As French election tilts right, voters still favor leftist issues

When the French are polled about what they value most, they overwhelmingly choose left-leaning issues like improving the social safety net and raising the minimum wage.  

But in the campaign ahead of Sunday’s presidential election, that’s not what voters are hearing. Instead, the election has been dominated by public debate on crime, security, and immigration – all hot-button issues on the right.  

“The French debate is pulling public opinion to the right,” says Bruno Cautrès, a political science researcher at Cevipof-Sciences Po. “But at the same time, many French people are feeling like France is no longer a fair and just country. They’re asking for more social protections and solutions to inequality.”      

Over the past two decades, French politics have steadily shifted rightward, even as its welfare state has remained among the most robust in Europe. And while President Emmanuel Macron, an avowed centrist, is favored to win a second term, his closest challenger is not a mainstream leftist – the once-mighty Socialist party barely registers – but Marine Le Pen, the far-right candidate he defeated in 2017 in a runoff election.  

Polls suggest a rematch, but with Ms. Le Pen trailing Mr. Macron by a closer margin than last time. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a veteran leftist who is often compared to U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, is polling third. Only two candidates go through to the second round on April 24.

Mr. Macron has himself shifted to the right during his presidency. That has left many left-leaning voters with a familiar dilemma: Vote with their head for President Macron or with their heart for a leftist candidate who can’t win – or simply stay home on election day. This dynamic has opened up a growing gap between French values and voting behavior, at least when it comes to socioeconomic priorities.  

“The French political class and the media have moved to the right but haven’t necessarily taken the French people with them,” says Pierre Bréchon, a professor emeritus of political science at Sciences Po Grenoble. “Left-wing values, like closing the gender pay gap and social equality, have remained stable. But values don’t necessarily translate at the ballot box.”  

Rise of the far-right       

For decades France’s working class supported left-wing parties that promoted full employment, and generous retirement and health-care benefits. But Ms. Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, outspoken and antisemitic, began to woo blue-collar voters alienated by mainstream politicians. In 2002, he made waves by coming second in a presidential election, and Ms. Le Pen has built momentum by rebranding his party while capitalizing on growing social tensions surrounding France’s Muslim minority.   

Indeed, the strength of far-right candidates is partly the result of the wave of terrorist attacks in France in 2015 and 2016 that shook the nation and pushed issues of identity and religion to the fore, wrong-footing Socialist politicians who were seen as too weak on tackling Islamic extremism. 

Mr. Macron served in a Socialist administration before breaking away to create his own party that he said could unite the left and right. But his presidency has often leaned rightward: He pushed conservative legislation on immigration, a controversial anti-separatist law, and changed labor laws and hiked gas prices, sparking the national yellow vest protests.  

This time, Ms. Le Pen has faced her own challenge from the right in the form of Eric Zemmour, a TV pundit whose nativist candidacy for president helped tip the election campaign toward issues like security, immigration, and the perceived threat of Islam. That debate has been catnip for French media – and for politicians, even if they might prefer to change the topic.

“The more French people seem to want to hear about a subject like insecurity, the more politicians give them what they want, and the more media outlets relay information on this theme,” says Arnaud Mercier, a professor of communications at the University of Paris II Assas. “It creates an atmosphere of people being genuinely worried about security.” 

There was speculation that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine might erode Ms. Le Pen’s chances at the polls, given her past support of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Instead, it appears that Mr. Zemmour is the one who’s been damaged by his past pro-Russian statements.

Social issues matter more

Still, those worries are secondary to social issues for many voters. A September 2021 Ipsos study found that 46% of respondents cared about the future of France’s welfare system and 41% cited the protection of the environment. By contrast, only 34% said they were worried about immigration, the bugbear of Mr. Zemmour, who claims that white Europeans are at risk of being replaced by nonwhites.  

So why don’t voting patterns reflect these priorities? One reason, suggests Mr Bréchon, is that values evolve more slowly than attitudes and behaviors, “which are reactionary and change very quickly following a stimulus” in the form of populist fearmongering. 

Another is the way that France chooses its president. Under its electoral system, a second round of voting is needed if no candidate wins a majority. This encourages tactical voting to keep out extremist candidates like Ms. Le Pen. But it may also lead to voters feeling less aligned with candidates on their values. 

It also fuels apathy: Turnout in Sunday’s election is predicted to fall below 70%, compared with 78% in the first round of voting in 2017. That would be the lowest turnout for a French presidential election since 2002 when only 72% of voters participated. A November study by the Fondation Jean Jaurès found that left-leaning voters were more likely to stay home than right-leaning voters.

For all the culture-war debates, France’s next president will likely spend more time tackling long-standing issues like public debt and economic productivity. And those issues have long confounded politicians on both the left and the right.  

“We get angry when the government doesn’t reform the country but shudder when they do,” Dominique Reynié, director of the Paris-based think tank Fondapol, told the Anglo-American Press Association last week. “The French now expect politicians to say, ‘We’re going to have to make some efforts, but it’s going to be painful.’”