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00:00Well, for more, we can speak to Mathieu Douaray from Ipsos Polling.
00:03Mathieu, hello to you and thank you for joining Paris Direct this weekend.
00:08Real quickly in that report, I don't know if you caught it, but we're talking about
00:11the abstention rate from those EU Parliament elections.
00:15Will we see a similar abstention rate when the first round of voting begins on June 30th?
00:23First, the abstention rate at the European elections was not particularly high for a
00:30European election.
00:31And we expect that the political tension aroused by the snap elections will probably prompt
00:40more voters to participate in those legislative elections than did in 2022, when the normal
00:49legislative elections were held after a presidential election.
00:52And we know that when legislative elections are held after a presidential election, interest
01:00is far smaller because, of course, for people, the most important election is the presidential.
01:08But I would say by default, a snap legislative election is probably the second most important
01:13to voters.
01:14Yeah.
01:15And on top of that, for our international viewers, it's worth pointing out that France
01:19has this two round voting system.
01:21So alliances become very key here.
01:24And that's what we're seeing here.
01:25We're seeing the far right leading the polls and then a left wing alliance in second place.
01:32In that previous report, we're looking at some various young people, some of them saying
01:36that the far right is no longer taboo.
01:39Is that what Ipsos sees in its polling as well?
01:44Absolutely.
01:45Twenty five percent of people under 25 voted for the national rally and the European election.
01:52And you can probably expect a similar proportion in the legislative elections.
01:58The main findings, though, is that the youngest voters, the ones under 25, are more on the
02:06left than the ones between 25 and 34, for example.
02:10That is that where the Rassemblement National, Jordan Baudelaire's party, is really particularly
02:17strong is among people who are already working, not students any longer, and particularly,
02:24of course, the ones who struggle to make ends meet.
02:28But also increasingly older people who are more reluctant to vote for the far right and
02:36also surprisingly more upper class people who were also historically more reluctant.
02:43So globally, we now have something like a catch all party.
02:48I'm wondering if we have a gender divide.
02:50We saw this well-published study earlier this year that mentioned that young men are leaning
02:57more and more conservative while young women are becoming more liberal.
03:01Today, we're going to have a protest on women's rights issues against the far right.
03:08Is that gender divide bearing out here in France as well?
03:12Yeah, absolutely.
03:15And the gender divide has been studied by Ipsos across 25 nations, and you can find
03:20it almost everywhere.
03:22It's not particularly new.
03:24Actually, the trend in France has been that Le Pen's and Baudelaire's party has been improving
03:32its scores among women because at first they had a very huge deficit among women.
03:38But of course, the mere fact that Marine Le Pen stood for candidate from 2012 has considerably
03:45increased their repeat to women.
03:47But still, there is a gap, particularly among younger people.
03:51The Popular New Front Alliance, the left-wing alliance, pulling in second place.
03:56Who are they going to have to try to lure to perhaps surprise the far right in these
04:00snap legislative elections?
04:03Actually, there is an extreme uncertainty because the electorate is almost evenly divided
04:11into three blocks.
04:13Even though Macron's party seems to be lagging far behind when you basically add up all the
04:21center-right parties, you have also one third of the electorate.
04:25So this is the worst-case scenario for pollsters because that means that we could have a lot
04:30of three-way races where basically only a few votes can make a difference.
04:36So that really makes the runoff results extremely unpredictable.
04:42And of course, a lot would depend on, I would say, the mere order of arrivals across all
04:50constituencies with very different local situations.
04:53So it's very difficult to anticipate what the future National Assembly will look like.
05:01It's almost impossible to infer seats from votes for the moment.
05:07We'll have to wait until the dust sets after the first round.
05:13Yeah, a lot of sleepless nights coming up for you, Mathieu, I'm guessing.
05:16I'm going to put you in that difficult position anyway.
05:19Let's assume the far right and the left-wing alliance make it to the second round of voting.
05:25I mean, this is a legislative election, so it depends on a seat-by-seat basis.
05:29But let's just assume that those two are the main parties moving forward.
05:34Where does that center bit of France's population, or the center-right, where do they tend to
05:39look?
05:40More to the left, or will they be lured by the far right?
05:44There is an assumption, and we will measure it very attentively in every constituency
05:50because once again, you can't make any generalization.
05:54But it's clear that there is now a likely scenario where center-right people would be
06:03more likely to vote for the far right than for the far left.
06:07But it all depends on whether they consider the local candidate to be an extremist within
06:12his or her alliance, or more of a moderate.
06:17So once again, it will also depend.
06:21If the left-wing candidate in the runoff is someone from Mélenchon's party, he or she
06:27will probably struggle to garner votes from the moderate voters.
06:32And probably, of course, the candidates the National Rally could present who would have
06:44insufficient local anchorage or a bad reputation could also struggle to garner votes from the
06:52moderate voters.
06:53But there is, for the moment, it seems that clearly the balance is tipping to the right.
06:58Yeah, a lot of uncertainty.
06:59Also a week is a political lifetime.
07:01Matthew, I hope we can have you back to help us make sense of whatever round one's results are.
07:05Thank you very much.
07:06Matthew Duare from Ipsos.