Presidential 2022: the Catholic vote moves to the far right

The vote of French Catholics is increasingly anchored to the far right, according to a poll carried out on Sunday April 10, 2022 by Ifop for

, in the first round of the presidential election.

In total, the candidates Marine Le Pen (RN), Éric Zemmour (Reconquest) and Nicolas Dupont-Aignan (Debout la France) thus total 40% of the Catholic vote.

At the same time, a Catholic vote on the left remains (21% of the total of left-wing candidates), with an astonishing breakthrough by candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon among regular churchgoers alone (19%).

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The “duty of citizenship” seems in any case to particularly concern Catholics: 78% of them went to vote on Sunday, including 86% among regular practitioners – against 75% for the national average.

From center to extreme right

If in general, the Catholic vote in France is rather anchored mainly on the right, no candidate manages to monopolize their vote alone.

The Ifop study thus shows that for the first round of the 2022 presidential election, their vote was largely expressed on an axis going from the center to the far right: 29% voted for Emmanuel Macron (27.84% on a national level) ;

27% for Marine Le Pen (23.15%);

and 10% for Éric Zemmour (7.07%).

The right-wing candidate Valérie Pécresse won 7% of the vote, a score also higher than her national average (4.78%).

On the other hand, Catholics as a whole are only 14% to have chosen Jean-Luc Mélenchon, against 21.95% at the national level.

A move to the far right

Compared to 2017, however, we see that the vote of Catholics is moving more towards the far right, to the detriment of the right-wing LR party.

Thus, for this first round of the 2022 presidential election, if we combine the scores of Marine Le Pen, Éric Zemmour and Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, the vote of Catholics reaches a total of 40% - against 32.4% for all French people.

In the first round of 2017, according to an Ifop survey carried out for the Catholic weekly

, Catholics had voted 22% for Marine Le Pen and 6% for Nicolas Dupont-Aignan: i.e. 28% of votes in total at the extreme right.

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They had been 28% to vote for the candidate LR François Fillon (against 7% for the candidate LR Valérie Pécresse in 2022).

And 22% to vote for Emmanuel Macron (against 29% in 2022).

In five years, the Macron vote has therefore gained 7 points among Catholics.

A stable Catholic vote on the left

Even if it remains a minority, the vote of “left-wing Catholics” is maintained in this first round of the 2022 presidential election. Among all Catholics, Jean-Luc Mélenchon thus achieves 14%.

If we add these ballots with those of the communist Fabien Roussel (2%), the socialist Anne Hidalgo (2%) and the ecologist Yannick Jadot (3%), we thus obtain a left-wing Catholic vote of 21%. .

Almost the same percentage as in 2017: all the left-wing candidates had attracted 20% of Catholics.

Among all Catholics, Jean-Luc Mélenchon had already obtained 14%, Benoît Hamon 4%, Nathalie Artaud 1%, Philippe Poutou 1%.

Among regular practitioners, the extremes attract more

Among regular practitioners, there is a real attraction for the extremes (right and left).

On the left, the vote of practicing Catholics is thus making a real breakthrough on the far left, where Jean-Luc Mélenchon collects... 19% of the vote (compared to 8% in 2017), a score almost equivalent to that of the population. overall (21.95%).

On the far right, there is also an “overvote” Zemmour (16%) and an “undervote” Le Pen (21%).

The ratio is reversed among non-practitioners (7% for the columnist and essayist and 29% for the RN candidate).

The Ifop study also confirms, as in 2017, a real prevalence of voting on the left among Muslims, with 69% for Jean-Luc Mélenchon (37% in 2017).

SEE ALSO

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