Metropolitan voting and its divisions: the case of Montpellier
How can we interpret the map of the municipalities where Jean-Luc Mélenchon came out on top in the first round of the presidential election? The strong results of the Insoumis candidate, particularly in working-class neighborhoods— for example, 93% in Seine-Saint-Denis as well as in other regions —raise questions about how major cities reacted to the elections and illustrate a deep political divide that civic and political action can analyze.
Emmanuel Négrier, University of Montpellier; Jean-Paul Volle, University of Montpellier; Julien Audemard and Stéphane Coursière, University of Montpellier
As a result, a city like Montpellier has emerged as the leading metropolitan area in terms of support for Jean-Luc Mélenchon in France. The France Insoumise candidate received 40.7% of the votes cast there. By comparison, in the other major cities where he came in first, Jean-Luc Mélenchon received 31.1% in Marseille, 33.1% in Nantes, 35.5% in Strasbourg, 36.9% in Toulouse, and 40.5% in Lille—the only other major city where his vote share was close to that achieved in Montpellier.
The sociological identity of the city
One way to explain the vote for Mélenchon is through the sociological makeup of the city of Montpellier, which, according to INSEE, had a poverty rate of 27% in 2019—nearly double the national average—a figure that resonates with the social agenda championed by the candidate.
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This observation is further reinforced when examining the vote counts by polling station. While it is true that voters in working-class neighborhoods turned out in lower numbers than the average—with turnout sometimes differing by as much as 20 percentage points between the neighborhoods with the lowest turnout and the more affluent ones with the highest—their turnout exceeded expectations, with participation exceeding 50% in most cases.
In these neighborhoods, Jean-Luc Mélenchon dominates. For example, he won 77% of the vote in the iconic Petit Bard neighborhood, with a 63% turnout. This initial observation is reinforced by the equally unexpected sustained turnout among young voters during this election. Given Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s significant share of the vote among 18- to 34-year-olds, it follows logically that he is in a strong position in the young capital of the Hérault department.
Effective mediation
However, these factors are by no means unique to Montpellier and do little to explain the surge in support for him. On the one hand, neighborhoods covered by urban policy were the focus of intense mobilization efforts during this campaign. The connection between a lived experience and a political platform is by no means automatic. To translate into motivation, a whole process of mediation—particularly at the local level—must be developed, and this effort has borne fruit here.
Furthermore, it is worth noting that Mélenchon’s campaign, in addition to its grassroots efforts in neighborhoods, drew on considerable resources: the rally at the Arena in Montpellier on February 13, 2022 (with approximately 8,000 attendees) was complemented by a significant physical and symbolic presence in public spaces.
This overwhelming presence has legitimized, perhaps more clearly in Montpellier than elsewhere, the strategy of the “tactical vote” for a left-wing electorate that is far more diverse than the label and platform of La France Insoumise would suggest. With 40.7% of the vote on April 10, 2022, it nearly matched the total number of left-wing votes cast in the 2017 presidential election. While the mayor, Michael Delafosse, had thrown his support behind Anne Hidalgo, she garnered only 2.3% of the vote—a result that, while better than her national average, was nonetheless disastrous.
A different reality in the Hérault
But the map reveals a different reality, beyond the city limits of Montpellier. Still in the Hérault department, Jean-Luc Mélenchon also came out on top in three nearby towns: Grabels, where Mayor René Revol is a longtime ally of the candidate and where Mélenchon garnered nearly 30%; Juvignac, a town that has long been a stronghold of the national vote, where a new population of young renters has recently settled; and Murviel-lès-Montpellier, a more outlying town governed by a left-wing environmentalist administration and marked by significant struggles in this regard both in the past and more recently.
From a sociological perspective, we do not fall within LFI’s core target demographic of young, working-class urban residents.
Three factors contribute to the overall Mélenchon phenomenon: the widespread adoption of tactical voting by the left in his favor; the existence of objective conditions that make his path to victory clearer than elsewhere; and the mobilization of grassroots activists.
These factors also explain why support for Mélenchon appears fairly consistent across social classes. This is the key difference from support for Le Pen. His penetration into the upper classes—evident in his success in certain affluent neighborhoods of Montpellier—goes hand in hand with a strong impact in working-class neighborhoods and even in towns far from the capital, as seen on the map to the north. Three regions, three sociological profiles that explain the electoral feat of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s LFI.
A clear electoral map
Three regions, this time for three candidates—that’s also what the map of the leading candidates in the municipalities of the Montpellier metropolitan area reveals. Alongside the votes for Mélenchon, the votes for Macron and Le Pen paint an electoral picture that is crystal clear, to say the least.
The President of the Republic thus leads in nearly all the municipalities in the immediate outskirts of Montpellier and further north. Marine Le Pen’s strongholds are primarily located south and east of the city, within the municipalities along the Mediterranean coast. These municipalities are predominantly home to an older electorate of small property owners, where support for the right—and particularly for the National Rally—is deeply entrenched. The correlation between Marine Le Pen’s results in the first round of the 2017 and 2022 presidential elections across the municipalities of the Montpellier metropolitan area—which is very high (R=0.90)—reveals the remarkable stability of the far-right candidate’s strongholds.
In contrast, in the municipalities of the inner suburbs, a well-off, homeowner electorate that has lived there for a long time coexists with a younger electorate living in recently built apartment complexes constructed to accommodate the city’s population growth.
A divide within these municipalities
The profile of these electorates closely matches what we know about the sociology of the Macron vote. An analysis of the map also reveals an internal divide within these municipalities. While the towns located north of Montpellier, in its immediate outskirts, place Jean-Luc Mélenchon in second place, Marine Le Pen overtakes him as one moves further away from the regional capital.
These areas are home to many first-time homebuyers who can no longer afford to live in the capital or its inner suburbs.
Behind this divide, we can also see the influence of local political dynamics. Emmanuel Macron is performing strongly in municipalities that have long been governed by the right, such as Castelnau-le-Lez—a town where the former mayor, LR Senator Jean-Pierre Grand, has come out in support of him.
La Grande-Motte, a town where Mayor Stéphan Rossignol is also president of the Hérault LR federation and a supporter of Valérie Pécresse, is the only town along the Montpellier coast where the incumbent president is ahead of Marine Le Pen. Like Jean-Luc Mélenchon on the left, Emmanuel Macron is undoubtedly benefiting from “strategic” voting on the right: the correlation between his results and those of François Fillon in the first round of the last presidential election seems to confirm this idea (R=0.55).
Although his support remains low in Montpellier, Emmanuel Macron is nevertheless capitalizing on the realignment of the right-wing vote to gain ground among voters in Montpellier’s affluent suburbs. Of the three leading candidates, he is the one whose support is increasing in the greatest number of towns across the Montpellier metropolitan area.
Our dual social and political perspective thus allows us to refute two widely accepted assumptions about urban voting: that left-wing and right-wing populism cancel each other out among the same electorate; and that voting in the suburbs is geographically homogeneous.
The reason the Mélenchon vote does not come from the same strongholds as the Le Pen vote is that they are sociologically and politically distinct.
Another lesson—one that holds true in Montpellier as well as in other major cities—is the vast disconnect between national and local politics, the latter being largely governed by parties in disarray.
Emmanuel Négrier, CNRS Research Director in Political Science at CEPEL, University of Montpellier, University of Montpellier; Jean-Paul Volle, Professor Emeritus, University of Montpellier; Julien Audemard, Associate Research Scientist, and Stéphane Coursière, Research Engineer and Cartographer, CEPEL, University of Montpellier
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