2024-07-03 | Nine pouets on the cracks of the Republican dam in France

You get the impression that the Republican dam is cracking. You're not wrong! Have you noticed the small cracks running through it? These regular movements over the last 30 years of candidates moving from “Republican” parties to the far right. Here, we take a closer look! 1/n
https://laviedesidees.fr/Les-fissures-de-la-digue-republicaine?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon

And for that, we have data: 1,600,000 candidacies found on data.gouv since 1993. With hard work, sleepless nights, and headaches to solve homonymy issues, we managed to isolate 460,000 renewals of candidacies from 300,000 candidates. 2/n

These transfers are rare: 0.76% of candidates from the “Republican arc” renew their candidacy on the far right, including 0.37% in the FN-RN. This is less than in the PS and the RPR-UMP-LR. But it has been increasing in the 2010s, particularly in the cantonal elections. 3/n
 
 

The candidates who make the transition tend to be men, under 40 or over 70. They rarely come from the public sector and often from the “boutique.” Here, the Marxist hypothesis of a penchant of the petty bourgeoisie for the far right holds sway. 4/n

 
Surprise, surprise! The candidates who are switching sides do not come from the left, nor even from the far left. So there is no convergence of extremes. They come mainly from the right and from diverse backgrounds: diverse right, diverse left, diverse center... 5/n

And we can understand them. The candidates who are transitioning did not do very well in previous elections. They scored low, were placed at the bottom of the list, and were rarely elected. 6/n

 
And they are doubling their scores by taking the plunge! Well... doubling if they go to the FN-RN. On the other hand, in the other far-right movements (Patriots, MNR, DLF, ReC), no such luck: their scores are divided by 1.3. 7/n

We stopped in 2023 due to lack of time. We only saw small cracks, but they foreshadowed the remarkable breach in the current elections. 63 LR candidates joined forces with the FN-RN, representing 17% of LR candidates! 8/n