Deputy CEO of Ipsos, Brice Teinturier analyzes the “Pécresse effect” in the Ile-de-France region in anticipation of the next regional elections.
And points to the weakness of La République en Marche in this election, as our poll illustrates.
Our survey on the future regional elections reveals a strong advantage for Valérie Pécresse in Ile-de-France: the match is already played?
BRICE DYER.
No !
But it accumulates strengths that place it in the position of great favorite.
First asset, its rate of notoriety.
87% of Ile-de-France residents know Valérie Pécresse far ahead of her competitors, even Audrey Pulvar or Jordan Bardella.
This was not the case in 2015, today she embodies the region.
And its other strengths?
Second asset, her popularity: she has a differential between good and bad opinions about her which is largely positive: 57% of Ile-de-France residents have a good opinion of her, 30% a bad one, ie a differential of +27. All the others candidates have a negative differential, for example - 8 for Audrey Pulvar (34% good opinions against 42% bad) or - 14 for Jordan Bardella.
Third asset, its record: not only 63% of Ile-de-France residents consider it excellent or good (98% for LR supporters!), But this figure climbs to 67% among voters on the LREM list.
This will complicate the task of their candidate Laurent Saint-Martin: how to criticize an action or call to vote for another list when 67% of your voters find that the outgoing record is good?
Even among the voters of the Greens and those of Bardella, this assessment is mostly considered positive, as with almost one in two voters on the list led by Pulvar.
This will not prevent these voters from voting for their respective camps?
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Of course, and a balance sheet does not make an election.
But Valérie Pécresse benefits from a fourth asset: the shattering of the left.
At the global level, it is already not very high - 34% if we add up the PS-EELV-LFI, 36% if we add the extreme left.
This is less than the total left in the 1st round of 2015, which was 41.4%.
Above all, there was then a dominant pole of rallying, with the socialist Claude Bartolone who had obtained 25.2% of the vote, far ahead of the green Emmanuelle Cosse (8%) and the communist Pierre Laurent (6.6%).
If these results are confirmed with a left divided into three equal blocks, leadership for a common list in the 2nd round will be hotly contested.
Positioning between two turns may be even more complicated for the candidate of the Republic in March, right?
Yes.
The low level of LREM is "the" big surprise.
Unlike the Europeans, this is an election with a strong local dimension.
And with, as in municipal, a bonus for graduates.
Bonus which plays in favor of Valérie Pécresse because people consider that she has worked well and that the Covid has allowed her to be active on the issue of masks, vaccination, etc.
Moreover, and this is very important, the voters of Saint-Martin have concerns very similar to those of the voters of Pécresse: delinquency, terrorism and immigration but also the health system (a little more among the LREMs) and the environment (a little more among the voters of Pécresse).
On the evening of the first round, when we approach the decisive round, how to justify maintaining an LREM list and the risk of winning a left that its own voters reject?
In case of triangular, 72% of voters in Saint-Martin indeed choose the Pécresse list, only 18% the left list.
To go to the polls, citizens need to feel that there is an issue but also that a candidate brings something that no other does.
This is LREM's problem with Pécresse.
This one will be able to invoke all the more easily the useful vote that there is a great proximity between its electorate and that of LREM and that its record is considered good.
How do you judge the level of lepenist Jordan Bardella, between 17% and 19%?
Ile-de-France is not Paris and the FN - now RN - scores well there: 18.4% in the 1st round in 2015 for Wallerand de Saint-Just in a national context, marked by terrorist attacks , and where the FN had obtained the historic score of 27.7% in France.
The RN has not disappeared from the regional and if Marine Le Pen remains strong at the national level, Bardella can perfectly reach 17% in the first round, or even more.
Methodology:
Ipsos / Sopra Steria survey, carried out for Le Parisien / Today in France and France Info among a sample of 1,000 people registered on the electoral rolls of Ile-de-France, constituting a representative sample of the inhabitants of 'Ile-de-France aged 18 and over, interviewed online from April 5 to 7, 2021.