Yannick Jadot and Sandrine Rousseau will face each other in the second round of the environmentalist primary. Yannick Jadot, given favorite because of his much stronger notoriety, obtained this Sunday in the first round only 27% of the votes against 25% for Sandrine Rousseau and his more radical eco-feminist proposal. Delphine Batho, on a decreasing line, and Eric Piolle, the mayor of Grenoble, are not so far either, at 22%. Their voting instructions could be decisive. 20 minutes asked Daniel Boy, a political scientist specializing in political ecology and director of research at Cevipof, for his on-the-spot analysis of the results which he considers “astounding”.
Yannick Jadot is in the lead but with his notoriety, we could imagine that he could kill the match a little more …
Yes of course. In my opinion, for the second round, he is rather in danger and it is a bit of a surprise. It still means that we have a green electorate more to the left than we imagined. We had said that with 122,000 people we would rather be on a consensual ecology, etc. Not at all. That was the mistake: we have a very divided electoral body which leans quite a bit to the left. If we add Rousseau, Piolle and Batho, that’s a lot and they are all more to the left than Jadot.
The second round which arrives promises to be quite difficult for Jadot. We come back to the party: it is true that Yannick Jadot was far from being in the majority and even in a primary with more than 100,000 voters, the voters are ultimately not so far from the party. One could wonder if at 122,000 registered, they would be like at 12,000. No, they’re not the same, but not that much and that’s a surprise.
On the side of Sandrine Rousseau, it is true that we had felt during the campaign that there was a dynamic around her. Can she really win in the second round?
It’s a real question because it has a more left-wing image but also more eco-feminist. And despite that she made a completely astonishing score. For me, it’s absolutely unpredictable but I still have the impression that it is rather she who could win. In any case on paper, before seeing the voting instructions and the campaign.
Another surprise, we did not necessarily expect Delphine Batho, on a decreasing line, to come third at 22%. Is radicalism here too attractive?
It’s damn interesting to see Delphine Batho, who is not in the party, who even comes from the Socialist Party, do more than 22% on the theme of degrowth. This means something because even in the texts of the ecological congress the word “degrowth” did not exist, they do not speak of it. We saw clearly during the debate that when Delphine Batho spoke of degrowth, the others were not very enthusiastic. Well it represents 22%. This means that not only is the party very anchored on the left (that we knew), but that its close sympathizers are too.
It’s very tight, but Eric Piolle is still fourth, only. He has long been given in the media as Yannick Jadot’s great rival. Did he miss his campaign?
It is true that the fact that he is even behind Delphine Batho is astonishing. He did a local campaign and in my opinion it is not a very good idea for a presidential election. I found that during the debates on television he defended himself rather well. But maybe at bottom he didn’t represent a particular cleavage, except that he was on the left but all were except Jadot and Governatori. Rousseau and Batho each embodied a particular cleavage. To one eco-feminism, to the other degrowth. Putting these two things forward propelled them a little more than what appeared to be “just green”. He did not have a clear identity.
Should Yannick Jadot present himself as the one who can really score in the presidential election or is it already this positioning that did not work in the first round of the primary?
This is his real argument, but it is more difficult to put forward now. He could do like Nicolas Hulot in 2012 and do everything to say “more to the left than me, you die”. He will have to go to the left of the left to show that he is as on the left as Sandrine Rousseau. He cannot play on his presidential image at all.
That said, the activists will perhaps wonder if with Sandrine Rousseau they can exceed 5%. To tell the truth, I don’t know. What does what we see here at the level of 100,000 people mean at the national level, with obviously a feminist electorate who propelled Sandrine Rousseau? I do not know. Is there a feminist movement, not an eco feminist in the narrow sense, but a movement for the defense of very strong feminist values in France, which would ensure that if she were a candidate, Sandrine Rousseau would exceed 5%? Frankly, who can say after this primary?