“There are more sausages if you want!” In shirt sleeves and glass of beer in hand, Gérald Darmanin strolls this Sunday August 27 in the botanical garden of Tourcoing (North). The Minister of the Interior invited ministers and parliamentarians to share a “sausage and fries” for his political comeback. Metaphor for the Beauvau tenant’s ambition: to conquer these famous “working classes”, an electorate that escapes Macronism. Two days earlier, the Socialist Party organized a round table with the title provocative and tinged with self-criticism during its summer university: “Is peri-urban France the France of rednecks?” Immediate response from Gérald Darmanin on Twitter, including bad faith: “A new example of the social contempt experienced by the working classes.” Closer to the people than me, you die!
Ridiculous but revealing pass of arms. Four years from the presidential election, the hunt for the popular vote is launched. This quest takes on a form of nobility in a fragmented political landscape, where voting and socio-professional categories intersect. Addressing this fringe of the population means speaking to the masses and to the most vulnerable. Who would boast of eyeing the CSP + and other winners of globalization? The challenge is also strategic. Workers and employees represent one in two jobs and can swing an election. “We cannot ignore the working classes to win the second round of a presidential election,” summarizes Brice Teinturier, Deputy CEO of Ipsos.
A strategic vote
In 2007, Nicolas Sarkozy seduced workers (21%) and employees (29%) in the first ballot. The weakness of François Fillon in this France (and business) will deprive him of a second round ten years later. The rise of Marine Le Pen makes this quest vital today. “That we do not base ourselves only on the winners of globalization and the elected officials of the city centers, because that does not make 51% of the votes”, judge Gérald Darmanin. Outside the people, there is no salvation! “On the right, some think that the entry ticket for the second round will be so low that we should not bother looking for these voters. But in this little game, we risk being crushed in the first round by Le Pen and suffer from too large a gap in view of the second”, warns LR deputy for Lot Aurélien Pradié.
The far right has taken control of this electorate, which has been hit hardest by abstention. In 2022, the RN candidate obtained 36% of the votes of employees and workers, ahead of Jean-Luc Mélenchon (25 and 23%) and Emmanuel Macron (17 and 18%). Among the frontists, it is repeated as a self-fulfilling prophecy: “The National Rally is the first party of the people.” The RN had a tailor-made theory forged by political scientist and party service provider Jérôme Sainte-Marie, responsible for training executives within the “Hémera campus”, the school of Jordan Bardella. The engine of the vote of the employees and workers in favor of Marine Le Pen would come under the “class reflex”, within the framework of a new cleavage opposing an “elite bloc” to a “popular bloc”.
Disputed theory. “There is not a Le Pen electorate, but an electoral conglomerate that votes for Le Pen, analyzes Willy Pelletier, sociologist and author of a book on the question*. This is very disparate and very contradictory since we finds small bosses who are against social contributions, taxation, and at the same time certain workers, very attached to their social protection which rhymes for them with purchasing power, as well as suburbanites who see themselves slowed down in their social ascent. “
Left Confrontation
On the left, the worker – now replaced by “Sandra, the nursing assistant” – is on everyone’s lips, even if he still does not appear in the devices. But they are far, the 80% of the votes obtained by François Mitterrand from the workers in 1981 and 1988. Not enough to worry Jean-Luc Mélenchon, faithful to his strategy of “radicality”. Didn’t a majority of the working classes from the suburbs vote for him in 2022? But what about the others, often summarized as those of the working-class basins of northern France, immersed in the arms of Marine Le Pen? “Their interests do not differ from workers in the suburbs”, refuted Jean-Luc Mélenchon, essentialist, in the winter of 2022. In the eyes of LFI, there is only one and only one proletarian class.
François Ruffin is skeptical. The deputy of the Somme deplores the weakness of the left in the popular and peri-urban territories. During a debate at the university at the start of La France insoumise, he wondered: “We must reassure, bring people together. When I am told radicality, radicality, radicality, I ask you, is it is it to be applauded by an AG of socios in Nanterre or to convince in Moselle and all over the country? What are we aiming for? Why corner each other, why remain at the risk of a minority culture? The communist Fabien Roussel likes to recall that he avoided Mélenchon’s face on his campaign posters for the last legislative elections, as LFI is, he says, “a foil”.
A problem of behavior, more than of programmatic offer. The form, more than the substance. “There are concessions to a form of cultural leftism consisting in taking over expressions which by definition are minority and marginal, judges a left-wing executive. The expression ‘The police kills’? 70% of French people think that it protects”. The voluntarily provocative invitation of the rapper Médine to the summer universities of LFI and EELV illustrates this trap of inter-self, fear several elected officials. A fascination with the margins and radical thoughts would guide these parties away from more relevant matters.
“Politics has a contemptuous side”
A matter of sociology. Leaders and activists of left-wing movements often come from an intellectual bourgeoisie, with its own codes. This is what the controversy told, a year ago, around the barbecue and the meat between Sandrine Rousseau and Fabien Roussel. “Politics has a contemptuous side, says Boris Vallaud, boss of the PS deputies. It is constantly overloaded with morality, class judgment. BBQ, diesel, etc. Class judgment is the enemy of understanding. When we attack identities, we recover identities…”
Take care of the form. Avoid all technocratic language. Gérald Darmanin understood this well. May be too much. The Minister of the Interior deplores the “contempt” and the excess of “rationality that can emerge from political discourse. But his heavy flirting with the working classes irritates even in his camp. Here, incessant allusions to his modest family origins. There , an electorate summoned in the form of a somewhat outdated image of Epinal. “The bistro is the parliament of the people”, assures There Voice of the North Gérald Darmanin, follower of a colloquial language. “Olivier Dussopt also grew up in a modest family. He has a much more sincere, sensitive, much more emotional link to his family origins than Gérald. macronist.
On the right, eyes riveted on the Macronist electorate
Targeting ostensibly a population remote from politics, isn’t that the best way to keep them at a distance? A relative of Emmanuel Macron fears him: “Jean-Jacques Goldman’s strength is to talk about little people without designating them as such. But by giving depth, a humanity to each story. The opposite of what Gérald does Darmanin.” Especially since the ambitious minister hardly initiates an ideological overhaul of Macronism. He is just advocating a shift in the reduction of corporate production taxes and an increase in remuneration.
On the right, Aurélien Pradié poses as a herald of such an aggiornamento. The LR deputy from Lot – elected from a land of the left – is convinced of this: the right can only be reborn from its ashes by addressing the popular electorate. “It does not today draw any radical conclusion from its past failures and does not carry out any strategic purge. However, Fillon and Pécresse had in common to have separated from the popular voters.” His opposition to the pension reform was part of this strategy. The man is in the minority on the right. At best, we reject his theory. At worst, it is reduced to a thirst for existence. The president of LR Éric Ciotti is betting on a reconquest of right-wing voters disappointed by Emmanuel Macron. His economic discourse remains orthodox, far from the social flights of Jacques Chirac in 1995. A leader admits: “There is an unconscious conviction that Marine Le Pen has monopolized the popular electorate.”