Contenu du sommaire : L'élection présidentielle de 2007

This article proposes an analysis of electoral (in)decision in the context of the presidential election of 2007. First of all, a theoretical and methodological reflection on the measure of the electoral indecision is proposed because the concept can take several meanings : absence of firmness of the vote intention, late crystallization of the choice, hesitations between different potential votes. We measure here (in)decision by the moment of choice ; then we distinguish three types of voters : those « convinced » for a long time, those recently « conquered » and finally those still « circumspect » late in the campaign. We use the data of the 2007 Panel électoral français realized by the Cevipof to portray these three types of (in)decided voters.

Non voting was regularly increasing in France since twenty years. At 2002 Presidential election, it has been a record. But this time, the French electorate, facing new candidates, has been specially politicized and has participated a lot (83,7 % at the first round and 84 % at the second one). This high level of participation has concerned all the social categories, all the ages, and also all the political families. Sociological abstention has been reduced. But it is protest abstention, a more political one, which has diminished the most.

The images have a considerable explanatory power on the vote's intentions. This capacity must be not theoretically measured, but in comparison to both fundamental facts : the position on the left-right scale and the political nearness. The results demonstrate for the main part that, put in competition with these factors, the explanatory power of the images is the same order of height as these classic attributes, and even sometimes superior. This superiority holds partly the fact that everybody or about can express « feelings » towards a personality while the setting on a left-right dimension or the partisan nearness are sometimes more difficult to achieve.

The successive waves of the French political Barometer and the Panel électoral français updated a constant phenomenon of political dissonance where approximately 10 % of the voters express a partisan nearness which does not obey the same orientation (left or right) as their votes. This phenomenon touched much more the sympathizers of the left-wing parties than those of the right-wing parties. It is above all F. Bayrou, candidate of the centre right, who took advantage of it. This dissonance does not touch, far from there, the only sympathizers of the central parties. Its social and cultural logics are diverse. Finally, if the dissonance is a majority in no electorate, it affects however almost 30 % in the new electorate of F. Bayrou. A strong minority of the electorate so privilege flexible and unstable relations to the politics at the cost of the stable and faithful relations.

At the first ballot of the 2007 presidential election, gender does not appear as a decisive factor of the left/right orientation of the vote. Still, it remains predictable of the vote for the extreme right candidate, Jean-Marie Le Pen. Moreover, the PEF electoral data show that it does exist in France a gender generation gap. Among younger population women tend to prefer the socialist candidate, Ségolène Royal ; on the contrary, among seniors, women (who are dominant in the category) tend to vote more often than men for the UMP's candidate, Nicolas Sarkozy. By the way, this phenomenon weighted heavy in the final result of this election.

The 2007 presidential election sent a mixed message regarding the traditional French left-right divide : on the one hand, the electoral results demonstrate a re-bipolarization process which seems to reinforce the left-right opposition ; but, on the other hand, the uprising of the Bayrou electorate takes its roots from the increasing proportion of individuals crossing the traditional ideological borders. In this article, the authors question the pertinence of the left-right divide by using two methods of analysis. Firstly they focus on the transformation of the meaning of left and right through a cohort analysis. Secondly, they question the strength of the left-right divide, too often said outdated, as a voting determinant in the electoral choice of April 22nd 2007.

The presidential election of 2007 confirms the validity of a two-dimensional conception of the right-left axis. The cleavage on the cultural liberalism, in particular on the questions of security and immigration, is more important than it was never and becomes a criterion of the vote almost so determining as the attitude towards the economic problems, the domain in which we observe complex changes. The final result of the election better appears to explain by the success of Nicolas Sarkozy's strategy aiming at the reorganization of the right electorate that by the hypothesis, contradicted by figures, of a long-term movement of the opinion in a right way.

This article analyzes the main lesson of the French presidential election of 2007, through nine maps. These maps use the scale of the canton, and show the modifications of the French electoral geography. Two major facts appear : first of all, a new cleavage West-East of France, characterized by the conquest by Nicolas Sarkozy of the Front national's lands, and by the progress in the West of the socialist party and Francois Bayrou among the “moderate” middle class and workers. Then, one can measure an urban-suburban-rural cleavage, which seems to be accentuated compared to the former national elections.

Between the first round of the 2002 and the 2007 French presidential election, Jean-Marie Le Pen lost 6 percentage points and a million voters. The French Electoral Panel (2007) shows that these voters still stand out by their rightist tropism, their ethnocentric-authoritarian attitudes. But over a quarter of the 2002 Le Pen voters turned to Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007, because he appeared to have a presidential stature and far more chances to be elected. The FN lost more support among the self employed and office and sales clerks than among blue collars which form today almost half his constituency. Its decline shows that the progression of extreme right parties is not inescapable, and that the supply side of politics is decisive.

This article analyses the logics sustaining votes for François Bayrou during the French 2007 presidential election. From data of electoral polls of the Cevipof, the sociology and the values of this electorate are described. Both indicate that votes for Bayrou were more anchored in the left than ever before. However, they are still “middle of the road” between left and right on issues such as economic interventionism. A typology has been computed. It shows the numerical importance of voters with a left wing profile who are more numerous than the “liberals from the right” and the “conservative”. Finally, regressions on the pool of potential voters of Bayrou shed light on the effect of the image of candidates but also on the effect of traditional political allegiances.

By showing the project of a « quiet break », Nicolas Sarkozy certainly showed a will of distance with his predecessors, but this one is not worth renunciation of all the resources and the dimensions of the inheritance. If the asymmetry of the balance of power between the partisan right constituents is turned out well after May 6th, 2007, a political dynamics doubled by a social one, going beyond the traditional outlines of the classic right, ensured – thanks to his syncretism – Nicolas Sarkozy's victory. But the election of Nicolas Sarkozy also fills the césaristes expectations of a part of his electorate and indicate the nostalgia, always in the work in the French society, of the Gaullist intensification of the presidential function.

For the third consecutive time, the left-wing has just lost the presidential election. Based on two surveys of the Panel électoral français 2007 of Cevipof (pre-and post-presidential), this article defends the thesis according to which the defeat of the left-wing deceived from the first ballot because of the weakness of the socialist candidate's electorate. This April 22, Ségolène Royal made a success of a real, but limited social redeployment of the socialist electorate of 2002. She joined together on its name of the voters linked by a strong left-wing policy identity, but in addition expressing a relative half-heartedness with respect to the specific proposals of their candidate, a disenchantment with regard to the politics and a limited confidence in the chances of the left's victory. This weakness restrained the mobilization of second ballot, opposite an UMP adversary supported by more trustful voters.