Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s plan to capture the “useful vote” on the left

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In December he foresaw a “mouse hole” to reach the final of the presidential election, before imagining, in mid-January, in “election turtle, sagacious”. “There is no point in running, you have to start on time”, he prophesied before his family three months before the ballot, taking up the moral of the famous fable by La Fontaine. What do animal metaphors matter: three weeks before the first round, Jean-Luc Mélenchon has benefited from favorable polls for a month and a half. The candidate of La France insoumise, who is organizing his “march for the Sixth Republic” in Paris on Sunday March 20, now firmly believes in a qualification in the second round of his third and (probably) last presidential adventure.

The ambition was already there in 2017, when he failed at the gates of the second round. “About 600,000 votes”grumbled the deputy of Bouches-du-Rhône after a very good dynamic in the last weeks of the campaign. “Is the scenario going to repeat itself? At the timeremembers political scientist Rémi Lefebvre, he had broken into public opinion thanks to televised debates. Then he took off in two ways: by siphoning off the socialist vote and by seeking voters distant from politics. Five years later, the Insoumis are aiming for the same objective.

However, the situation is slightly different. First, there will be no televised debate between the candidates until April 10. Then, from the communists to the social democrats, the left is even more fragmented in 2022. If he had only one socialist and two representatives of the far left in front of him in 2017, Jean-Luc Mélenchon must this time outdistance more than five competitors to win his bet. He must deal with the presence of the communist Fabien Roussel. “Of 100 voters of Jean-Luc Mélenchon in 2017, 10% vote for Fabien Roussel, which is not negligible”explained Brice Teinturier, Deputy CEO of the Ipsos Institute, Saturday March 12 on franceinfo.

But the will to win remains intact, omnipresent, ferocious. The argument is deployed tirelessly by all the rebels, from executives to activists: the Mélenchon bulletin would be the only one capable of sending the left to the second round. An opinion shared beyond Melenchonist circles: “Today, it is obvious that the useful vote on the left is the Mélenchon vote”thus launched Ségolène Royal in February. “We don’t like the expression because it implies that there are useless votes”corrects Alexis Corbière, LFI deputy for Seine-Saint-Denis. “We prefer effective voting.”

Let them call it“useful” or“effective”the leaders of La France insoumise are pleased to have imposed the debate on the interest of the Mélenchon vote to take the left until April 24th. “We entered the storytelling of the second round, it was not won”breathes MP Clémentine Autain.

“We had to wake up the people on the left by telling them that a second round between Macron and Mélenchon is not the same atmosphere in the country.”

Clémentine Autain, MP LFI

at franceinfo

Neck and neck to be the third man in the polls, Jean-Luc Mélenchon only looks up. Since the end of February, the hypothesis of a duel against Emmanuel Macron has regularly emerged in opinion polls. Even if this possible confrontation turns systematically to the advantage of the outgoing president, the prospect of not storing posters and flags in the closet on the evening of April 10 delights the executives of the movement. These now only target Emmanuel Macron and the far right in their interventions. “We are focused on that”insists Aurélie Trouvé, president of the Parliament of the Popular Union, which brings together 300 representatives of civil society invested behind the program of Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

The time for invectives with the rest of the left would therefore be over, even if the camps of Yannick Jadot and Anne Hidalgo constantly point to the present and past statements of Jean-Luc Mélenchon on Vladimir Poutine, at a time when the war in Ukraine disrupts campaign. For the moment, “neither he nor Marine Le Pen suffers from the way Vladimir Putin is viewed in public opinion, unlike Eric Zemmour”observes Jean-Daniel Lévy, Deputy Director of the Harris Interactive Institute.

“In 2017, there was a lot of talk about Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s relationship with Venezuela, but that did not have a strong impact on how he could be judged.”

Jean-Daniel Lévy, from the Harris Interactive Institute

at franceinfo

Despite the criticisms which are doubling in intensity, Jean-Luc Mélenchon continues to benefit from a good dynamic in the polls. “The electorate on the left considers that international politics is not an essential criterion of judgment and that the social question is more important”analyzes Rémi Lefebvre, author of Should we despair of the left? (Textual editions). The Insoumis have understood this well: in public meetings, in front of the cameras or on social networks, they insist on the opposition between Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Emmanuel Macron on pension reform, a social subject par excellence.

But the tribune and his supporters are not only addressing voters tempted by Fabien Roussel, Yannick Jadot or Anne Hidalgo. To pass the first round, “Jean-Luc Mélenchon absolutely needs abstentionists”emphasizes Manuel Cervera-Marzal, author of a Sociology of La France insoumise (La Découverte editions). They are mostly in the lower classes, as he received a class vote in 2017.” Five years ago, 24% of workers and 31% of the unemployed had voted for him, against 19% of the population as a whole.

This is where Jean-Luc Mélenchon encounters a major problem: all the opinion polls predict a strong demobilization for the presidential election. “We are heading towards an abstention record”, warns the pollster Jean-Daniel Lévy. Gold, “the higher the abstention, the more it will be unfavorable to him”, anticipates Manuel Cervera-Marzal. Insubordinate France knows this. “Abstention is the worst that can happen to us. The more it votes, the stronger we are”said the candidate at the launch of his campaign.

He therefore has three weeks left to remobilize the third of voters who, according to a recent survey by OpinionWay, are losing interest in the ballot. “Today, the polls establish participation at around 66% of registered voters. We have ten points of participation to move”, calculates the campaign manager of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Manuel Bompard. Behind him, the LFI machine criss-crosses France, multiplying field encounters. Every week, 400 door-to-door operations are claimed and “25 to 30 meetings, excluding those of the candidate, are organized throughout the country”boasts Alexis Corbière.

To feed the militant machine, La France insoumise is betting this year on Popular Action, its digital mobilization management tool created in April 2021. At each towing, each public meeting, the same message is repeated. “Get people to vote!” implored David Guiraud, spokesperson for the movement, to the few hundred people crammed into a room in Malakoff, a bordering town run by the Communists near Paris, on Tuesday evening.

Will this mobilization be sufficient at the ballot box on April 10? “The idea that a candidate with 19%, 20% can qualify in the second round is now credible”, wants to believe Manuel Bompard. It calculates: “We are now at 12%, 13% in the polls. If you go for three points on the side of the rest of the left and three points on the side of those who had not planned to vote, it starts to to take shape.”

However, “even if the qualification threshold for the second round is currently lower than in 2017 (it was 21.3%), will the current rise of Jean-Luc Mélenchon not have an effect reverse vote useful to the far right? asks political scientist Rémi Lefebvre.

On closer inspection, the gap is widening on the far right in recent opinion polls: if Eric Zemmour records a drop in his voting intentions, Marine Le Pen is not weakening. This mathematically complicates the task of a Jean-Luc Mélenchon who ensures “feel good” this presidential election, as he confided last Sunday to the JDD. Sure of her strength, certain of overtaking all the hares as soon as spring comes, the “sagacious turtle” did she start her race early enough to beat them to the post?


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