations for the overall Plural Left/Green coalition were respectively 8.9 and 8.5 (on a per ‘department’ basis), hence slightly higher figures than those seen in previous elections (Dolez and Laurent, 2001). 1965–1995: territorial reconstructions15 The homogenisation of the vote map was also shown in the second rounds of the 1965 to 1995 presidential elections and went along with profound vote reconstructions as well. Over a 30-year span of presidential elections, the gap between strong and weak areas has kept narrowing,

22

France’s 2002 Presidential Elections

thus highlighting the homogenisation process of votes. Over that period, the scale and standard deviation of the Left vote has practically been halved: 45.1 per cent down to 25.3 per cent; 8.86 per cent down to 4.79 per cent (Table 1.5). In 1969 as in 2002, the Left did not run in the second round of balloting. Such findings lead to a twofold conclusion. First and foremost, the homogenisation of votes in the second round is not a steady process. The narrowing gap of contrasts is essentially due to the 1965–1974 period and was followed by a time of stability (1988–1995). Later, the homogenisation of voter behaviours seems to have been caused mainly by the erosion of weak areas, be it on the Left as well as on the Right. Back in 1965, the most staunchly anti-Left ‘department’ gave it only 20 per cent of recorded votes; ten years later, in a weak area, the Left was to garner at least 33 per cent of recorded votes (Table 1.5). Such a pattern makes one wonder about the changes in the geographical structures of the vote France has been experiencing since 1965. Those last thirty years of elections have been marked by outstanding electoral fractures. First and foremost, the presidential changes of both 1981 and later, 1995; then, the two ensuing power-sharing systems (the 1986 and 1993 ‘cohabitations’). Electorally, those breaking points had uneven consequences on the geography of votes since nearly half of metropolitan France’s departments (49, more specifically) illustrated such in-depth changes over the period concerned with the research paper. Out of the 49 above-mentioned departments, 27 experienced a markedly Rightleaning course,16 22 of them had a Left-leaning course,17 while the rest of the departments had a less noticeable evolution ranging between those two poles. The major changes concerned weak areas. Such an observation is more relevant for the Left than for the Right. Therefore, the chances of voting for the Left markedly increased in areas where François Mitterrand had made his poorer showing back in 1965: in Alsace, Lorraine and in Table 1.5 The second ballot in presidential elections from 1965 to 1995: the evolution of standard deviations between most – and least – Left-leaning departments Minimal score 1965 1974 1981 1988 1995

20.1 330.0 34.9 40.9 34.5

Maximal score

Deviation

Standard deviation

65.2 63.5 63.7 64.7 59.8

45.1 30.5 28.8 23.8 25.3

8.86 6.67 5.55 4.74 4.79

Annie Laurent

23

western France. Likewise, the chances of voting for the Right increased in areas where Charles de Gaulle had scored poorly: the Paris area, Limousin, part of southwestern France as well as on the Mediterranean coast. What is more, the pace of such reconstruction is not alike from one presidential election to the next. Those of 1981 and 1995 altered the geographical structure of the previous election only marginally, although politically speaking, these were milestones. Conversely, the 1974 and 1988 elections dramatically contributed to reinforcing territorial reconstructions. What elements can we focus on so as to account for such a paradox? The 1974/1981 and 1988/1995 periods were not marked by any major political upheavals, the political situation was the sole element that changed. On the contrary, during the 1965/1974 period on the one hand, and the 1981/1988 on the other hand, France’s political landscape was to change dramatically. Indeed, 1965/1974 was marked by the demise of the Center electorate and bipolarisation; 1981/1988 was, on the contrary, characterised by the unravelling of the four major-party pattern and by the emergence of the National Front. It is commonly held that the end of the Center as a politically autonomous force and the emergence, and later, grassroots appeal of the National Front led to an overall political recombining with part of the Christian-Democratic electorate eventually joining hands with the Left while part of the blue-collar electorate (from the working class) which had rallied the National Front was to make the Right their political home. Until further research has been carried out, one can put forward the hypothesis that such political reshuffling translates into a geographical reconstruction in the MRP’s former strongholds and in the National Front’s newly-won bastions. It thus ensues that the electoral structure was profoundly altered in the elections after which there was no political change in office. On the contrary, it was not, or little, affected by the elections which signalled major political upheavals. Political stability can hide great geographical reconstruction while change occurs in a constant or almost constant geographical structure: in 1995, one was under the impression that Jacques Chirac had regularly and evenly improved his showing in all French departments. Indeed, the Right/Left relationship did change whereas its geographical structure remained the same (Dolez and Laurent, 1996). 2002: new territorial fractures On election night of the first round during the 2002 presidential election, profound social and territorial reconstructions appeared. Even though the National Front vote, as in 1995, was higher among blue-collars than the national average (+13 percentage points), 18 it had not encroached

