An abstention rate of more than 55% and significant gains by the far-right Front National party were the key results of the first round of local elections held across France on Sunday to elect members of the regional councils that manage the country's 100 départements, the administrative regions which are broadly the equivalent of a county.
The Front National garnered more than 15% of votes cast, less than two percent adrift of the vote for President Nicolas Sarkozy's ruling conservative right UMP party which totaled just under 17% (16.97%). The opposition Socialist Party, with just under 25% (24.94%) of the vote, took top position.
It was a severe defeat for the president's supporters, and confirmed the recent steep rise in support for the Front National (FN), which opinion surveys have predicted could pose a major threat to Sarkozy in next year's presidential elections. But, as Stéphane Allièsand Lénaig Bredouxreport here, the left had surprisingly little to rejoice over.
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Sunday's poll was the first of two rounds, the second due next Sunday, in which could broadly be called county council elections. With 21 million voters called to the urns, these partial local elections represent the last political test before presidential elections in May 2012.
They are held to elect councilors onto the regional assemblies that manage France's 100 départements. Each département is divided up into electoral constituencies called cantons, and which total 4,039 nationwide. Just more than half - 2,026 cantons - are involved in the current elections.
Under two-round voting system, only candidates who attract more than 50% of the vote in the first round are immediately elected. That event is extremely rare, and almost all of the elections head into a second round play-off between those candidates who attracted a score equivalent to more than 12.5% of the number of registered voters (as opposed to votes cast). In practice, this means most second (and final) round voting is a match between two candidates.
The first-round scores on Sunday saw the far-right Front National (FN) strike significant scores in many cantons, with its candidates heading for a second-round showdown in more than 400 constituencies. In many of these it will be the only party of the right to face a candidate of the left, mostly representatives of the Socialist Party (PS).
A major test of the attitudes of the mainstream right electorate will be played out in these cantons where candidates from President Nicolas Sarkozy’s ruling conservative right UMP party were eliminated in the first round. In a speech on Monday, Sarkozy refused to call upon his supporters to block the FN by voting for the PS in the spirit of a front républicain (a republican, or democratic, front). The dilemma has caused a split among his own ranks, with several centre-right and UMP figures arguing for a vote against the FN even if this means electing a candidate from the opposition left. The issue is made all the acute given the 55.6% national average abstention rate registered in Sunday’s elections.
This call for a front républicain is, in a reverse situation, precisely what happened in presidential elections in 2002, when Jacques Chirac faced then-FN leader Jean-Marie Le Pen in a second round knock-out vote; then, the mainstream left, led by the PS, called on its supporters to vote for conservative right candidate Chirac in order to eliminate any chance of Le Pen winning the election1.
While the stakes in the cantonal elections are clearly less dramatic, the massive abstention rate, the rise of the far-right and the consequences of the FN establishing itself in local political assemblies saw the main parties of the left call an urgently convened joint press conference after Sunday’s polling.
On a barge on the river Seine, close to the PS headquarters on the rue de Solférino in the heart of Paris, PS first secretary Martine Aubry, Europe-Ecologie-Les Verts (EELV) green alliance leader Cécile Duflot and Communist Party (PC) national secretary Pierre Laurent all gravely spoke of the "urgency" and "responsibility" for the left in uniting against the FN next Sunday.
The three appealed to their electorate to turn out en masse next Sunday to counter the FN vote, which they described as a sign of "the desperation" into which the French electorate has sunk. "We are together tonight, which is not a regular occurrence, because we have a major responsibility," commented Martine Aubry.
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1: The first round of the 2002 presidential elections saw the vote on the left split among candidates at the expense of the chief contender, Socialist Party candidate and outgoing prime minister, Lionel Jospin. As a result, he scored just 16.18% of the vote in the first round, from which only the leading two candidates emerge for the final second-round play-off. Jospin was third placed, behind conservative right candidate Jacques Chirac (19.88%) and Front National leader Jean Marie Le Pen (16.86%). The socialists called upon their supporters to vote for Chirac in the second round against Le Pen. Chirac was elected president with an unprecedented 82.21% share of the vote.
'You cannot fight the FN with gestures'
The left is alarmed at the two key factors to emerge from Sunday's vote, and which were nevertheless widely predicted. One is the 55.6% average abstention rate recorded on Sunday, the highest ever in cantonal elections, and which reached as much as 70% in some of the working class, low-income areas, like the Seine-Saint-Denis département, which represent the traditional support bases for the left. The other is the significant rise in support for the far-right Front National party in several of those left-wing bastions, where it replaced the mainstream right as main opponent to the left, and which even reached as much as 30% of the votes cast, notably in the northern town of Roubaix.
Other results underlined further concerns; in Marseille, in the Notre-Dame-du-Mont canton, the parties of the left accounted for the large majority of all votes cast. But this was so divided and diluted between them (Socialist party, Greens and the Front de gauche) that they were eliminated from next week's second round knock-out poll in favour of the Front National and the UMP, whose candidates each individually attracted more support than any of the others.
"The very high abstention rate is worrying," read a communiqué released Sunday by the Front de gauche, a radical left alliance that includes the French Communist Party and the Parti de gauche, created in 2008 by a breakaway movement of Socialist party left-wingers. "It expresses the gulf that now separates the French public from the institutions that represent them," the text continued. "The profound democratic crisis in our country has become visible for everyone."
The Socialist Party attracted 24.94% of the national vote, and the independent left candidates with which it was allied claimed a further 6%. But while the PS stand to lose none of the councils of any of the départements which it controlled before Sunday's poll, it can now only reasonably hope to win three of the eight it previously saw within its grasp. These are the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, the Jura and the Loire.
While many results next week in those cantons where a second round play-off will pitch a PS candidate against the FN remain uncertain, there is also no certainty either about what will be the attitude among a section of green supporters in cantons where only the PS among candidates of the left has reached the second round against the UMP.
The major green force, the EELV alliance, succeeded in confirming the continued momentum of its newly-founded electoral base, averaging 8.2% of all the vote, despite being represented in only 70% of the cantons concerned. Concerning only the cantons where they stood, they averaged 12% of votes cast. The alliance now predicts it will see some 50 councilors elected in the second round next weekend, when many will face off against a PS opponent. "There was no Japan effect, as some reproached us with, just an implantation of political ecology that continues on a local basis," commented EELV election secretary Jean-Marc Brûlé.
The Front de gauche alliance, present in 80% of the cantons, came close to a double figure score, with 9.5% of all votes cast. Most of this was down to support for the Communist Party candidates (about 7.9% of votes cast). The communists expect to hold on to control of the two départements in their control, the Val-de-Marne near Paris, and the Allier, in central France.
Meanwhile, the Sunday evening call launched by Aubry, Duflot and Laurent for a broad left movement of solidarity next weekend ran into some sharp criticism from some to whom it was addressed. "It was not a common declaration, there is no common programme any more than there is a solidarity of the left," said Europe-Ecologie Euro MP Yannick Jadot. "The response to the Front National can no longer be limited to doing the habitual thing of calling for a rally."
His words were echoed by Alexis Corbière, a joint national secretary of the Parti de gauche, part of the Front de gauche alliance. "The political conditions are not for the moment present in order to sit for a family photograph that appears above all to be a communications operation, " he said. "You cannot fight the FN with gestures and hasty party agreements."
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English version: Graham Tearse