franceinfo would like to point out that a poll is not a prediction, but a photograph of public opinion at a given moment. A survey is necessarily accompanied by a margin of error, also called “margin of uncertainty” or “confidence interval”. The smaller the sample, the more the margin of error increases. For more details, here is everything you need to know to decipher the polls.
There are “a fairly strong set of communicating vessels” between Eric Zemmour, Marine Le Pen and Valérie Pécresse, estimates Saturday January 8 on franceinfo Mathieu Souquière, expert of the Jean-Jaurès Foundation, and co-author with Damien Fleurot of “The populist outbreak” (Plon). He was reacting to the Ipsos Sopra-Steria poll for Le Parisien and Franceinfo published the day before.
In this poll, Eric Zemmour loses two points compared to a month ago, Marine Le Pen gains one point and Valérie Pécresse remains stable. “The short-term effects have little meaning”, recalls Mathieu Souquière, “But what must be remembered at this stage is that the far right remains at a very high level, between 30 and 35%. It is at a higher level than usual, and at double what is the classic right, today embodied by Valérie Pécresse. “
Figures that can be explained according to the specialist by “two different shades of the extreme right”, which allows “cast a wider net.”
“With Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour we have two different styles, with one far right demonized and another re-demonized.”
Mathieu Souquière, expert from the Jean-Jaurès Foundationto franceinfo
The programs are also “quite different” for Mathieu Souquière, “because Eric Zemmour is focused on the migration issue and Marine Le Pen continues to dig into the social issue”. Finally, their electorate would also be “partly different”, that of Marine Le Pen being “younger, more popular, less educated and more rural.” However, recalls the specialist, the two candidates remain at the present time “in a pocket square.”
Hence the interest, explains Mathieu Souquière, in field trips. Marine Le Pen is Saturday January 8 in Carcassonne, while Eric Zemmour travels to Sables-d’Olonne: “the challenge for them is to create the gap, to gain the advantage”, he continues, “and it is also a way of garnering a certain number of signatures. We know that the extreme right always has some difficulties in accumulating them and there you have two candidates. We can see that Eric Zemmour, in his call for representatives of the Association of Mayors of France, is perhaps a little less confident in its ability to obtain the 500 signatures. ”
* Ipsos-Sopra Steria survey for franceinfo and “Le Parisien / Today in France”, carried out from January 5 to 6, 2022 on a sample of 1,500 people registered on the electoral roll, representative of the French population aged 18 and over. more.