Jérôme Sainte-Marie currently heads Pollingvox, a research and consulting company specializing in public opinion issues. He has notably published “Block against block, the dynamics of macronism” (Éd. Du Cerf, 2019).
FIGAROVOX.-An interactive Harris survey attributes a record voting intention to the president of the RN, 48% against 52% to the current president in the second round of the 2022 presidential election. Is the Macron-Le Pen match inevitable or another can candidate still pull out of the game?
Jerôme SAINTE-MARIE.-
All the polls of voting intentions carried out over the past two years indicate a second round between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen.
However, much has been said about a figure published last September by the FIFG, indicating that only 32% of French people wanted such a prospect.
On closer inspection, this percentage did not mean what anyone wanted him to say.
First of all, very logically, all sympathizers of political currents other than the RN or LREM would prefer another outcome.
That's already nearly half of the first-round voters.
Then, Marine Le Pen embodying everything that supporters of Emmanuel Macron hate, the majority of them do not want her to be present in the second round.
Finally, the main thing is that at the same time when 68% of the French said they did not want a Macron-Le Pen duel, their choice of the first round prevented the publication of another hypothesis.
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Could another figure win by the 2022 poll?
It is obviously impossible to refute this prospect, but it is clear that it is today highly improbable.
According to the Harris Interactive poll it would, depending on the hypotheses, be missing between seven and ten points for the right-wing candidate to arrive in second position in the first round, and thirteen points for Jean-Luc Mélenchon to achieve it.
These are considerable differences and have already been observed in much the same way in previous studies of voting intentions.
Since the middle of François Hollande's five-year term, the left-right divide has been in great danger.
All those whom the idea of a Macron - Le Pen duel indisposes can easily invoke the fifteen months which separate us from the deadline and the fact that the second rounds indicated so far from the presidential election by the studies of opinions have sometimes, not always, been denied.
It may therefore be that this announced offer does not materialize, due to the emergence of another candidate or the collapse in the opinion of Emmanuel Macron or Marine Le Pen, but today it appears the most probable and, frankly, the most logical.
Does this estimate mean the disappearance of the right-left cleavage?
Since the middle of François Hollande's five-year term, the left-right divide has been in great danger.
Let us remember that the two candidates for the second round of the presidential election in 2017 did not recognize themselves there, and neither did the three lists which came first during the Europeans of 2019. The return of rebellious France in the semantic universe of the left was then accompanied by an electoral rout, while the score of the LR list showed that exalting the identity of the right was not a guarantee of success.
It is different during the local elections, but we have to admit the prevalence of a new cleavage at the national level.
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If only one in four French people identify as on the right and one in five as on the left, this is primarily due to a massive phenomenon of electoral realignment from above and below in our society.
Around Emmanuel Macron a coherent bloc has been formed, what I call the elite bloc, made up in particular of business leaders, senior officials, senior executives and retirees.
Its vector is social ease.
In statistical trends, the higher his income, the higher his level of education, and the more we vote for LREM or Emmanuel Macron.
Conversely, Marine Le Pen triumphed among modest workers in the private sector, and more generally won in the popular or lower middle classes.
In the Harris Interactive poll, 38% of workers and workers would choose it in the first round.
It happens that among the workers alone we observe an absolute majority of intentions to vote in its favor despite the presence of a dozen competitors.
Class voting, at the top and bottom of society, has been the main factor in replacing the left-right divide.
If we think that even in its prime, for example during the legislative elections of 1978, the Communist Party won the vote of less than four out of ten workers, we can measure the hegemony acquired by the National Rally in the popular layers.
This class vote, at the top and bottom of society, was the main factor in replacing the left-right divide.
Can the current health crisis explain this minimal gap between the two finalists in the 2017 presidential election?
At this stage, the health crisis has not produced major political effects.
It should be noted that Emmanuel Macron is less unpopular today than a year ago.
The extraordinary social tension reigning in the country since the start of the five-year term gave way from last March to a form of astonishment.
This state of anxiety, of incomprehension but also of national solidarity seems to diminish in front of a form of impatience or even exasperation.
The main difficulty for Emmanuel Macron who, let us remember, is still to this day the best placed in the second round, should come from the economic tragedies which are before us.
The main risk, for Emmanuel Macron, would then be to see his credibility damaged, including in the upper middle layers.
For now, the small difference observed is mainly due to other things.
In your opinion, does this poll herald the end of the Republican front?
The terms "
republican front
" have always been questionable and seem increasingly inappropriate to the reality they attempt to describe, and perhaps even more to construct.
Already in 2017, the fact that Nicolas Dupont-Aignan called to vote Marine Le Pen in the second round and that Jean-Luc Mélenchon refused to do the same for Emmanuel Macron had revealed that this notion was in crisis.
It will certainly have lost a great deal of its effectiveness during a five-year term marked by unprecedented social confrontations and covered with endless controversies over respect for public freedoms.
Since the fall of 2018, it seems to me that if Marine Le Pen had very little chance of winning during the last presidential election, now this possibility exists.
It is therefore not easy to draw what could be a “
republican front
” in the event of a Macron - Le Pen second round.
It would seem that a third of François Fillon's voters, very sensitive to the themes of security and cultural identity, now choose Marine Le Pen in the second round.
This theme so often chanted risks being stricken with obsolescence for many voters.
Would the president of the RN now be able to win in 2022?
It has been quite a long time, since at least the fall of 2018, that it appears to me that if Marine Le Pen had very little chance of winning during the last presidential election, now this possibility exists.
Not only does the Head of State suffer from the inevitable attrition of power, but he also aroused by some of his words and his reforms an immense social detestation, whether this is justified or not.
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This is why, and without even mentioning the uncertain effects of the health crisis, the 2022 election will be atypical, because even if the second round duel opposed the two competitors of 2017, its conditions would be very different.
Emmanuel Macron like Marine Le Pen each has an important social base, with symmetrically opposed properties, consolidated over the years.
The Head of State enjoys a dominant position in all points but the vagaries of abstention, especially on the left side, and transfers of votes, more on the right side, creates, always keeping to the mind that we are still more than a year away from the poll, real uncertainty about the outcome of the presidential election.