Dissatisfaction with political class points to record numbers staying at home

6 hours ago by: Michael Stothard in Paris

Growing up in Paris’s disadvantaged eastern suburbs, 22-year-old leftwing student Sabrina Robin has long felt abandoned by the political and business elite a few miles away in the city centre.

The idea of casting her vote in France’s presidential election for Emmanuel Macron, the 39-year-old former Rothschild banker who for her embodies that system, is hard to stomach. But nor is she a fan of far-right leader Marine Le Pen.

So if, as polls suggest, the election is a choice between Ms Le Pen and Mr Macron, Ms Robin sees only one option open to her: abstain.

“Macron and his type run around Paris wearing their Louis Vuitton clothes with no idea what’s happening in the real world. I’m not sure I can give someone like that legitimacy with my vote, even if it does help Le Pen,” she says.

For voters and investors assessing the chances of a victory for Ms Le Pen and her National Front (FN), the turnout in the election, as well as the solidity of support for the candidates, is likely to prove crucial. Stay-at-home voters offer path to victory for Le Pen French election outcome depends on turnout gap between second-round contestants

This year’s election could record the highest abstention rate of any French presidential vote, with 37 per cent of people saying they plan to stay at home for the first round in April 23, according to polls. This compares with 20 per cent in the last presidential election, a sign of widespread dissatisfaction with the political class.

Regardless of how this affects the first round, it will be in the deciding run-off vote two weeks later between the two leading candidates that France’s stayaway voters could decide the election — potentially in favour of Ms Le Pen.

Latest polls show the FN leader, who has campaigned on anti-globalisation and anti-immigration platform, winning just 40 per cent of votes in the second round — short of what she needs to win.

But the loyalty of Ms Le Pen’s fan base will also come into play if Mr Macron’s vote proves less solid. Latest polls show less than two-thirds of voters who say they support Mr Macron are sure to vote in the first round compared with a figure of 83 per cent for backers of Ms Le Pen.

“The chance of a Le Pen victory is much higher than the polls indicate,” says Serge Galam, a political scientist at Sciences Po University. He believes the surveys fail to take into account the likelihood that potential second round Macron voters such as Ms Robin will abstain owing to a lack of enthusiasm.

“For many, voting Macron is like taking a bitter medicine. They know they should, but they will look for any excuse not to swallow it,” he says.

Mr Galam says that if turnout among Macron supporters is low enough, Ms Le Pen could even win the election with less than 50 per cent of the intention to vote. He said the same would hold true if centre-right candidate François Fillon contested the second round against Ms Le Pen.

According to one of his election models, a 90 per cent turnout rate for Le Pen voters on the second round, compared with 65 per cent for Macron, would give the far-right leader victory with 50.07 per cent.

Low turnout has already been a factor in other elections recently. Younger Britons, who were broadly against the UK leaving the EU, voted in slim numbers in last year’s Brexit referendum. The same was true for ethnical minorities in the US election voting for Hillary Clinton.

Léo Roussel, an agricultural worker from eastern France, is another who is unsure if he will support Mr Macron, even though he says he knows he should vote tactically to keep Ms Le Pen from power.

“I’m not saying Macron is a bad guy,” says the 42-year-old, who was attending a Paris rally to support his favoured candidate, far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon. “But he’s a millionaire financier and I’m a leftwing farmer — I don’t think I could vote for him as a point of principle.”

In past elections, a so-called “Republican front” has developed, where France’s political left and right have, when necessary, systematically united to defeat the far-right.

When Jean-Marie Le Pen, Ms Len Pen’s father and FN founder, made it to the run-off in 2002, voters turned out in droves to defeat him, with turnout rates of 80 per cent.

Some believe a similar pact will form this year. “The FN is too controversial to rally enough voters to win in the second round,” says Sylvain Broyer, chief economist at Natixis.

But this Republican front has been fraying. Latest polls reveal that millions of voters from the traditional right and left of French politics are willing to cast their ballot for Ms Le Pen in the second round if their favoured candidate is eliminated. Such is the dislike for mainstream politics, even more are said to be planning to abstain.

Mélissandre Mallee, a 24-year-old friend of Ms Robin, says there will be little enthusiasm to vote in her social circle if the second round pits Mr Macron against Ms Le Pen.

“Macron is the same as all the other politicians who went to the same schools and eat at the same restaurants . . . Most of us will probably abstain if he is the only other choice to Le Pen.”