France's snap election campaign: an interview with IPSOS Director of polling, Mathieu Doiret

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00:00Well, for more, we can speak to Mathieu Douaray from Ipsos Polling.

00:03Mathieu, hello to you and thank you for joining Paris Direct this weekend.

00:08Real quickly in that report, I don't know if you caught it, but we're talking about

00:11the abstention rate from those EU Parliament elections.

00:15Will we see a similar abstention rate when the first round of voting begins on June 30th?

00:23First, the abstention rate at the European elections was not particularly high for a

00:30European election.

00:31And we expect that the political tension aroused by the snap elections will probably prompt

00:40more voters to participate in those legislative elections than did in 2022, when the normal

00:49legislative elections were held after a presidential election.

00:52And we know that when legislative elections are held after a presidential election, interest

01:00is far smaller because, of course, for people, the most important election is the presidential.

01:08But I would say by default, a snap legislative election is probably the second most important

01:13to voters.

01:14Yeah.

01:15And on top of that, for our international viewers, it's worth pointing out that France

01:19has this two round voting system.

01:21So alliances become very key here.

01:24And that's what we're seeing here.

01:25We're seeing the far right leading the polls and then a left wing alliance in second place.

01:32In that previous report, we're looking at some various young people, some of them saying

01:36that the far right is no longer taboo.

01:39Is that what Ipsos sees in its polling as well?

01:44Absolutely.

01:45Twenty five percent of people under 25 voted for the national rally and the European election.

01:52And you can probably expect a similar proportion in the legislative elections.

01:58The main findings, though, is that the youngest voters, the ones under 25, are more on the

02:06left than the ones between 25 and 34, for example.

02:10That is that where the Rassemblement National, Jordan Baudelaire's party, is really particularly

02:17strong is among people who are already working, not students any longer, and particularly,

02:24of course, the ones who struggle to make ends meet.

02:28But also increasingly older people who are more reluctant to vote for the far right and

02:36also surprisingly more upper class people who were also historically more reluctant.

02:43So globally, we now have something like a catch all party.

02:48I'm wondering if we have a gender divide.

02:50We saw this well-published study earlier this year that mentioned that young men are leaning

02:57more and more conservative while young women are becoming more liberal.

03:01Today, we're going to have a protest on women's rights issues against the far right.

03:08Is that gender divide bearing out here in France as well?

03:12Yeah, absolutely.

03:15And the gender divide has been studied by Ipsos across 25 nations, and you can find

03:20it almost everywhere.

03:22It's not particularly new.

03:24Actually, the trend in France has been that Le Pen's and Baudelaire's party has been improving

03:32its scores among women because at first they had a very huge deficit among women.

03:38But of course, the mere fact that Marine Le Pen stood for candidate from 2012 has considerably

03:45increased their repeat to women.

03:47But still, there is a gap, particularly among younger people.

03:51The Popular New Front Alliance, the left-wing alliance, pulling in second place.

03:56Who are they going to have to try to lure to perhaps surprise the far right in these

04:00snap legislative elections?

04:03Actually, there is an extreme uncertainty because the electorate is almost evenly divided

04:11into three blocks.

04:13Even though Macron's party seems to be lagging far behind when you basically add up all the

04:21center-right parties, you have also one third of the electorate.

04:25So this is the worst-case scenario for pollsters because that means that we could have a lot

04:30of three-way races where basically only a few votes can make a difference.

04:36So that really makes the runoff results extremely unpredictable.

04:42And of course, a lot would depend on, I would say, the mere order of arrivals across all

04:50constituencies with very different local situations.

04:53So it's very difficult to anticipate what the future National Assembly will look like.

05:01It's almost impossible to infer seats from votes for the moment.

05:07We'll have to wait until the dust sets after the first round.

05:13Yeah, a lot of sleepless nights coming up for you, Mathieu, I'm guessing.

05:16I'm going to put you in that difficult position anyway.

05:19Let's assume the far right and the left-wing alliance make it to the second round of voting.

05:25I mean, this is a legislative election, so it depends on a seat-by-seat basis.

05:29But let's just assume that those two are the main parties moving forward.

05:34Where does that center bit of France's population, or the center-right, where do they tend to

05:39look?

05:40More to the left, or will they be lured by the far right?

05:44There is an assumption, and we will measure it very attentively in every constituency

05:50because once again, you can't make any generalization.

05:54But it's clear that there is now a likely scenario where center-right people would be

06:03more likely to vote for the far right than for the far left.

06:07But it all depends on whether they consider the local candidate to be an extremist within

06:12his or her alliance, or more of a moderate.

06:17So once again, it will also depend.

06:21If the left-wing candidate in the runoff is someone from Mélenchon's party, he or she

06:27will probably struggle to garner votes from the moderate voters.

06:32And probably, of course, the candidates the National Rally could present who would have

06:44insufficient local anchorage or a bad reputation could also struggle to garner votes from the

06:52moderate voters.

06:53But there is, for the moment, it seems that clearly the balance is tipping to the right.

06:58Yeah, a lot of uncertainty.

06:59Also a week is a political lifetime.

07:01Matthew, I hope we can have you back to help us make sense of whatever round one's results are.

07:05Thank you very much.

07:06Matthew Duare from Ipsos.

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