24

France’s 2002 Presidential Elections

on the middle- and upper-ranking executive electorate (−8 percentage points). Yet, the Far Right vote had increased sharply among the unemployed (an 18-point rise in 2002 compared with the national average, to a 3- to 4-point rise in 1988 and 1995) and also, though less markedly, among farmers (a 3-percentage point rise in 2002 compared with −1 point in 1995 and −9 points in 1988). Beyond the sociological dimension, these election returns highlighted a major territorial fracture between areas voters viewed as ‘dynamic’, and those viewed as economically depressed areas. In the former situation, Lionel Jospin’s campaign themes on economic recovery, a lowering unemployment rate or, more broadly speaking, the Plural Left’s themes were heeded and materialised in the ballot-box. Some departments ringing Paris, Hauts-de-Seine or Yvelines, but also the Rhône ‘department’ are apt illustrations of such a phenomenon. In Paris, the Plural Left improved its showing by 5 per cent compared with 1995 while the rise of the Far Left and of the Far Right were contained (respectively 2.0 and 0.9). On the contrary, such campaign themes went unheeded in economically depressed areas as voters felt they were being left out of the economic recovery. Such an ‘exclusion’ process was to make itself felt in the polls through an overall weakening of the Left and through the rise of far Right and Left votes, as well as of abstention. This situation can be epitomised by the example of the Pas-de-Calais ‘department’, a Socialist stronghold still reeling from the trauma of pit closures, where the Plural Left lost more than eight points while the Far Left improved its score by seven points and the Far Right gained five points. Likewise, the Plural Left’s campaign themes did not catch the country folks’ attention. Therefore, in Ardennes, Somme, Nièvre or in Brittany, the Left lost ground dramatically and such a drop went along with the rise of both far Right and far Left parties in each instance. This territorial fracture was also to be confirmed in the second round of balloting of the presidential election since, from one Sunday to the next, Jean-Marie Le Pen’s showing was broadly speaking stable compared with the overall Le Pen + Mégret vote in the first round in most so-called ‘dynamic’ areas while it often increased in economically-depressed areas or in areas geographically remote from urbanised regions. One month later, the general election was to bear out this territorial fracture. From such a perspective, Paris is indeed emblematic since the Left gained three constituencies. On the contrary, in economically depressed areas, the Left collapsed in terms of votes and far Right and far Left parties gained a firm foothold. But those elections to France’s National Assembly also highlighted further territorial fractures between big city-centers and their surrounding suburbs. Generally speaking and

Annie Laurent

25

in a somewhat caricatural manner, the further from the downtown area one resides, the less the Left resisted. Such a phenomenon can partly be accounted for by the sociological reconstructions that have affected France as a whole. Over the past few years, a sizable part of the middleand upper-middle class have moved back to the city-centers after making it to the city-outskirts in a flight-from-the-city move whereas low-ranking white collars and blue-collars have found themselves left out in the city-outskirts and in the country, this being due to the price of housing and higher taxes levied in city-centers. The Socialist Party’s change in grassroots appeal, which has less focused on less privileged classes since the 1990s, 19 can partly explain why the Left kept a firmer grip in citycenters than in suburbs. Likewise, the Right gained a firm foothold in rural and blue-collar, sometimes populist France. One must bear in mind that the far Right’s showing in the presidential election was especially good in rural areas (21 per cent in rural constituencies). In the general election, a return to a more pragmatic, ‘utile’ vote enabled the moderate Right to reclaim some of the votes that had been cast for the far Right in the presidential election. At the end of the general election, the gap between Right and Left in terms of seats was overwhelming (399 for the Right, 178 for the Left) while the National Front did not get a single seat. The distortion between the number of seats and votes again raises the question of the choice of the ‘right’ type of election system. In August 2002, two months after the legislative elections, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, the Prime Minister, tackled the subject, announcing that electoral reforms were in the works for threes types of elections – legislative, regional, and cantonal. In the end, after numerous debates and violent controversies, the method of balloting for the legislative elections remained unchanged. In contrast, from 2004, regional elections would unfold according to a mixed two ballot system (majoritarian with a bit of proportionality), that will take place at the regional level instead of the departmental one. The European elections would remain proportional, but would be organized at the level of eight big regions, rather than the national level. These modifications will limit considerably the effects of proportionality. This was a goal of some, because the last presidential elections showed that the major parties were in a minority position nationwide (Table 1.6). Nevertheless, while these reforms will contribute to the modification of the party system since they will reinforce the two great political forces – the PS and the UMP – they will not manage to exclude the National Front from the national political landscape.

