With the European elections looming, the anger of farmers, known to be avid voters, is being taken very seriously by the different parties. But who are they voting for?
Anger is brewing among farmers. Over the past ten days, mobilizations have multiplied, intensified and spread. And Gabriel Attal’s announcements on Friday will not have succeeded in calming everyone’s minds. However, the government bent over backwards to quickly propose a certain number of concrete measures. The Prime Minister received stakeholders from the agricultural world in spades this week. At the same time, the executive was able to demonstrate a barely credible leniency in the face of the violence of certain demonstrators, preferring, it seems, for this time, to speak of “compassion”. Could the charm of the tractor have something to do with it?
Four months before the European elections, any fight, even in the media, must be taken seriously by any candidate worthy of the name. But at a time when abstention is gaining ground in each election, the cause of farmers, who still represent 6 to 8% of the electorate, according to The Parisian, and are, what is more, considered to be particularly avid voters, is taken very seriously by politicians. “95% of farmers are going to vote, if they don’t go, it’s because they must have broken a leg!” confirms to the capital’s daily Christiane Lambert, former president of the FNSEA. That is to say !
A breakthrough for the far right over the past fifteen years
Also not insignificant, the National Rally, led by Jordan Bardella, clearly dominates the race in voting intentions for the next election, with 10 points more than the list of the presidential camp, according to the YouGov poll of HuffPost. And it is between these two camps that the voices of farmers could be divided. Historically, farmers drive on the right. In the last presidential elections, the left only collected 16% of their votes, further relays The Parisian. Gaullists, Chiraquians, then mainly UMPists between 2000 and 2010, the agricultural vote has then divided in recent years, but always remaining on the right. According to a Cevipof survey, in 2017, Emmanuel Macron and François Fillon both received 20% of the agricultural votes.
The arrival of Julien Denormandie at the Ministry of Agriculture will have allowed the president to further conquer the hearts of farmers. This is evidenced by an Ifop poll carried out for the FNSEA in March 2022. Candidate for re-election, Emmanuel Macron then collected a third of the voting intentions, in the lead ahead of Valérie Pécresse and her 10%. Éric Zemmour, for his part, did better than the LR candidate with 12.5%. But it was above all Marine Le Pen, in ambush, with 18.5% of voting intentions who seemed to make a real breakthrough. There are several factors to explain this. The National Rally “has become Europeanized” and “no longer wants to leave Europe”, analyzes for The Parisian the president (ex-LR) of Corrèze, Pascal Coste. However, for a long time, farmers were more afraid of Frexit than they were angry with Europe. In addition, the themes favored by the RN, such as insecurity or “punitive” ecology, speak a lot to this electorate. A detail which will not have escaped the president of the National Rally. In recent weeks, Jordan Bardella has increased his trips to the countryside, getting closer to farmers.