The 10 lessons of the regional elections in France

21 June 20213 years ago babelfish

The italics of Pietro Romano on the first round of the regional elections in France

Are we heading towards a democracy without voters? The question is more than legitimate in light of the record absenteeism recorded in France in the first round of the regional elections on Sunday 20 June.

66% of those eligible did not go to the polls. And this is the most striking fact of the session rather than the retreat of Marine Le Pen's party, the Rassemblement National (RN), as emerges today from the one-way analyzes of the "collective journalist".

This round, however, allows many observations, useful not only in the transalpine case. Let's limit ourselves to ten.

Record absenteeism is undoubtedly a more than relevant aspect of election Sunday. A fact that poses a problem of democratic legitimacy to the elected officials and risks exacerbating the dangerous dichotomy between "real country" and "legal country" which in the past has done very little damage in France. How, then, to beat the feeling of uselessness of the vote? For now the only proposal received is technical: to allow digital voting …
The record abstention and above all the performance of RN – not even perceived on the eve of the vote – sound like two sensational slaps in the face to the pollsters. Such a deep fracture had not been registered up to now even in Italy (where polls flops have not been lacking over the years) and must now be posed as a real problem for democracy. No one will ever be able to calculate how much such false polls could have affected the real result.
Administrative continuity emerges more than voting for individual parties. The outgoing representatives, both representatives of the institutional right (the former Gaullists of Les Républicans ) and of the social-communist agreement (the five outgoing socialist presidents from the first round were supported by the communist allies), were generally rewarded by the polls. About their recognized good governance? Or, rather, of a well-managed clientelism that pulled the “camel troops” of voters grateful to administrators and godparents to vote? Nobody can say for sure.
Moving on to the performance of the parties, the result in percentage terms undoubtedly rewards LR. In part, the vote has gratified the administrative continuity (and until proven otherwise the competence) of relevant personalities such as Valérie Pecresse in the Paris region, Xavier Bertrand, Laurent Wauquiex. But the right-wing turn of the party also had an impact which, after losing its centrist and notable wing to La République En Marche (LREM, the party of President Emmanuel Macron), in many fields is unrecognizable by RN. It is no coincidence that, despite the administrative capital available, LR has in turn "nationalized" the vote. Just like the lepenists did.
Surely the first round of the regional elections has sanctioned the electoral marginalization of LREM. By demonstrating that truly plastic parties dissolve easily not only in Italy (as happened to the Scelta Civica by Mario Monti, who had a rather limited political staff) but also in a country like France where LREM was supported by a conspicuous part of the ruling class, at all levels.
To the magmatic French left, the administrative vote has provided a new breath of fresh air, after that of the municipal elections of 2020. Not only that. Sunday 20 June marks the apparent awakening of the Parti Socialist , once again the first party of the left thanks to its “safe used”. In the Nouvelle Aquitaine , its exponent Alain Rousset is preparing to become regional president for the fifth consecutive time. How much do the clienteles affect and how much the political orientation on these results will need to be verified when, and if, not only those directly concerned will go to the vote. In a democracy, however, those who desert the polls do not decide anything and the accounts are made with valid votes.
Perhaps it is too early to say, but fatigue for the EELV écolos already seems to emerge, the novelty of last year's municipal elections, also thanks to a strong absenteeism. More likely, the vote for the écolos is above all a metropolitan phenomenon, limited to the main cities. When the election expands to rural areas, the incidence of EELVs, even if only on the left, is significantly diluted.
Although the administrative vote tends to fragment the electorate from the polls, a drying up of the national political landscape is rather evident. The bar of 10% of the valid votes to be admitted autonomously to the second round has not been exceeded by any local list, at least in Metropolitan France. Not only. The suffrages of the smaller national parties (right, center, left), from Debout la France to La France Insoumise and Lutte Ouvriere have been further reduced
Once again the result of the administrative vote disappoints Marine Le Pen. On the one hand, there is the impact on the party of her leader: when she is a candidate she also leads RN, vice versa it is almost everywhere impossible even to compare the voting intentions for her and the party's results. Maybe Marine Le Pen work more for her image than for the party. Furthermore, an unavoidable problem of the ruling class persists in RN, which threatens to jeopardize its role in French politics.
Beyond what will emerge from the polls on Sunday 27 June, which could partly modify the result of seven days earlier (from which the previous observations arose), it is clear that this round, about a year after the presidential vote, is destined to have consequences, at least on the preparation for the race for the Elysée. But be careful not to overestimate the result of June 20. Today it seems that the announced duel between Macron and Le Pen (the encore of 2017) is difficult to replicate. But underestimating their personalities and, above all, the hold they have on the French people, in the opinion of the writer far superior to that exercised by their own parties, could be a serious mistake.

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/elezioni-regionali-francia-dieci-cose-da-sapere/ on Mon, 21 Jun 2021 13:30:15 +0000.