26

France’s 2002 Presidential Elections

Table 1.6

Results of the presidential election (the whole of France) First ballot

Inscrits Votants Exprimés Abstentions (inscrits – votants): Blancs et nuls (votants – exprimés): M. Chirac Jacques M. Le Pen Jean-Marie M. Jospin Lionel M. Bayrou François Mme Laguiller Arlette M. Chevénement Jean-Pierre M. Mamere Noël M. Besancenot Olivier M. Saint-Josse Jean M. Madelin Alain M. Hue Robert M. Megret Bruno Mme Taubira Christine Mme Lepage Corinne Mme Boutin Christine M. Gluckstein Daniel

%

41 194 689 29 495 733 28 498 471

%

41 191 149 32 832 295 31 062 988

11 698 956

28.40

997 262 665 855 804 713 610 113 949 170 630 045

19.88 16.86 16.18 6.84 5.72

1 518 528 1 495 724 1 210 562 1 204 689 1 113 484 960 480 667 026 660 447 535 837 339 112 132 686

5.33 5.25 4.25 4.23 3.91 3.37 2.34 2.32 1.88 1.19 0.47

5 4 4 1 1

Second ballot

8 358 854

20.29

1 769 307 25 537 956 5 525 032

82.21 17.79

Notes 1. Please refer to the ‘Chroniques électorales’ collection published by Presses de Science-Po, Paris, or to ‘Revue française de Science politique’ for an example. 2. By comparison, nine candidates had run for the 1995 presidential election, six of whom had made it beyond the 5 per cent mark. 3. Insofar as part of his votes come from the Republican Right. In a phone public opinion poll conducted by IPSOS on 21 April 2002 with 3949 respondents, with the quota method, 7 per cent of voters who had cast their vote for Edouard Balladur and 4 per cent of those who may have voted for Jacques Chirac in 1995 were reported to have voted for Jean-Pierre Chevènement. 4. The 1994 and 1999 elections to the European Parliament, but also 2001 municipal elections. 5. In January and February 2002, J.-P. Chevènement still garnered more than 10 per cent of vote intentions according to pre-election public opinion polls. 6. To quote him verbatim. 7. Metropolitan France comprises 96 departments. 8. Back in 1995, Arlette Laguillier was the far Left’s sole candidate. In 2002, three contestants were vying for votes: Arlette Laguillier pour LO, Olivier Besancenot pour LCR and Daniel Gluckstein pour PT.

Annie Laurent

27

9. It is still surprising to note how stable the structure remained compared with the 1981 presidential election in which Arlette Laguillier garnered 2.3 per cent of recorded votes only (a 0.64 coefficient). 10. At least 20 M. P.s are necessary to set up a group in France’s National Assembly. 11. Cantal, South Corsica, Upper Corsica, Creuse, Mayenne, Manche, Vendée, Lozère and so on. 12. ‘Territoire de Belfort’, Haute-Saône, Lot, Lot-et-Garonne, Tarn-et-Garonne, Charente, Doubs, Landes, Ariège and Nièvre. 13. Aude, Haute-Saône, Ardennes, Ardennes, Ariège, Saône-et-Loire, Gard and so on. 14. In 2002, the 6.4 standard deviation is identical, whether Jean-Pierre Chevènement’s Republican Pole be taken into account or not. 15. The core of this chapter is taken from an article published in 1996 at the RIPC (Dolez and Laurent, 1996). 16. Measured with odds ratios which, over the 1995–1965, were lower than 0.8. 17. The 1995–1965 odds ratios were superior to 1.25. 18. Data taken from the IPSOS public opinion poll (references quoted). 19. 15 per cent of blue-collars and employees are reported to have voted for Lionel Jospin, compared with 22 per cent back in 1995, which means 1 point lower than his score nationwide. Conversely, upper-ranking executives and the professionals may have voted for the Socialist contender more than the national average (+2 points), like in 1995.

