Let’s go back to a traditional expression of electoral campaigns: the “useful vote“. A way of calling on voters, and particularly left-wing voters, to vote strategically for the best-placed candidate to enter the second round. Except that this time, for the first time, the useful vote could be… Jean-Luc Mélenchon. At least if we are to believe Ségolène Royal, who estimated on BFMTV on Wednesday that he was, among other compliments, “the most solid”. A real crown of laurels for Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who is obviously adorned with all the qualities, and would therefore, from now on, be the new avatar of the useful vote.
But does this statement really have any weight in the political debate? Probably. To understand it, we must go back to the roots of this expression. Before the presidential election of 2002, it was hardly used: 39 uses only in the press between September 2001 and April 2002, according to the calculations of researcher Mathias Reymond. And then, the earthquake that we know: penalized by a dispersion of votes between the various left-wing candidates, Lionel Jospin was eliminated in the first round of the presidential election. It was following this event that the “useful vote” became a central element of political debate: more than 1,000 occurrences in the press during the 2007 and 2012 campaigns, and up to 1,500 during that of 2017.
The expression is almost exclusively used to analyze the leftist vote. Traditionally, candidates on the right are fewer, voters less fragmented, and strategic voting therefore makes less sense. On the left, on the other hand, where the trauma of 2002 remains vivid and the candidates plethoric, it plays full … and always in favor of social democracy.
In 2007 and 2012, it was Ségolène Royal and then François Hollande who claimed it, to block the National Front. And in 2017, as Benoit Hamon plunged in the polls, it was Emmanuel Macron who had gradually established himself as the most rational vote to ensure that “left“, or what was perceived as such at the time, is not eliminated in the first round. Conversely, Jean-Luc Mélenchon has constantly fulminated against the calls for a useful vote, which he described as “straitjacket“ in 2012. This is why it is not insignificant that Ségolène Royal, figure of social democracy, former presidential candidate having herself been assimilated to the useful vote, now uses this expression to qualify the candidate France insubordinate.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon does not now call for a useful vote in his favour: it would be difficult to do so without changing his mind. For several weeks, rebellious France, leading in the polls on the left, claimed for its benefit a “effective voting“. It was, of course, a mere rhetorical strategy of substitution, to avoid being caught in the act of contradiction. But what is interesting is that this substitution has a price: the “effective voting“which is a recent invention, does not have the same mobilizing power as that enjoyed by the “useful vote”, at least in the minds of some left-wing voters.
Should we see a turning point in the campaign? Let’s not exaggerate: for the moment, it remains around 10% in the polls. But if other analysts follow in Ségolène Royal’s footsteps, and if Jean-Luc Mélenchon does manage to establish himself as the new incarnation of the useful vote on the left, this could be a turning point. So goes rhetoric: certain words carry within them such evocations that they actually come to confer power on whoever manages to invoke them.