That a 57.84% of the votes in the first round of the French presidential elections have gone to radical options, from the extreme right or extreme left, illustrates the electrifying state of opinion in a country that is always subject to social upheaval. And this is the tone that will set the second round, in which both Emmanuel Macron – probably the only leader left to Europe, together with the non-political Mario Draghi – as Marine LePen they will concentrate as much vote of adhesion as opposed to the other candidate. France today is a social laboratory that deserves detailed attention, especially for Spain –and very particularly, Catalonia– that have traditionally been under its socio-cultural influence.
The sum ofe Le Pen, Zemmour and Dupont-Aignan –which represent the options that are further to the right of the conventional right– have meant the 32.28% of the first round ballots. and those of Mélenchon, Roussel, Potou and Arthaud –who embrace the radical left, communism and derivatives– have been 25.56%, which, adding that of the Greens, with a marked leftist tone, and the ridiculous contribution of the Socialist Party in this meeting would reach 31.94%.
But, despite these high percentages at both extremes, only 9% of French people are ideologically “very to the right”, according to a July 2021 survey by IFOP -one of the main French opinion institutes-, while 4% are “very far to the left” (22% are located on the right and 19% on the left). Namely, the French vote for options markedly more radical than their own positions.
What is significant about the IFOP study is that 46% of those consulted are located in the center-right or the center-left; in 2014 the sum of these two fragments housed only 29%. In the last seven years, the moderate positions have increased almost 60%, while the extreme right and extreme left parties have jumped from 47.31% obtained in the previous presidential elections of 2017 to 57.84% of the current ones.
This dysfunction between ideology and voting option reveals the accentuated divorce between the political class and society. It is nothing new or exclusive only to France, since it is a widespread practice in most of Europe. But probably in no other place than in the hexagon do the voters behave with a radicalism so accentuated at the time of casting the vote, even if this means betraying his moderate convictions.
The rise of far-right and left-wing populism in France is the reflection of the tiredness of the population with respect to their politicians. What they have already had has not worked for them and now they only have to throw themselves into the arms of those who have never been at the top, no matter how well known they may be, such as the inconsistency of the demagogic approaches of Le Pen, Mélenchon or Zammour. It was already reflected in this way, in the municipal elections of June 2020, in which the environmentalists were the winners and the most voted force in most of the main cities. This Sunday, on the other hand, they did not reach 5%… The known no longer worksalthough they have not had even half an opportunity to show their hypothetical worth.
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This divorce exposes the boredom of a middle class economically punished and frightened by insecurity. And it is the result of a host of errors that the rulers and the ruling classes have made over the last few decades. France is no longer the social bastion of old Europe, where the State covered the needs of all its citizens, guaranteed their protection and favored their projection. The per capita income of the French is today 6% lower than the average of developed countries and is 15% below that of Germany. Its public debt has reached 118% of GDP, double that of Germany and equal to that of Spain, which has always been a huge distance from its northern neighbors. And not everything is the fault of globalization. In France, deindustrialization has destroyed 2.5 million jobs so far this century and this sector only employs 10% of employees, but in Germany, where salaries are higher, it occupies 16%.
If we add to this the agitation of the ‘banlieus’ and the shock derived from an increasingly significant part of the population of immigrant origin of embrace cultural separatism and renouncing the values of civilization provided by their host land, the cocktail offers too many elements to turn on at any time. It is the ideal terrain for populism, which – unlike the United States that voted for Trump – no longer comes only from the hands of the least culturalized sectors of society, but also from the backbone of the system. What Michel Houellebecq predicted for 2022 in his fictional novel ‘Submission’, written seven years ago, was not just a fictional game.