The argument keeps coming back when Eric Zemmour’s supporters speak, in the home stretch of this presidential campaign. According to them, there is a hidden vote in favor of the Reconquest! candidate, whose real level in public opinion is underestimated. “The Eiffel Tower salutes France for the hidden vote! It is beautiful, the revenge of the Trocadéro right”declared Philippe de Villiers at the podium of the Parisian esplanade, Sunday March 27, before the meeting of the far-right candidate.
Eric Zemmour is not the first candidate whose teams claim a hidden vote capable of creating surprise. Nicolas Sarkozy in 2012 and François Fillon in 2017 had already suggested biases in opinion polls. The two right-wing candidates had also brought this idea to the Trocadero esplanade, in order to remobilize their troops in the face of bad polls. “When a candidate starts talking about a hidden vote, it’s not good news”comments the pollster Brice Teinturier, who heads the Ipsos institute.
“It’s a sign of worry or restlessness.”
Brice Teinturier, Deputy CEO of Ipsosat franceinfo
The supporters of Eric Zemmour, they refute any breathlessness of the campaign and speak of a dynamic poorly measured by opinion polls. “There is something happening elsewhere than in the polls and that is why we have a lot of confidence in this second round.“, explained Bertrand de La Chesnais, campaign director of Eric Zemmour, Sunday March 27, after the meeting of his candidate. “At each event, at each meeting, at each meeting around our candidate, we are the ones who have brought together the most people since the start of this presidential campaign”supports Senator Sébastien Meurant, who recently left Les Républicains to join the far-right candidate.
The pollsters questioned by franceinfo affirm for their part that the dynamic claimed by the supporters of Eric Zemmour is well taken into account. “We don’t really have any evidence to show us that there is a hidden vote for him”believes Mathieu Gallard, director of studies at the Ipsos institute. “I think it’s a rather very claimed vote, we saw it on Sunday.”
“I don’t have the impression that all these French people present at the Trocadero were ashamed to show that they were going to vote for Eric Zemmour.”
Mathieu Gallard, research director at Ipsosat franceinfo
On the side of the candidate’s relatives, we do not hesitate to question the polls, which would underestimate the chances of the former polemicist. “Many pollsters officially recognize that it is complicated to know how the electorate of Eric Zemmour really behaves. It is normal, he is a new man who, thanks to his civilizational project, breaks completely with political parties traditional”says Dénis Cieslik, spokesperson for Reconquête!.
“In the polls, there is a rule of weighting in relation to the candidate’s history. However, there is no history.”
Bertrand de La Chesnais, campaign director for Eric Zemmourat franceinfo
In parallel with this supposed hidden vote for Eric Zemmour, his supporters put forward a “inflated vote for Marine Le Pen”. For Dénis Cieslik, the candidate of the National Rally would be overvalued in the polls. “In 2017, the polling institutes gave it much higher and in the regional elections: the National Rally had to win at least four regions and it ultimately won none”tackle this close to Eric Zemmour.
According to Brice Teinturier, a technical change nevertheless allows “from a decade” to transcribe more faithfully the reality of opinions. “From now on, with online surveys rather than by telephone, there is no longer a psychologizing relationship where we would not dare say that we are voting for such and such a candidate. I do not believe in the idea of a hidden vote in the sense of a hidden vote”judges the sounder, who observes a “complete disinhibition of opinions” from a decade. This excludes, according to him, any under-declaration in favor of a candidate.
Other supporters of the candidate rely on polling errors for Brexit in the United Kingdom in June 2016 and the election of Donald Trump in the United States in November of that year. “For Brexit, there was a problem of differential mobilization according to the pro and anti-Brexit electorates and, for Donald Trump, segments of the population were not perfectly integrated” in opinion polls before the vote, recalls Brice Teinturier.
The pollster wants to be cautious for the presidential election: “We must not exclude the possibility of having, in our samples, biases of representativenesshe notes. But, if we had identified any sampling problem [la manière dont les sondés sont sélectionnés]we would have corrected it.”