One in two French people did not come to vote. It has become a classic of the electoral exercise, totally denied by the actors and observers of political life who like to comment on each other's scores when modern democracy first asserts itself as a democracy of abstention.
“Tonight, the voters have rather mobilized”. This is the first comment from Brice Teinturier, director of the Ipsos institute, on France 2. Our pollsters are full of resources. When abstention is close to 50% (49,8%), the democratic glass is half full. The figure, moreover, undoubtedly the most significant of this election, of the previous ones and of those to come, never has any impact on the political comments. These invisibles of democracy have no existence, neither political nor media.
In the parties and among the commentators, the habit is now taken, probably for a long time, to analyze and decipher as a "vote of the French" a result which in fact concerns only half of them. A comfortable process when it comes to giving an electoral meaning to what has less and less.
For Manuel Valls, the "real upheaval" is the score of the extreme right, unable to take into account that this Sunday the people of the left simply did not move. As announced by a survey of Figaro, the “ni-ni” defended by the right has apparently also reached voters on the left.
But what was still sometimes the subject of a few worried comments about the “crisis of representative democracy” is now totally denied. A simple percentage given while waiting for “real” results which will necessarily have a political meaning. We must discuss the respective scores of the PS, the UMP and the FN even though a recent Odoxa opinion poll for iTélé and Le Parisien explained to us that nearly half of respondents (48%) do not recognize themselves in these training courses... Worse: 26% admit to not having "no partisan proximity". But too bad, let's not talk about it...
The blank vote now counted (but not counted in the final result), suffers the same fate. This claimed weapon against abstention and extreme votes is barely presented when it is simply denied and or forgotten. In some cantons, however, it is close to 10%. In the first round, the blank vote aggregated with the null vote together crossed the one million mark!
This denial of desertion from the ballot box has passed into electoral mores while the real discontent, who have abandoned politics so much that even the radical opposition to the party in power does not reach them, are doubtless to be sought on this side- there.
According to Anne Jadot, researcher at CEVIPOF, a phenomenon is accentuated with the rise in “differential abstention. The voters of the ruling party are abstaining more”.
If we look more specifically at the cantons coveted by the FN, we see that the mobilization is indeed very relative if not imperceptible. In Aisne 45% abstention, 5% blank and invalid votes and a National Front which won 5 votes from one round to another.
In the Vaucluse, abstention drops by three points, but blank votes climb by the same amount. And the National Front made the same score as in the first round.
Seine-Maritime, which swings to the right, has an abstention rate of 51%. In the North, there are 53% of abstentionists and 8% of blank and invalid votes, that is to say more than 60% of the electorate who do not choose any party. And we could endlessly list the lost territories of the left where abstention flirts with 50%.
Symptomatic, the department of Lozère, the only department that tilts to the left, is one of those where abstention is the lowest in the country (31%). The left still wins when the voter has moved, but the necessary mobilization invoked by Manuel Valls throughout the campaign has not taken place.
In the past, the protesting left “voted with their feet”. It's always like that. But the feet warm now.
source: Marianne.net
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