Presidential 2022: the electorate of Eric Zemmour dissected by two studies – The HuffPost

Eric Gaillard / Reuters

POLITICS – It is only on paper that Eric Zemmour is not (yet) a candidate for the election presidential. His agenda, his conferences meeting style and its programmatic test balls leave little room for doubt as to its intentions. This is also how the French understood it. This Wednesday, October 27, the Jean-Jaurès Foundation is publishing a report which studies in depth the motivations behind the candidacy of the polemicist, in the light of the sociological and electoral data collected by Ipsos Sopra-Steria in partnership with The world and Cevipof-Sciences Po.

A study that comes just a few days after a note published by Ifop, proposing a “radioscopy of a new national-populist electorate” that the essayist aspires to capture. These two publications have in common that they polled a larger panel than usual: 5,025 people for Ifop and 16,000 potential voters for Ipsos. This makes it possible to obtain more solid data than a classic poll of voting intentions which generally brings together between 1000 and 1500 respondents. A first major observation emerges: Éric Zemmour has a solid base.

A compact and determined electorate

With a positioning at the crossroads of the National Rally and Republicans, Eric Zemmour manages to bring together several categories of the population, achieving scores “relatively close regardless of the age of voters, from 13% among those under thirty-five to 17% among those over sixty ”, writes the Jean-Jaurès Foundation, which adds:“ it achieves relatively similar scores also between the main professions, from 14% among CSP + to 16% among CSP-: this gap of 2 points culminating at 18 points for Marine Le Pen ”.

Homogeneity also measured by Ifop. “Today, the television host receives nearly as many votes among workers (14%) as among executives and higher intellectual professions (16%), just as he obtains roughly the same score among holders of a 2nd cycle (14%) than among voters without the bac ”, notes this study carried out for Licra. In other words: a certain electoral base which contradicts the hypothesis of a “poll bubble” on which the putative candidate would artificially surf.

Especially since his electorate appears very determined. For Ifop, 64% of Eric Zemmour voters say they are sure of their choices. Which is close to those of Jean-Luc Mélenchon (63%) or Emmanuel Macron (66%). With Ipsos, the Jean-Jaurès Foundation emphasizes that “57% of his voters think he will be qualified for the second round and elected” and that “83% of them believe that he has the makings of a president of the Republic”. This shows a particularly strong membership rate.

Priority to Islam and immigration

Do you find that Eric Zemmour is doing too much about Islam and immigration? He has, in reality, no reason to stop, as these themes impress on his potential voters. “Their only concern is immigration (75%) and delinquency (51%) – respectively 46 points and 24 points above the average – conversely, they do not attach much importance to the environment (12%) or social inequalities (7%). They believe 96% that Islam is a threat to the Republic and 98% that France must be further closed in terms of migration ”, observes the Jean-Jaurès Foundation.

Same observation on the side of Ifop, which makes a comparison with the electorate of Marine Le Pen. “If they are both characterized by a much higher than average sensitivity to questions of the fight against delinquency, terrorism or illegal immigration, the Zemmour electorate is even more polarized by these themes. Social issues such as the fight against unemployment or the increase in purchasing power are on the other hand much less present in the motivations of the Zemmourian electorate than the penist ”, explains the polling institute. This allows us to observe from a different perspective the political divide that is expressed between Éric Zemmour and Marine Le Pen about purchasing power.

“Gender gap” and other limits

If the quasi-candidate can boast of having solid foundations, he still has serious limits. First difficulty, what the Anglo-Saxons call the “Radical Right Gender Gap”, Or the lack of support that the far right arouses among the female electorate. Unsurprisingly, the author of First sex (Ed. Denoël) shows a serious deficit on the vote for women, unlike Marine Le Pen who had succeeded in 2017 in overcoming this obstacle.

As shown in the graph below (Jean-Jaurès Foundation), the under-representation of women is glaring in the Zemmour electorate, and more particularly among French women under 35, who are only 8.2% to support it. (10 points less than men of the same age). A real difficulty for Eric Zemmour, who continues to say “Against parity” by even promising to reconsider the law which consecrates it, which would amount to making a constitutional revision, since article 1 of the Constitution establishes that “the law favors the equal access of women and men to electoral mandates and elective functions , as well as professional and social responsibilities ”.

Graph produced by the Jean-Jaurès Foundation on Ipsos data

This is not the only difficulty facing the quasi-candidate. Among the other weaknesses measured at this instant T, a sort of ceiling in its ability to siphon off from its competitors, and more precisely from the candidate RN. “At 57%, the voters of Marine Le Pen approve the idea that” to establish social justice, it is necessary to take from the rich to give to the poor “- in exactly the same proportions, the voters of Eric Zemmour think the opposite” , notes the Jean-Jaurès Foundation.

A phenomenon also measured by Ifop. “Given the more liberal positioning of the journalist from Figaro on economic issues, Eric Zemmour fails to capture the most popular fringe of lepenism: the RN candidate manages to keep most of her former workers (74%) or employees (71%) in her lap ” , observes the polling institute. Another mechanism that could constitute a limit, a sort of distorting mirror linked to the specificity of its electorate, which has a large proportion of “political addicts” to use the expression of the Foundation.

“Almost a quarter (23%) of those who say they are very interested in politics choose him as a candidate, against only 9% of those who say on the contrary that they are not interested in politics”, note the authors, who warn: “this may also explain why the dynamic of the polemicist is so favorable at the moment, where the citizens less interested in politics do not yet express a clear intention to vote because they are not interested in it. ‘election”. In summary, an over-representation of the Zemmourian vote in the various polls published by the press in recent days would not be surprising.

Eric Zemmour, who should formalize his candidacy in early November, will he succeed in consolidating and expanding his base by overcoming these difficulties? Even if he succeeds, the competition will remain complicated for the polemicist. According to Ipsos data, 70% of French people believe that he does not have the makings of a President of the Republic (ten points behind Marine Le Pen) and 71% that he does not give a good image of France internationally: “on these two questions, it is the one of all the candidates who achieves the worst performances”.

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