By climbing to third position in the first round of the presidential election, Jean-Luc Mélenchon largely sucked the “useful vote” on the left. Without underestimating the persistence of a traditional left-wing people, this success is also explained by the contribution of electoral segments seduced by its triple social, societal and ecological positioning, despite divisive positions internationally. A class coalition between committed urban youth, cultural bourgeoisie and low-income suburbanites from minorities.
The “climate generation”, urban and educated youth
Polls that analyze the sociology of electorates at the exit of the polls converge: Jean-Luc Mélenchon is the candidate for whom voters aged 18 to 24 voted the most. It captures in particular a certain youth, open to cultural and social issues and socially weakened by two years of health crisis, that of student cities in particular (it comes out first in Rennes, Lille, Toulouse, Amiens, etc. .). This youth is also what we call the “climate generation”, the one who challenges the “boomers“for their supposed indifference to global warming. The one, then, which recognizes itself in the new cultural struggles of the left, in particular those linked to feminism and anti-racism, for which the rebellious candidate has given pledges throughout his campaign. Significantly, voters who felt close to the ecofeminist Sandrine Rousseau for a good part of them deferred to the Mélenchon vote, considered more credible and more radical than Yannick Jadot, Anne Hidalgo or Fabien Roussel on these issues.
An urban duopoly Mélenchon – Macron
In addition to this qualified and aware youth, there is a second electoral segment, more mature and economically comfortable, made up of professionals in the knowledge and information economy professions, whose troops are grouped together in cities such as Nantes. , where Mélenchon comes out on top, Lyon and Bordeaux, where he is very close to Emmanuel Macron, or even throughout the “boboland” to the east of the capital and its small gentrified crown. It is the electorate of the moderate left Hamon and, in part, Macron of 2017, the one who swung the metropolises to the Greens in the last municipal elections in Lyon, Bordeaux, Strasbourg or Marseille, who in this case expressed themselves in favor of the candidate of La France insoumise. These two electorates (educated youth and knowledge workers) form an alliance of cultural capital, close to what the economist Thomas Piketty calls the “Brahmin left”, a left of “knowledgeable people”. Unsurprisingly, many artists and intellectuals had also called to vote Mélenchon. And voters with a bac +5 level diploma are twice as likely to choose Mélenchon as Le Pen, the latter sharing the vote for cultural capital with Emmanuel Macron in a sort of urban and educated duopoly.
A monopoly of suburban and minority voting
It should be noted that the vote for the Popular Union is also very strong in the Overseas Territories, as can be seen throughout a shrinking neo-rural France. Finally, we cannot miss the suburbs, where Jean-Luc Mélenchon achieves his most impressive scores. He finished in first position in Seine-Saint-Denis, where he came close to an absolute majority in the first round, with more than 60% of the vote in certain municipalities such as La Courneuve or Aubervilliers, he exceeded 58% in Grigny in Essonne ( south of Paris), also achieved excellent scores in working-class neighborhoods in the Lyon conurbation, such as Vaulx-en-Velin and Vénissieux. Mélenchon largely won the vote of voters descended from postcolonial immigration, affected in the suburbs by the Covid crisis, faced with ethno-racial discrimination and for some sensitive to the open positions on Islam of the leader of La France insoumise.
A popular vote or a cultural vote?
In the light of these lessons, we see that the Mélenchon 2022 vote is a generational, social and territorial conglomeration which nevertheless retains a certain cultural coherence. Is it justified to write that the left, embodied in 2022 by La France insoumise, has cut itself off from the popular vote? Not really, insofar as the less well-off categories have chosen its candidate about as much as Marine Le Pen. On the other hand, if Mélenchon very largely captures the vote of the “declassed”, graduates but not well off (students, precarious intellectuals, neo-rurals) and that of popular voters from minorities, the vote of low-skilled workers in the outskirts and small towns remains the preserve of the candidate of the National Rally.