Sunday, July 7, 8 p.m. The surprise is huge for the voters, who discover live the new composition of the National Assembly. Contrary to the predictions of the polling institutes, which placed the National Rally in the lead of these legislative elections, without an absolute majority but ahead of the New Popular Front, itself followed by the presidential majority (Ensemble), it is indeed the union of the left that finally pulled off a masterstroke, by sending 182 deputies to the hemicycle. The RN and its allies, for their part, only obtained third place with 143 seats, behind Ensemble, which the voters raised to second place with 168 seats.
Throughout the inter-round period, as withdrawals occurred and taking into account the different scenarios of the three-way races, polling institutes attempted to provide precise projections of the future National Assembly. Did their simulations – which ultimately did not come to fruition at the ballot box -, widely taken up on social media and commented on in the media, have an influence on the voters’ vote, particularly against the RN? Brice Teinturier, political scientist and deputy CEO of Ipsos France, analyses for L’Express the consequences of opinion polls on the French vote.
L’Express: To what extent did the polls influence the French vote against the RN for this second round of the legislative elections?
Brice Teinturier: For this election, we can rightly conclude that opinion polls and seat simulations did not really influence voters. As early as Sunday evening, June 30, after the first round and even before we took into account the possible withdrawals of the three-way races, our estimates indicated that there would be no absolute majority for the RN. After the withdrawals of certain candidates, we confirmed and amplified this message: I have never stopped saying, everywhere in the media, that this idea of the RN on the threshold of power was a false idea. On the number of seats potentially won by the RN, which we estimated at a low range of 175, I also warned that around fifty constituencies could be decided by a point, and that these projections should therefore be taken with a grain of salt.
However, the French people’s perception of the immediate threat posed by the RN has not changed. They did not really listen to what the electoral simulations were saying on the subject and remained with the idea that there was a major risk of an absolute majority for the RN, and the Republican front against the party has therefore considerably amplified. I would also like to point out that the RN has not disappeared: on the contrary, it is expanding rapidly, with 142 seats in total, and I do not think that it was the seat simulations and the polls that provoked such enthusiasm among voters.
What are the other elements that, in your opinion, could explain the success of the “barrage” against the RN?
I think it was rather the result of the first round, with more than 10.5 million votes for the RN, which marked the voters and amplified the vote for a republican front. At the same time, the French were able to see during the inter-round period that the RN was not ready, by observing the difficulties of certain candidates who deserted the debates and the platforms, showed a certain incompetence, or made racist, anti-Semitic or xenophobic remarks. This cracked the respectability that Marine Le Pen was trying to build around her party. On the one hand, left-wing voters felt a real danger and mobilized more than ever, while right-wing or center-right voters prioritized the dangers, and preferred to “block” the RN. This is what explains for me, much more than the polls, this power of the republican front in the second round.
Beyond this election, does the possible influence of the polls depend on the type of vote?
The effects of polls are not mechanical, and are not the same depending on the type of election and the political context. At the end of the 2022 presidential campaign, some voters took the polls into account and thus made a “useful vote” for Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who was able to take advantage of it by positioning himself as the only legitimate candidate on the left. Voters for Yannick Jadot (EELV) were thus able to switch to Jean-Luc Mélenchon during the presidential election – which also explains his good score in the first round. [NDLR : 21,95 %]. On the other hand, the Republican Front did not work in the 2022 legislative elections, because the RN was relatively weak at the time. Even though it ended up with a historic score of 89 deputies, it had nothing to do with what we have just experienced in 2024 – no one at the time feared that the RN would end up with a majority.
Do the “useful vote” and the “republican front” that you mention only work against the National Rally?
It all depends on the immediate threat perceived by the French; for this between-rounds, it was the RN, and not another party. The media and political context must be taken into account: the RN had just achieved a historic score of more than 30% in the European elections, then mobilized 10.5 million votes in the first round of the legislative elections. Despite a fairly rapid relativization of a possible absolute majority for the party, the perception of the threat has therefore crystallized around the RN. If, tomorrow, you had for several weeks, or even several months, the idea that LFI could obtain an absolute majority on its own – which was not the case for this election – you would also have a block vote against LFI, whose political program can worry some voters. The perception of a divisive party “on the threshold of power” plays a huge role.
Do all voters watch the polls?
Voters who follow polls are those who are most interested in politics, they are those who follow the election campaign closely. It also depends a lot on the political offer. The candidates themselves rely on opinion polls, either to say that they are false when it does not go their way, or to use them positively. We have a good example with Jean-Luc Mélenchon in 2022, who uses polls to explain that the useful vote is him.
Beyond the use of opinion polls by political figures themselves, what is the role of the media in the exploitation of these polls?
There are unfortunately some media outlets that use the results of the polls by distorting them or not understanding them, which can produce certain effects on voters. For example, when we keep saying that the RN will not have an absolute majority, and we point out a possible rebalancing of seats, while accompanying our predictions with many precautions, but the speech and the ambient little music remain those of an RN on the threshold of power. We had difficulty, in this inter-round, to be listened to on the necessary caution with regard to the RN’s seat estimates.