References Boy, D. «Les petits partis: niveau, structure et sens» in Les petits partis. De la petitesse en politique, A. Laurent and B. Villalba (eds) (Paris, Edition L’Harmattan, 1997). Delbos, G. “De l’isolement comme déterminant du “Non” à Maastricht, l’exemple de l’Aveyron”, RFSP, 1 (1994) 3–22. Dolez, B. and Laurent, A. «1965–1995. Trente ans d’élections présidentielles françaises: les dynamiques territoriales», RIPC, 3 (1996) 647–668. Dolez, B. and Laurent, A. «La nationalisation des comportements électoraux» in Dictionnaire du vote, P. Perrineau and D. Reynié (eds) (Paris, PUF, 2001). Goguel, F. “Géographie des élections du 21 octobre 1945”, Esprit, 11 (1945) 935–956; “Géographie du référendum et des élections de mai-juin 1946”, Esprit, 14 (1946) 27–54; “Géographie du référendum du 13 octobre et des élections du 10 novembre 1946”, Esprit, 16 (1947) 237–264; “Géographie des élections du 17 juin 1951”, Esprit, 19 (1951) 343–364; Modernisation économique et comportement politique (Paris, A. Colin, 1969); Géographie des élections françaises de 1870 à 1951 (Paris, A. Colin, 1961); L’élection présidentielle française de décembre 1965, RFSP, 2 (1966) 221–254. Lancelot, A. «Les élections des 23 et 30 Juin 1968» Projet, 28 (1965) 935–952; «Les résultats de l’élection présidentielle» Projet, 2 (1966) 159–178; «Comment ont voté les français le 27 Avril et les 1er et 15 Juin 1969», Projet, 38 (1969) 926–947; «La relève et le sursis» Projet, 88 (1974) 940–958; «Une métaphore économique en sociologie politique. L’analyse de l’offre électorale» Revue européenne des sciences sociales, 23 (1985) 55–75.

28

France’s 2002 Presidential Elections

Platone, F. and Ranger, J. «L’échec électoral du Parti communiste» in 1981: Les élections de l’alternance, A. Lancelot (ed.) (Paris, Presses de la Fondation nationale des Sciences politiques? 1986). Salmon, F. Atlas électoral de la France. 1848–2001 (Paris, Seuil, 2001). Siegfried, A. Tableau Politique de la France de l’Ouest sous la Troisième République. (Paris: Armand Colin, 1913).

Annie Laurent

29

>21% 18%–21% 15%–18% 12%–15% 23% 21%–23% 18%–21% 15%–18% 21% 18%–21% 15%–18% 12%–15% 30% 26%–28% 24%–26% 2.00 (p < 0.05) Total effects

Vote

L–R ideo.

Party id.

L–R ideo. Party id.

0.57 0.85

– 0.74

0.59 –

Figure 3.2(a) Path model (closed party id.) – endogenous variables.

variables traditionally held up as les variables lourdes in French voting behaviour, namely class and religion. The total effects in the tables demonstrate that the majority of their effect manifests itself indirectly via Left–Right ideology and party identification, however. Interestingly, church attendance exercises slightly greater effect on ideology than on party identification, though in both cases it exceeds the class effect. Both protest and retrospective economic assessment manifest almost no effect whatsoever, and are certainly not significant. On the other hand, Maastricht vote (in the closed model) and opinion of the 1988–1993 Socialist government manifest strong effects and in the expected direction – those who voted No to Maastricht (according to some commentators, as much a referendum on the Socialist President François Mitterrand as on Europe) were more likely to have voted for the Right in 1993; those who felt that the Socialists government was a positive thing came more from the Left than from the Right. A potentially important problem in these findings concerns the nonrecursive nature of the endogeneity between previous vote and political

Jocelyn A.J. Evans

63

Party id. 0.57*

1.66

0.29

Vote (1993)

0.20*

Ideology *Critical ratio > 2.00 (p < 0.05) Total effects

Vote

L–R ideo.

