The National Rally Through Its Voter Base

[The Conversation] - Published on June 9, 2021 in Science and Society

Thierry Mariani in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur (PACA) region, Sébastien Chenu in Hauts-de-France: the two lead candidates for the National Rally (RN) party are neck and neck with Les Républicains (LR) candidates Renaud Muselier and Xavier Bertand, ahead of La République en Marche (LREM) and left-wing slates that are struggling to win over voters, according to polls examining voting intentions in these two key regions of France.

Arnaud Huc, University of Montpellier

Beyond its platform, elected officials, and controversies, the National Rally is also defined by its voters. However, if we look beyond the apparent monolithic nature of the RN’s electorate as revealed by the polls, we can see that several distinct voter groups coexist within it.

In the 2017 presidential election, two main voter groups shared their National Rally (RN) votes with more specific constituencies: voters with royalist sympathies, practicing Catholics, voters employed in law enforcement, etc.

The two (main) groups within the National Rally discussed here account for a significant portion of the RN vote and represent geographically and ideologically distinct “ideal types.” They nevertheless share several common traits: they tend to live in suburban areas, work primarily in the private sector, and generally have an educational level below a bachelor’s degree.

Rather than illustrating these two voter bases using maps, we chose to illustrate them through statistics and in an indirect way—that is, through the sociological characteristics of the populations in the municipalities where support for the RN is strong.

Two polling stations for the National Rally

The municipalities where this vote is significant do indeed share certain sociological characteristics. The relationship between these variables and the RN’s election results can be measured using tools such as linear regression, principal component analysis, or multilevel analysis. Linear regression allows us to examine how the “RN vote” variable changes as other variables—such as the proportion of certain socioeconomic groups in the municipality—change.

However, care must be taken not to draw hasty conclusions linking certain characteristics of these municipalities to the National Rally vote. Indeed, unlike polls or door-to-door surveys, the tools used do not focus on individuals taken one by one but on statistical aggregates. Thus, the relationships measured do not necessarily indicate causality, and certain variables sometimes mask others.

To illustrate this electoral duality of the RN, we chose to examine it in the context of the last two “national” elections (the 2017 presidential election and the 2019 European elections) and in two regions that have historically been “strongholds” of the RN vote: the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region, where support for the FN took root as early as the 1980s, and the Hauts-de-France region, where it began to grow in the 1990s.

In these two regions, there is a very strong correlation (0.945) between the RN vote in the 2017 presidential election and the 2019 European Parliament election. This means that the municipalities where support for the RN was particularly high in 2017 are also those where support for the RN was high in 2019 (the calculations are weighted by municipal population to ensure that small municipalities are not overrepresented).

These two regions are similar from an electoral standpoint: the RN came out on top there in the first round of 2017. Marine Le Pen came in first with 27.17% of the votes cast in PACA and as high as 31.07% (her best result) in Hauts-de-France. Obviously, these are not the only regions where the RN vote is significant, and the purpose of this study is not to describe the RN vote in all its complexity and in its entirety.

However, in these two regions, the RN’s strong showing is not limited to municipalities with the same sociological characteristics. Support for the RN is particularly strong in municipalities with a high percentage of blue-collar workers in Hauts-de-France, whereas it is weaker in those with a large number of artisans, shopkeepers, and business owners. The relationship is somewhat the opposite in PACA (Graph 1, right).

Similarly, municipalities in the Hauts-de-France region where support for the RN is strong have a higher proportion of residents with a CAP or BEP than in the PACA region, where the overall level of educational attainment is higher (Figure 1, left). These differences reflect distinct regional sociological realities but also, indirectly, distinct electorates, as highlighted by the interviews conducted as part of my dissertation research in each of these field sites.

Municipalities with high support for the RN are not only distinct sociologically, but also “economically.” Support for the RN is concentrated in municipalities where the proportion of taxable households tends to be higher than the national average in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region, whereas in the Hauts-de-France region, it is primarily poorer municipalities that tend to vote for the RN rather than wealthier ones.

However, this should not be interpreted as a direct contrast between the RN vote among the “rich” in the south and the RN vote among the “poor” in the north (Figure 2). In fact, the RN vote in the south comes primarily from the “middle classes,” and each of these regions is home to a variety of socioeconomic profiles.

There is, however, a clear socioeconomic difference between these voter bases. RN voters in PACA are more closely aligned with a typical profile of artisans, small business owners, and self-employed individuals with an average level of wealth, whereas in Hauts-de-France, the typical profile of an RN voter is closer to that of a blue-collar worker or employee from the working class. Furthermore, municipalities in Hauts-de-France with a wealth level comparable to those with high RN vote shares in PACA tend to be relatively unfavorable toward the RN.

The Duality of the RN

This socioeconomic difference is also reflected in the discourse of RN voters. When interviewed, RN voters in Hauts-de-France are more likely to raise issues of social inequality, poverty, and even wealth redistribution. These are topics more commonly discussed when speaking with voters from left-wing parties. Conversely, RN voters in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region are more likely to talk about immigration, excessive taxation, and the over-reliance on public assistance among certain segments of the population.

This dichotomy is also reflected in the voting patterns of RN voters. Some RN voters in Pas-de-Calais view the RN as a “working-class” party, and some also vote for left-wing parties when the RN is not in the runoff, rather than for right-wing parties, which they continue to view as parties “for the rich.” Conversely, RN voters in the south more often have a voting history already aligned with the right and are comfortable with the issues and economic platforms of right-wing parties.

Therein lies the duality of the RN. This is nothing new, as some polls were already hinting at it as early as 2013, while the debate over “left-wing Le Penism” and “working-class Le Penism” has been ongoing since 1997.

This party is thus able to mobilize voters whose political, economic, and social concerns are different—or even opposed. Paradoxically, many RN voters in the Mediterranean departments rail against those on “welfare,” even as some of the very people they consider to be on “welfare” also vote for the RN in the northern departments, citing social arguments aimed at defending “ordinary people” or raising the minimum wage or even the RSA.

This ideological dichotomy is partly reflected in the elected officials of these regions and compounds a discursive divide between elected officials and activists. Indeed, local officials in the “south” are generally less focused on social issues than those in the “north,” who, in turn, focus less on issues related to immigration or taxes during local elections.

This divergence was one of the reasons behind Florian Philippot’s split from the party in 2017, when he advocated for the party to adopt a “neither left nor right” stance that included a relatively well-developed social agenda and a very clear opposition to the European Union.

On the other hand, the more “southern” line championed by Gilbert Collard and Marion Maréchal Le Pen was aimed more at uniting the right and promoting ideas that resonated with traditional right-wing voters.

Since then, Marion Maréchal (Le Pen) has also stepped back. Divisive issues—such as the economic and social platform and relations with the European Union—have receded into the background. The two factions of the National Rally, however, remain.

Arnaud Huc, Research Associate, CEPEL, University of Montpellier

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Readthe original article.

Keywords: Politics, Research, Company