Book. An outdated self-discipline, electoral cartography, since not less than the sociologist André Siegfried (1875-1959) and his Political image of Western France underneath the Third Republic (Armand Colin, 1913), is of curiosity to all these, voters, strategists or commentators, who attempt to unravel the thriller of the poll field. As the 2027 presidential election approaches, mapping votes additionally means dispelling misunderstandings that may gas political narratives.
With their New electoral cartography of France (Text, 304 pages, 24 euros), economist Youssef Souidi and editor Thomas Vonderscher obtain an unsurpassable degree of precision in quantitative evaluation. Inspired by the work of economists Julia Cagé and Thomas Piketty, who explored the municipal degree from 1789 to 2022 in A historical past of political battle (Seuil, 2023), they cross the outcomes of some 70,000 polling stations in France with social knowledge from INSEE, for a portrait with the best granularity.
If political discourse periodically revolves across the concept of deep geographical divides, this new cartography makes it attainable to nuance the discourse on the archipelagos, to explain an voters within the midst of change. A brand new political panorama is rising, marked by the tip of the bulk rule and a tripartition which appears established, even when the Macronist electoral base appears to have turn out to be very fragile.
Four “swing circos”
The authors are betting on “be interested in how voters live and not stop to wonder where they live”which permits them specifically to attract up a exact portrait of the voters of the National Rally (RN). The far proper now appeals to a major a part of the center class. But the RN vote is anchored much less in territories (the countryside, the outskirts of medium-sized cities) than in a set of residing circumstances, marked by the gap from on a regular basis providers. The selection of the far-right candidate is essentially made in polling stations the place residents don’t have any each day expertise of cohabitation with immigrant populations.
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