Meanwhile: the well-heeled professional-class left-voters who say they are going over to Bayrou were already pretty much known. See this article in Libé, or this article in Le Monde for example.
As for less well-heeled people saying they are on the left but will vote Sarkozy, frankly, I think you can find this kind of cognitive dissonance in every election in any country. It is true, however, that the left - especially the PCF - has gradually lost voters to the Front National over the last twenty years. There's no longer the belief in a left (particularly Communist) that is going to turn the world arse over tit and bring justice, one of these days. The next simple doctrine to believe in is we need to throw the foreigners out.
I'm trying not to sound too sanguine about this. Things certainly do look difficult for the left and Royal. They always were, though - it's (I think) fairly well-attested that a woman candidate can't count on much support from women, for example (without necessarily gaining counter-balancing votes from men...). It's also fairly constant that the left is in the minority in France. It's an uphill battle. But there are six weeks to go and there were great changes in the last six weeks in 2002 and 1995.
I'm not thinking of a deus ex machina, but the Canard Enchaîné, which I haven't seen yet, has a new instalment on Sarko's sleaze with the real estate promoter in Neuilly. Libé has it up as top story now. Seems that Sarko (as mayor) gave the promoter a sweet deal on some land, then got one in return when he bought an apartment.
The problem with this kind of thing is that Sarko will end up being seen as a victim of leftwing journalism.
Présidentielle : la défiance au coeur du vote (Presidential elections : mistrust as the core of the vote)
it states according to the BPF that 61% of the French mistrust BOTH the left and the right and that it is a structural change. 17% trust the left, 21% trust the right.
regarding the "apartments affairs" (both Ségolène and Sarko) it seems that a majority (note of internet users) think that it isn't such a big deal even if they consider it in itself as "serious".
http://fr.news.yahoo.com/070313/206/5h57x.html
It seems that people in general expect the elite to cheat both to the right and the left, and since they can't do anything about that, other questions have priority.
And Bayrou's triumphant trip to St Denis should scare the PS to death... probably one of the reasons is that he is seen as Mr Clean, like Jimmy Carter was. I am amazed every day by the pro-Bayrou support in my neighbourhood coming from people on RMI or unemployed. Those guys would never vote Sarko, but Sego doesn't convince them, no matter how many promised billions...
she is not credible, they say, she belongs to the elite, Bayrou is a least a farmer and talks like normal people...
and when Azouz Begag, goes over to Bayrou... the "beur" vote is going to be influenced..
As for the article, it is by a pollster, Jérôme Jaffré - who, like all pollster/pundits, wants to have new and astounding analysis on sale. He may be basing this on the CEVIPOF survey, (which is only available for cherry-picking by "analysts"), but what are we supposed to make of this : he says there's a group (identified by the tag hors-système, outside-system, and we don't know if he invented that tag or not) that say they want neither right nor left, but who strongly support Nicolas Sarkozy ("very high percentage"). Does it reveal anything of importance or use about French politics, making out there is a coherent group of "neither-right-not-leftists", who are obviously on their face incoherent?
Also, a trend that has been seen for one year becomes "structural". That's quick structure-building. I suspect Jaffré has to say this, because, like all pollster/pundits, he prefers surveys to actual elections. He points out that the first-past-the-post electoral system encourages a bi-polar political system (le scrutin majoritaire qui favorise la bipolarisation). He omits to discuss the last elections held in France, the regional, local, and European, in 2004. Of those three only the local (election of one-third of "departmental" councillors) was first-past-the post, the other two - more important - were proportional representation.
With PR, you'd expect the meltdown picture Jaffré paints to show through in a varied and broad spectrum of votes. In fact, the regional elections showed a very solid position of the left:
Liste de gauche 12 896 820 49,91% Liste divers gauche 111 720 0,43% Liste régionaliste 99 512 0,39% Liste de droite 9 519 416 36,84% Liste divers droite 11 094 0,04% Liste du Front national 3 199 392 12,38%
The Interior Ministry is responsible for grouping the results left/right (with the FN apart), but that mirrors reality - councillors divide along those lines in the regional councils. Strange that all those disenchanted voters gave the left a push that led it to take over all the regional councils but one.
The European elections are even more open, in the sense that party positions are less entrenched. Yet these elections resulted in:
PSE 33 PPE 28 Greens 6, assorted far right 12 (inc. 7 FN)
Where's the centre? (Bayrou sat with the PPE when he was MEP, in other words with the right...)
I'm not denying that there is an overall tendency towards disillusionment with the left. Nor am I denying that Royal is not, for the moment (and may never) making much progress on that score. I am saying that Bayrou is an illusionist when he pretends to be both left and right. He may get to the Elysée that way, I don't know. But the election is far from over, and I am getting tired of pollsters and survey analysts who are mostly interested in taking centre stage and promoting their guru careers.
(Hardcore political frontists find Sarko soft on Muslims, and in any case hate anyone associated with Chirac and Gaullism... historical rancour going back to Vichy... it does not apply to the UDF and the Giscard tradition, which always had bridges with the Xtreme right...)
I think everyone should vote Bayrou in the first round. You know, he's the one who's going up in the polls... ;)
This is always something that has baffled me -- the presence of folks like Longuet or even more so de Villiers in the old UDF. Villiers, IIRC, ran Barre's campaign in 88.
So I've always wondered, was it the old PRI (with its wierd alliance of libertarianism, Coriscan mob, and 68-vintage street fighters) that had ties to the far right (by which I mean not today's watered-down FN but the hard-core Tixier and OAS folks) or did the UDF include new right nationalists as part of the "anti-Delmas" cum "anti-Chirac" rationale that was what brought the UDF together in the first place.
Anyway, I do think in his defense (and I could be wrong) that Bayrou and the old Christian Democrat tradition from which he came, has pretty clean hands with respect to the Front (as opposed to the rest of the right which at various times has sought alliances with LePen...)
Afaik, of the different strands of the UDF, neither the Christian Dems nor the Radicals (Valoisiens) had ties to the extreme right. These were to be found more among the CNIP (Centre National des Indépendents et Paysans), then the Républicains Indépendents, which operated as a way into "respectable" politics for 1960s fascist street-fighters like the co-founders of Occident, Alain Madelin, Gérard Longuet, Claude Goasguen, Patrick Devedjian. These have now joined the UMP, and are Sarko supporters. I don't know for sure, but I imagine they're seen as opportunists by those who stayed out on the fringe and built the FN.
