Edwige Diaz and Grégoire de Fournas are entering the National Assembly this Wednesday, alongside Marine Le Pen. These two deputies of the National Rally are the first elected since 1986, in Gironde, respectively in Blayais and Médoc. Seats won, from the point of view of Edwige Diaz, thanks to the strategy of Marine Le Pen, initiated when she arrived at the controls of the movement, ten years ago.
“She had said priority to local establishment. The elected officials we have today did not arrive by chance. Grégoire and I are well identified in our sectors, ”comments the president of the Rassemblement National de la Nouvelle-Aquitaine group, the day after her election.
Not a push for the RN
An analysis that does not share Vincent Tiberj, sociologist researcher at the Center Emile Durkheim and research delegate of Sciences po Bordeaux, specializing in the analysis of electoral and political behavior in France, Europe and the United States. “There are few activists in the Médoc, for example, these are not the victories of a powerful partisan organization but victories by default, he believes. There is not a push in favor of the RN but a very clear division between the other alternatives facing the RN, that’s the real intelligence. He recalls that at the national level, two-thirds of the workers did not turn out to vote, a figure which makes it impossible to speak of a popular vote in favor of the far-right party.
The scores of the candidates are also to be put into perspective with an abstention of 50%. Thus 25,410 registrants voted for Edwige Diaz out of a total of 98,743 registrants. And 21,710 registered voters moved for Grégoire de Fournas, when 120,999 voters appear on the lists. “The legislative ones mobilize minorities, points out the specialist. In the case of the RN, it is a minority that has mobilized a little more than the others. »
“A crumbled Republican front”
The other point that played in favor of the far-right party is the vagueness of the voting instructions before the second round. “It is not specific to the Gironde but to this election. The camp excluded from the second round, had a lot of trouble being in a Republican vote logic, analyzes Vincent Tiberj. It is the product of the LREM campaign which played on a logic of equivalence between the Nupes and the RN, or even which suggested that the Nupes was even more dangerous than the RN. »
In Blayais, left-wing voters did not mobilize in favor of the presidential majority. “We suggested that their candidate had a problem of republicanism, do you, under these conditions, want to mobilize to block the RN? “says the sociologist. And in the Médoc, the LREM electorate did not turn to Nupes because there was no call to block the RN, as during the presidential election. “It is not played much but it is enough for the RN to manage to recover two deputies”, he summarizes. Their election would have nothing to do with a rise in power of the far-right party but is explained according to Vincent Tiberj by “a crumbled republican front”.
Features conducive to RN voting
The vote for the far right has existed in the Blayais and the Médoc since the 1990s. It was in these sectors that Chasse Pêche Nature et Traditions (CPNT) had its best scores in Gironde at the end of the 20th century. “We see from the 2000s that the CPNT vote is evolving towards the RN vote”, points out the sociologist. “Of course not all hunters are in the RN but, behind hunting there is a culture of a certain relationship to nature, he develops. There is a polarization on these questions of the environment, of uses of nature (which oppose cyclists and motorists for example). And, all that is attached to a system of ideologies, of values. »
These two rural districts are also part of the poverty “corridor” (identified by INSEE, from the tip of the Médoc to Agen) and the resulting social polarization in relation to large cities. In this electorate, we also find “people who flee the city, who have a dream of home ownership and the desire to be in between themselves, between people of good company, points out the researcher. We observe a strong triangular consciousness, those above, those below and the assisted, those we don’t want. »