Rachida Dati leads the polls? In her vast HQ on Boulevard Sébastopol, the dynamics of candidate LR in Paris, which is starting to make the Hôtel de Ville nervous, is rather lived with phlegmatism. The entourage of the mayor of the 7th arrondissement knows that good scores do not necessarily rhyme with victory in an election by indirect ballot. “But above all, we are not surprised by the dynamic that many have not seen coming. We've been in our hallway from the start, ”says Nelly Garnier, Rachida Dati's campaign manager. The hallway? The one on the right borrowed by the candidate, who hammers concrete proposals on safety and cleanliness.
At the origin of this strategy, a conviction: in the metropolises, contrary to an idea received and maintained by Laurent Wauquiez when he was president of LR, the vote is not necessarily acquired on the left or at LREM. This theory is developed in “Hello mom bobo, the urban electorate, from gentrification to disenchantment”, a long note published in July 2019 by the Foundation for political innovation (FondaPol) and written by a certain… Nelly Garnier.
Reclaiming the bohemian electorate
In this study, the strategist of Rachida Dati does not deny that the right was no longer in phase, in the 1990s, with urban transformations. Witness, for example, this promise in 1995 by the mayor (UDF) of the 3rd arrondissement Jacques Dominati to raze the Marché des Enfants-Rouges to make it a large car park! What, for the right, lose the electorate bobo in the metropolises. "This development was particularly noticeable in Paris," observes the note. But, explains Nelly Garnier, for a few years now, this electorate of young adults has also suffered from a “feeling of downgrading compared to previous generations. "
While the share of families with children - a theme at the heart of the Rachida Dati campaign - increased from 22% in 1999 to 25.4% in 2015, property prices have exploded at the same time. The share of Parisians who own their main residence was only 34% in 2015, 26.5 points lower than the national average. So it's no coincidence that Rachida Dati's housing proposals focus more on tenants than owners and that its flagship measure consists of a check for 1,200 euros per year for three years for all families who welcome a new child.
To this economic insecurity, which weakens the maintenance of families in Paris, is added, according to the note, "cultural insecurity". “For the metropolitan populations, of which we have seen that the main capital is cultural, school is the vector of the transmission of this capital. However, experience shows them that public schools, in certain districts, undermine this transmission rather than offering an educational system allowing children of managers and children of lower classes to grow up and succeed together ”, underlines Nelly Garnier.
Added to this is "physical" insecurity, while "19.2% of Parisians say they have been victims of at least one robbery without violence in the street, the metro or at their home in the last three years", that is to say 8.7 points higher than the regional rate.
"Need for security"
Faced with this "metropolitan malaise" and this "need for security", the right can "become audible again", underlines the note from FondaPol. This explains why Rachida Dati made safety and cleanliness (which feeds the feeling of insecurity) his priority. “Dati has flair. She feels that my analysis corresponds to reality. This is why she did not erase the right markers from her program as Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet had done, ”says Nelly Garnier.
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A speech on the right therefore but which would be softened by the singular CV of Rachida Dati, "self made woman" from working class neighborhoods. A journey that she recounts in her latest book, "The Confiscation of Power" (Plon). “The emancipation which it embodies sticks with Paris: even if it is associated with royal markers, she is not Brice Hortefeux in a skirt! "Concludes Nelly Garnier. Relevant analysis? Response on the evening of the second round.