The left-wing candidates for the presidential election in France were bickering on Monday over their respective legitimacy, the day after the victory of the former Minister of Justice Christiane Taubira in the “popular primary”, a citizen consultation supposed to promote the unity of a very weak camp.
The polls invariably give a left eliminated in the first round, as in 2017, and at a historically low level, only Jean-Luc Mélenchon (La France insoumise, radical left) approaching 10%.
To ward off this risk, 392,000 left-wing sympathizers voted by Internet from Thursday to Sunday, giving a rating ranging from “very good” to “insufficient” to each of the seven personalities proposed, including Mr. Mélenchon, the environmental candidate, Yannick Jadot, and the socialist candidate, Anne Hidalgo, who nevertheless all three challenged this consultation.
Unsurprisingly, it’s Mme Taubira, the highest-ranking official on her own, won, and her call for rallying behind her candidacy was met with unanimous rejection from her competitors.
“She put on the shoe that was prepared for her, I’m not concerned”, replied Jean-Luc Mélenchon, while Yannick Jadot and Anne Hidalgo deplored “one more candidacy” on the left, the opposite of the objective sought.
Christiane Taubira criticized them on Monday for “extremely disrespectful” behavior towards the nearly 400,000 voters, while the Communist candidate, Fabien Roussel, ruled out joining her. Just like Anna Agueb-Porterie, who arrived in 7and position in the “popular primary”, which announced support for the “program of ruptures, capable of winning” carried by Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
This popular primary represents “a civic success and a political failure”, explains political scientist Gilles Finchelstein, director general of the Jean-Jaurès Foundation, to Agence France-Presse. “There will not be a single candidate on the left, and there will probably be one more candidate on the left,” he summarizes.
“Single application”
“The ambition to have a candidacy for the whole of the left is an illusion”, estimates Gilles Finchelstein, who considers that a rally under these conditions “would have been too heterogeneous”.
“What would really change things would be a single candidacy, let’s say from ‘social-ecology’, from Jadot to Hidalgo, but I don’t see how that will happen,” adds Gilles Finchelstein.
A popular figure on the left – in particular for having carried the law opening up marriage and adoption to homosexual couples, adopted in 2013 – the former Minister of Justice “benefited from the majority judgment vote” or “preferential vote”, according to Rémi Lefebvre, professor of political science at the University of Lille.
“Christiane Taubira, who perhaps splits less for example than a candidate like Jean-Luc Mélenchon, appeared more central”, he noted on Sunday evening on France 5.
The debate on the left crystallizes on “small differences” about certain issues, such as secularism, despite many “convergences” on many subjects, such as ecology, the increase in purchasing power, and even on Europe, he pointed out.
“What this debate reveals are border struggles” within the left, but also across the political spectrum since the eruption of Emmanuel Macron and his election in 2017, according to him.
A Rolling Ifop-Fiducial poll published on Monday credits Jean-Luc Mélenchon with 9.5% of voting intentions, down one point over a week.
Yannick Jadot stagnates at 5%, ahead of Christiane Taubira, who gains one point (4%), the day after her victory in the popular primary, and Anne Hidalgo and Fabien Roussel, neck and neck at 3.5%, according to this survey.
For Gilles Finchelstein, “we remain in a moment in which electoral mobility is very, very strong, nothing is fixed”.
In the latest studies by the Jean-Jaurès Foundation, between mid-December and mid-January, “there are 28% of French people who have changed their minds”, he indicates. “And 28% in one month is absolutely considerable and, from experience, we know that now this mobility lasts until the ballot, so there is still room for everyone. »
With the political department of Agence France-Presse