Sunday’s second round of the regional elections in France provides us with a mixed picture of the state of French politics. A week previously, in the first round, the Front National (FN) was ahead in 6 out of 13 metropolitan regions. In the end, it failed to win a majority in a single regional council. Les Républicains (centre right) won seven regions, the Socialist Party (PS) and its allies won in five regions, and nationalists won in Corsica for the first time, although they are two seats short of a majority. There are however few reasons for the traditional parties to rejoice.
French regional elections are the very definition of second-order elections: the issues dominating the campaign are mostly national, the governing party tends to do poorly, opposition or smaller parties tend to see their results improve from past national elections, and turnout is lower than in presidential or parliamentary elections. These elections were also new, as many voters found themselves voting in new, larger regions after the 2015 territorial reform that saw the number of metropolitan regions go from 22 to 13.
French parties tend to see all elections between presidential and parliamentary elections as popularity tests and as electoral health checks ahead of the next presidential elections. In this instance, the fact that Marine Le Pen, the leader of the FN since 2011, chose to be the lead candidate in the new Nord-Pas-de-Calais Picardie region was always going to make this election about more than lycées and regional investment and transport. Likewise the return of Nicolas Sarkozy as leader of Les Républicains (the party formerly known as the UMP) has also turned this election into a test of his popularity and of his strategy ahead of the 2017 presidential elections.
Finally, the November 13 terrorist attacks have derailed all campaigns, which were briefly suspended, and focused the parties’ attention on terrorism, security, Islam, immigration and integration, issues that are very much outside of the regions’ areas of competences.
Turnout in regional elections is systematically lower than in presidential elections but sometimes comparable to that in parliamentary elections, which has been in decline since the turn of the century. Turnout in the first round was 49.9%, just like in the March 2015 departmental elections, but it increased to 58.5% in the second round. Turnout is usually similar between the first and second rounds of election; the only precedent of a similar increase is in 2002, when Jean-Marie Le Pen made it to the second round of the presidential elections. This suggests that the likelihood of the FN winning an election mobilises voters.
The results first show that the FN consolidated its presence beyond its heartlands of the North and East-South East. Although it was expected to come first in at least three regions in the first round, the FN came first in six regions (Alsace Champagne-Ardenne Lorraine, Bourgogne Franche-Comté, Centre Val-de-Loire, Languedoc-Roussillon Midi-Pyrénées, Nord-Pas-de-Calais Picardie, Provence-Alpes-Côte-d’Azur) and second in a further two. Some tactical voting, the withdrawal of the PS lists in Nord-Pas-de-Calais Picardie and Provence-Alpes-Côte-d’Azur (the PS head of list refused to withdraw his list in Alsace) and an electoral system that provides a bonus to the first party in the second round hindered its progress in the second round, although it will have councillors in each and every one of the regional councils.
Even though Marine Le Pen will be disappointed by her party’s failure to gain a single regional council (and in particular by her own failure), she can still find comfort in the second round results. Even though the FN’s share of the vote decreased in every region, its number of votes increased in all but two regions (the two exceptions are Ile-de-France and Corsica). In four of these regions (Alsace, Nord, Paca, and MPLR) the FN list managed to attract over a 100,000 more voters than in the first round. Louis Aliot won 175,000 more votes in the second round than in the first in MPLR (South and South West), and Marion Maréchal-Le Pen won 166,000 more votes in Paca (South East). This shows that the increased turnout is not simply a sign of mobilisation against the FN. In addition, the withdrawal of the PS list in two regions will allow Le Pen to maintain the line that her party is the only ‘outsider’ party against traditional parties that rig the system to serve their own interests.
These results should be a sobering read for the main parties, who should not dwell too much on the positives. For the Socialist Party, these elections are not a complete disaster. They have retained five regions, but the party lost all representation in the North and Paca, which have traditionally been two of its strongholds and its two strongest federations. Hollande’s work to build the party locally, which led to the 2004 and 2010 regional landslides, when the party won 20 and 21 of the 22 regions respectively, has been undone, and the party finished the first round in third position in seven regions. Hollande’s popularity increased a little in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, but unemployment, on which he wanted his mandate to be judged, is still stubbornly rising, a fact that few voters will have forgotten come 2017. If these results were to be repeated in the next presidential elections, Hollande would not make it to the second round.
For Nicolas Sarkozy and Les Républicains, this election marks their return at the helm of a number of regions that they had lost in 2004. However, with a consistently unpopular president, increasing unemployment and Islamic terrorism, the centre right (LR and their allies of the UDI) should have done better. Sarkozy’s campaign focused on immigration and security in the hope of attracting FN voters, but this strategy seems to have failed and the party only came first in four regions in the first round. Sarkozy’s claim that voting for the FN or the PS was the same thing was also criticised by a number of leading UMP moderates, who question Sarkozy’s strategy to look for voters on the right of the party. One of these critics, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet has already been removed from her position as deputy leader. Les Républicains will now turn their attention to the forthcoming primary to designate the candidate for the presidential election, and Sarkozy is no longer the domineering figure he used to be on the right. His rivals have already started to question a strategy that led to his defeat in the 2012 presidential election, has yielded mixed results in these elections and has failed to slow down the progression of the FN.
As the new regional councils start their work in January, little will change in policy terms, but the FN will be the main opposition in four regions, having built on its previous successes in local elections. However, none of this means that France is heading towards a Le Pen presidency, as there is enough opposition to defeat her in a second round. For the main parties, a battle for second place against the FN starts as they start to focus on the 2017 presidential elections. With a political class that remains entrenched in its elitism and fails to renew itself (it is one of the oldest political classes in Europe and the ‘cumul des mandats’ – double jobbing – remains endemic), the PS and Les Républicains will have to work hard on their project if they hope to counter the rise and rise of Marine Le Pen and the Front National.
Elodie Fabre is Lecturer in Politics and International Studies at Queen’s University Belfast. She tweets @EloFabre.
Image: Marie-Lan Nguyen
