Shock in the face of horror. Fear of an act II on your doorstep. Then, key words, “insecurity”, “immigration”, “savagery”, distilled by a part of the political class in the media and on social networks. Thomas, Lola, Matisse, Philippe and two weeks before the first round of the legislative elections, the anti-Semitic rape of a 12-year-old girl in Courbevoie. In this last case, as in most of the previous tragedies, the National Rally, regularly accused of exploiting news items, stepped up to the plate. Marine Le Pen denouncing a “stigmatization of Jews for months by the far left” and Jordan Bardella, the president of the RN, an “atmospheric anti-Semitism”. On television sets, the hypothesis of a turning point in the legislative campaign: was the Le Penist party going to take advantage of a “news item” effect at the ballot box?
Anyone who would dwell on the scores achieved by Jordan Bardella’s party in the last European and legislative elections in the municipalities recently marked by tragedies could well be convinced of this. In Crépol (Drôme) alone, where young Thomas Perotto was killed on the night of 18 to 19 November 2023 at the end of a fight that occurred during the village ball, the RN made a jump of more than 20 points on 9 June compared to the 2019 vote (and the trend was confirmed during the legislative elections).
In Châteauroux (Indre), the scene of the murder of Matisse, who died after being stabbed several times on April 27, the RN also increased its score by more than 10 points in the European elections. In the first constituency of Indre, to which the town is attached, the increase in the party’s score in the legislative elections even amounts to 20 points compared to 2022.
Behind an apparent surge, a more nuanced reality
Even in Courbevoie, where a 12-year-old schoolgirl was beaten up and raped on June 15 by boys of the same age who accused her of not telling them she was Jewish, the flame party’s score almost tripled in the legislative election that took place two weeks later.
Behind this apparent surge, the reality is more nuanced. In Courbevoie, precisely, if the RN has indeed gone from 5.5% to 15.1% of the vote in the space of two years, it already totaled 14.36% during the 2024 European elections. In reality, even by moving away from the inner suburbs and its surroundings, the figures are far from confirming the existence of a “miscellaneous fact” effect.
In the 13th constituency of the North, which includes Grande-Synthe – where Philippe Coopman, a young 23-year-old educator, was found unconscious, disfigured and undressed in April, the RN candidate certainly came out on top with 43.5% of the vote compared to 30.2% in 2022. But on the scale of the commune, The far-right party only won 36.3% of the vote, compared to 42.8% for the rebellious candidate of the New Popular Front. In short: in Grande-Synthe, the Bardella’s party only increased its score by about 7 points compared to the 2022 election, compared to more than 13 at the constituency level, and 14.5 at the national level. On this tragedy, the Le Penist clan had kept a low profile, while the socialist mayor Martial Beyaert of the city had filed a complaint with the prosecutor following “attacks suffered by far-right groups [ayant] tried to use this tragedy for political ends”…
One factor among others
It is April 27, 2024 when Matisse, a 15-year-old teenager, is stabbed to death several times in Châteauroux. The suspect, a minor of the same age of Afghan origin, was known to the police, in particular for aggravated robbery with violence. The next day, Jordan Bardella rushes to denounce on X a “new tragedy linked to our migration policy”. The day after, he reiterates in a polished video, denouncing the “out of control and senseless migration policy” of which French youth would be the “new victim”. Blue-white-red flag in the background.
Nearly two months later, in the first constituency of Indre, to which Châteauroux is attached, the RN has certainly almost doubled its score in the legislative elections, going from 22.3% to 40.2% in two years. But at the level of the commune, affected first and foremost by the event, the RN nevertheless only collected 31.92% of the votes (barely the national average) compared to 16.9% in 2022. Here again, the improvement in the party’s score is less significant at the level of the commune (+ 15.1) than at the level of the constituency (+ 17.9 points), and even of the department of Indre (the increase being more than 18 points in the second constituency).
“A news item can have an impact on an election, but however dramatic and significant it may be for the municipality concerned, it is only one factor among others, such as socio-cultural level, value system, expectations, which can also have an impact on citizens’ choices,” analyses Frédéric Micheau, deputy general director of the OpinionWay institute. “It is therefore difficult, if not impossible, to isolate the effect of a news item from all the determinants of the vote.”