Party id.

L–R ideo. Party id.

0.70 1.73

– 3.19

0.55 –

Figure 3.2(b) Path model (open party id.) – endogenous variables.

opinion variables. For, as surely as class and church attendance are causally related to these variables, so there is certainly reciprocal causation between them and party identification and ideology. Current ideology and party identification will have been affected by views of the Socialist government and reaction to the Maastricht issue; but equally positions on these will have been forged precisely by party identification and ideology. The problems of temporal precedence and the usefulness of lagged endogenous variables appear once again; and the logistic problems of numerous endogenous variables are increased by the introduction of reciprocal causation. Whilst we cannot hope to solve these issues given current data and techniques, we can sort out the direct effects of les variables lourdes and other traditional predictors of vote in France and their relationship to party identification and ideology using the bloc recursive model (Tables 3.4(a) and (b)). The first thing to notice of course is that in Model I, containing just social background variables, the class and church attendance effects are

64

Ideology and Party Identification

Church attendance

Economy

–0.05

0.00 –0.14*

Maastricht vote

Vote (1993) 0.06 Class

–0.04 0.27* Protest

Opinion of socialist govt.

*Critical ratio > 2.00 (p < 0.05) Total effects

Vote

L–R ideo.

Party id.

Church att. Class Opinion of Soc. Govt. Maastricht vote

−0.24 0.22 1.21 −0.27

−0.30 0.19 1.28 −0.30

−0.25 0.22 1.30 −0.25

Figure 3.3(a) Path model (closed party id.) – direct effects of exogenous variables on vote.

still strongly significant despite the inclusion of parents’ ideology, and conform to directional expectations. Only patrimoine and gender consistently fail to reach significance (age’s non-significance in the open model is probably due to sample size). The only notable change between the closed and open party identification models is the stronger effect of church attendance in the latter model, an effect also seen in the path model. Amongst strong party identifiers, then, church attendance divides much more clearly between Left- and Right-wing voters than it does amongst those defined by a lower threshold of identification. The same cannot be said of class, however, whose effect remains stable. Amongst a more general electorate, then, class is as effective a determinant as church attendance – but amongst clear identifiers, church attendance is still the better predictor of vote.17

Jocelyn A.J. Evans

Church attendance

65

Economy

–0.06

–0.04 –0.07

Maastricht vote

Vote (1993) 0.04 Class

–0.01 0.16* Protest

Opinion of socialist govt

*Critical ratio > 2.00 (p < 0.05) Total effects

Vote

L–R ideo.

Party id.

Church att. Class Opinion of Soc. Govt. Maastricht vote

−0.33 0.25 1.30 −0.16

−0.41 0.25 1.46 −0.07

−31 0.28 1.48 −0.13

Figure 3.3(b) Path model (open party id.) – direct effects of exogenous variables on vote.

In Model II, the inclusion of Socialist government opinion and Maastricht vote do significantly reduce the parameter estimates for class and church attendance, but do not eliminate their effects completely. Notably, the effect of the economy is significant though the parameter estimates vary, indicating a tendency amongst those who believe the economy has got worse to have voted for the Left. The interpretation of the parameter is made difficult by its ‘false’ retrospective nature, mentioned earlier. However, the relative strength of the effects does emphasise that amongst those with stronger party identification in the open model, economic considerations play a much greater independent role in vote choice. In this case at least, identification seems not to indicate blind obedience to the party with which one identifies but rather a greater awareness of broader political influences such as the economy. Conversely, however, Maastricht vote in 1992 manifests larger significant parameter estimates in the closed model, and in all three nested

66

Ideology and Party Identification

Table 3.4(a)

Bloc recursive model of closed party identification (OLS estimates) Model I

Constant Age Gender Education Church attendance Patrimoine Parents’ ideology Class Public sector

Model II

3.74***

2.45***

0.96***

1.43***

−0.08** 0.11 −0.12*** −0.29*** 0.04 0.77*** 0.23** −0.18*

−0.03 −0.07 −0.05 −0.19*** 0.02 0.52*** 0.17* 0.08