The National Rally confirms its territorial roots. On June 30, the far-right party came out on top in the first round of the legislative elections with 33.15% of the votes cast, followed by the New Popular Front (27.99%) and those of the presidential majority (20.04%). This score follows its results in the European elections, where the RN was in the lead in 93% of the municipalities in France. According to the Ipsos institute, these results can be explained by a “diversified and expanded” electorate. In the legislative elections, Jordan Bardella’s party strongly mobilized its traditional electorate (employees and workers) but also attracted other categories, such as women (32% against 17% in 2022), the wealthiest (32 against 15% in 2022) and retirees (31% of the vote against 12% in 2022).
Even some of the big cities, supposed bastions of the left and the presidential majority, slip an RN ballot into the ballot box (28% compared to 13% in 2022). While it remains a minority among the most qualified, it is nevertheless progressing (22% compared to 11% in 2022). To understand this evolution, L’Express interviewed the geographer Aurélien Delpirou, lecturer at the Paris School of Urban Planning and co-author of 50 cards to see before going to vote (Ed. Autrement).
L’Express: What lessons can we learn from this election? What difference can we see with the 2022 legislative elections?
Aurelien Delpirou: This is obvious, but let’s state it: first, the strong and widespread progress of the National Rally across the entire territory. Its victory goes beyond its strongholds: it achieved very high scores – more than 45% – everywhere else, in all types of spaces – cities, villages, peri-urban areas. We have witnessed the transformation of a regional party of strongholds, towards an organization that aims to be in the majority. This is the big difference with 2022. The party is in line with the European elections, and even in a slight progression. One might have thought that the massive mobilization of the electorate in this election would benefit the New Popular Front, but it favored, first and foremost, the National Rally.
So the analyses which indicated that the RN no longer had any reserves of votes after the European elections were wrong?
There was an error regarding the dynamics of abstentionists. It was considered that the RN had won the European elections because its voters were the most motivated. This conclusion was permissible because, in general, in opinion polls, the choice of voters for the RN is often old, very determined. But here, the party went looking for abstentionists.
That being said, we must be careful: we still do not have a France “cut in two”. Let’s look at the number of votes. You have a first stock with the abstainers, who number 13 million and remain the leading party in France. Then, there is the RN, which clearly had a reservoir of votes, everywhere in the country. After that, come the New Popular Front, at 9 million, and Ensemble, at 6 million. Of course, if we look at the constituencies, it is indisputable that bastions of the New Popular Front or Ensemble exist in the center of large cities and working-class suburbs. But the division of France “in two” stops there.
In 2022, you criticized in an article the interpretation of the geographer Christophe Guilluy, who for several years has been contrasting metropolises with “peripheral France”. What do you think about it today?
Everyone sees what they want in the results. Christophe Guilluy could tell you – and would not be wrong – that certain privileged metropolises – Paris, Lyon, Bordeaux – provide the votes of the NFP and Ensemble. That everywhere else, the RN has progressed. In this, the observation “France of metropolises” against “peripheral France” could be true. But if we look at the current score of the RN, it means that the whole country, or almost, has become peripheral France. Previously, it was not like this: we found good scores of the RN 80 kilometers from the big cities, in a certain rural world. However, today, the party has progressed in all territories, nibbling away at all electorates and all parties. This opposition is therefore no longer a sufficient key to reading. Be careful, however: this does not mean that we should sweep aside the territorial aspect of the vote: it must be taken into account, but in a multi-factorial way.
The most determining factor in the RN vote remains the socio-professional category and the level of education. Unemployment, income level, CSP, number of years of training and studies are the most influential elements on the vote. The territorial dimension also exists. It is important, but only comes second.
So the RN vote in the countryside is not a reaction to a feeling of abandonment?
It would be wrong to pretend that there was not, in the multiple reasons for voting RN, a very powerful feeling of indifference from the State – and by extension, from Paris, the media, the elites – with regard to the specific difficulties of peri-urban and rural lifestyles. The latter are expensive – because of the car and very complicated access to services. Today, we are paying for thirty years of unraveling of the historical network of public services in France, which had an absolutely singular density in Europe. The first victims are the small towns, which have seen their courts and maternity hospitals disappear. Nevertheless, this point still needs to be qualified: we remain the country with the highest amount of public spending in Europe. We have not abandoned the countryside for the cities and their suburbs. The statistics show it. But there is a gulf between the reality of the figures and the feelings of the inhabitants.
In your 2022 article, you mentioned a fracture line not between cities and countryside or metropolis and peri-urban, but between “the one that distinguishes France from the West and South-West of France and that of the North, from the Mediterranean rim”. Would you say the same thing today?
This division is disappearing, but traces of the divide remain. The Great West – Pays-de-La-Loire, Brittany -, despite the progress of the RN, will send many Ensemble or NFP deputies. This legacy is not dead. Another legacy that is not quite dead, that of the historical establishment of the PS in the South-West. Of course, the RN is very powerful. It has dislocated the left in the Dordogne, Tarn-et-Garonne, Lot-et-Garonne. On the other hand, in a large South-West that goes from Corrèze to Ariège, you have resistance from the New Popular Front with socialist tendencies. The broad outlines of the regional division have been swept away by the progress of the RN, but a few strongholds therefore remain. This is also the case in the privileged corners of Haute-Savoie (for Ensemble) and in the pre-Alps, where the NFP is present. This also invites us to consider, locally, the role of associative and activist networks. Very well-stocked in Ardèche or Drôme, they can partly explain the resistance of the NFP.
But elsewhere, the traditional parties are being nibbled away by the RN. The north of Allier, Cher, Creuse, are constituencies that sometimes remained under French communism for 50 years. It was rural communism. They were completely swept away. The rural left, apart from in the West – and perhaps Ariège -, is almost wiped off the map. The left-wing parties will have to ask themselves deep questions about their program, about the deployment of their elected representatives. More recently, the RN absorbed the right-wing campaigns, thanks to the collapse of the LR, by hunting on the lands of the historic RPR. The activists patiently plowed the rural terrain, and are now reaping the results.
Can we say, ultimately, that since 2017, Renaissance has never really managed to establish itself locally?
Renaissance has never been a territorially anchored party. They tried, but each time they were at odds with the barons of the Socialist Party or the Republicans. They failed in the municipal and senatorial elections. It is still a party that has very few relays in terms of elected officials, but also activists. It is partly their fault, because they did not put in the resources. But also because the story of a president belonging to a disconnected urban elite has spread. It is cruel: Emmanuel Macron is part of it, but no more than François Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy. Things have been done on the public policy side. Emmanuel Macron has not completely abandoned rural and peri-urban areas. He has deployed sectoral programs, reserving them for certain territories. Among these programs, we find Action Coeur de ville, for medium-sized towns, Petites villes de demain for towns with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants, a specific program on villages… With them, the State has provided some funding, and a bit of engineering – the Caisse des Dépôts has financed project manager positions, in particular.
What do elected officials say about it? That yes, there is a mark of interest, but that the funding is insufficient, and that these programs put territories in competition with each other to obtain it. That they impose, in their calls for projects, criteria disconnected from territorial realities, and that elected officials need greater room for maneuver to develop public policies. Finally, the State’s actions have been very fragmented and inconsistent. Emmanuel Macron’s action in rural areas has not been negligible, but it has been illegible. Today, he is not reaping the benefits at the ballot box.
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