The famous precedent “Papy Voise”
For L’Express, Guillaume Caline, director of the Public Issues and Opinion division at Verian (formerly Kantar Public), established the average rate of increase in the RN vote between the 2024 and 2019 European elections, according to the size of the municipalities in metropolitan France. Result: the increase in the Le Pen vote in many municipalities affected by a tragedy in recent years is actually… average. In Rantigny, a municipality in Oise with 3,000 inhabitants marked by the sordid rape of Shanon, a schoolgirl who died last March after three weeks in a coma, the RN has “only” increased by 10 points between 2019 and 2024, while municipalities with between 500 and 3,499 inhabitants have seen an increase of 11 points. In Viry-Châtillon (31,000 inhabitants), where Shemseddine, 15, was killed in April after being beaten up, the increase is 7 points, perfectly in line with the average for towns with between 10,000 and 49,999 inhabitants.
“The media coverage of a news item can have a massive national impact by capturing the attention of the 92% of French people who feel that insecurity has increased,” argues Erwan Lestrohan, director of studies at the Odoxa polling institute. “But beyond this attention from the French, for a news item to have a significant impact on a vote, it must resonate with a political climate, deeply rooted concerns among the population, and the discourse of a party.”
The specialist cites the famous precedent “Papy Voise” – the assault of a septuagenarian, at his home in Orléans, the day before the first round of the 2002 presidential election, which according to legend (partly false) changed the course of the election and allowed Jean-Marie Le Pen to reach the second round. “We cannot say that this event radically changed the course of the election, the breeding ground was there. But precisely, this news item resonated perfectly with the concerns of the right-wing electorate regarding the security dimension, and this, in the context of a campaign already very focused on these issues.”
Conversely, Erwan Lestrohan further specifies, when Mohammed Merah assassinated three soldiers in Toulouse and Montauban in 2012, then coldly shot an adult and three children in a Jewish school, the vote in favor of the right-wing candidates, Nicolas Sarkozy or Marine Le Pen, had not significantly increased. “The terrorist threat was not then one of the priority concerns of voters, in a campaign that had rather taken the form of a referendum for or against Nicolas Sarkozy,” he concludes.
Crepol and the halo effect
Most of the specialists contacted by L’Express agree that the small town of Crépol (barely more than 500 inhabitants) stands out. To the point of making Emmanuel Rivière say that the hypothesis of a “news item effect” in this town is “solid”. In the European elections, the RN already had a total increase of 22.6 points compared to the previous election – whereas, on average, the party only observed an increase of 11 points in towns with between 500 and 3,499 inhabitants. In the legislative elections, the Le Pen vote is all the more symptomatic since at the town level, it amounts to 42.9% of the vote, compared to 38.4% at the constituency level. This is almost 24 points more than in 2022, where at the constituency level, the increase is limited to 18 points.
“In a small town like Crépol, everyone knows each other. Imagine a small, peaceful village like this suddenly in the spotlight, erected as a symbol, in shock from a news item that arouses very strong emotion. All these factors contribute to an impact on the vote,” analyzes Emmanuel Rivière. The latter wants to be all the more categorical because in the neighboring towns, we also observe a “halo effect”, that is to say a significant increase in the RN vote around Crépol, more significant than in the constituency. “If the event did indeed have an effect on the vote in the town, there is a strong chance that this will also be the case in the small surrounding towns,” specifies the specialist.
Between 2022 and 2024, the RN vote thus increased by almost 30 points in Le Chalon, by almost 21 points in Charmes-sur-L’Herbasse, and by around 20 points in Valherbasse. In these three municipalities, the increase in the RN score between 2022 and 2024 is not only above that achieved in the fourth constituency of Drôme (of which all these municipalities are part), but also well above that on a national scale, where the RN went from 18.7% in the 2022 legislative elections to 33.20% in the first round of this year’s legislative elections.
“The increase in the RN’s score on site is one thing, but there is nothing to suggest that Thomas’ death in Crépol and its media-political treatment converted new voters to the RN,” Erwan Lestrohan nevertheless tempers. “I’m not saying that we should exclude this hypothesis, but the most likely is that this event mainly had the effect of maximizing the electoral participation of people who had already voted for the RN in the past.” During the second round of the 2022 presidential election, where participation was 79.3%, Marine Le Pen had collected 138 votes in Crépol, the maximum reserve of votes that the party candidate was likely to mobilize among voters. In the 2024 legislative elections (where participation was 76.8%), how many votes for the RN? 138.
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