Reading our Ipsos / Sopra Steria poll for France Info and Le Parisien and Today in France leads to a question as simple as it is cruel for Les Républicains: does this party still have a future?
While the storm raised within LR by Renaud Muselier's alliance with the Marcheurs in the Paca region has not yet subsided, revealing the deep internal fractures in this political family, we wanted to know how the voters themselves situate the (main) parties from the center to the far right.
To read also "The very existence of the party is in question", analyzes the political scientist Brice Teinturier
Great lesson of our investigation: LR appears torn between the Republic on the move (LREM) of Emmanuel Macron and the National Rally (RN) of Marine Le Pen.
Before considering alliance strategies for regional elections, it is the question of the very usefulness of LR in the political system that arises in the eyes of the respondents.
Indeed, the majority of them (64%) believe that the old Gaullist party, in view of the ideas of its leaders, could just as easily rally LREM or the RN.
Even more embarrassing for LR, one in three sympathizers (34%) judge that his party could thus merge into his rival to his left or to his right!
In the meantime, while the LR staff returns the question after the first round, both Republican and Macronist sympathizers say they are in favor of LR-LREM alliances (58% and 86% respectively) in the second round of the regional ones.
The political recomposition started in 2017 is still at work ...
"It is a difficult period for the Republicans, admits the deputy of Lot Aurélien Pradié, secretary general of LR.
We undergo the cynical assaults of LREM and the RN, that would suit them so much that we disappear.
With us, there are cowards, but also resistance fighters who think that our party is not for sale to the cut and can again become a benchmark for the French.
"
But precisely what our poll underlines is that this weakening of the Republicans comes from the blurring of their image.
If a number of François Fillon voters in 2017 went to the Macron camp, isn't it because they found themselves in the reforms at the start of their mandate (SNCF, labor code, taxation, etc.)?
By now focusing on the regal - separatism law, security, etc.
-, the president and probable candidate "could still cut a little more the political space of LR", estimates the political scientist Brice Teinturier.
On these themes (insecurity, immigration), the Ipsos survey nevertheless confirms that it is indeed from the RN that the danger of phagocytosis comes for LR.
This does not however worry the number 3 of the Republicans: “The poll shows above all that the RN is unable to unite, since the desire for alliances to block it is the majority.
He omits to note that nearly one in two LR sympathizers (48%) would be in favor of an agreement with the RN to prevent a victory for the left in a region.
"The Republicans must stop eyeing their right or their left, and raise their heads to rally on their own ideas," challenges Aurélien Pradié.
Our poll shows that the French have yet to be convinced ...
Ipsos-Sopra Steria survey, conducted for Le Parisien-Today in France and France Info on a sample of 985 people constituting a representative sample of the population aged 18 and over, interviewed online on May 10 and 11, 2021 .