What participation next Sunday, for the second round of the presidential election? 26.3% of voters abstained in the first round. A figure up four points compared to 2017. A trend that Occitania did not follow: it is the third region where mobilization was strongest (21.75% abstention), behind Brittany and New Aquitaine.
“People are discouraged”
In Haute-Garonne, participation exceeded 80%. But in some sectors, abstention exploded. In St-Gaudens, for example: it is the Haut-Garonne commune of more than 2,500 inhabitants where we voted the least. There was more than 32% abstention in the first round, four points more than in 2017. Sauveur is one of those who did not vote. He perfectly understands the abstainers: _”People think ‘let it be him or let it be her (Emmanuel Macron or Marine Le Pen, editor’s note) it’s the same story. People are discouraged, nothing changes!” _
Walking through the city center of Saint-Gaudens, it is not very difficult to find residents who have shunned the ballot box. Claire did not go to vote for the first time: she says she is chilled by the poor quality of the debates: _”_There are no more analyzes : there are only opinions, but that does not mean anything, the opinions! We are in a form of consumption and this is the result.
A burst of mobilization in the second round?
For Céline, who also did not go to vote, the abstention in St-Gaudens can also be explained by sociology: _”_It’s a disaster town, there’s a lot of misery. I’m not surprised that people didn’t go to vote.”
Abstention could decrease in the second round, as in almost every presidential election since the 1960s. Pierrette and Bernard are already imagining this scenario: “It’s often like this: a lot of people don’t care in the first round, but for the second they want to be there”, smiles the retiree. Her husband shares his analysis: _”_It’s decisive : that’s when we choose who will be the president.”
– Claudia Calmel
Francis is in this scenario: he did not go to vote in the first round, but he will put a ballot in the ballot box in the second: “There were too many people in the first round : I wanted to see which candidates were going to come out.” Francis will follow the debate between the two rounds “to listen to arguments” even if he already knows which ballot he will slip into the ballot box even if he has not been convinced by the campaign: “I already know who I’m going to vote for: I don’t like extremes.”
“In the second round, there is a frontal collision between two designs”
Since 1965, participation increased in the second round in seven of the ten presidential elections. Jean-Michel Ducomte, political scientist and lecturer at Sciences Po Toulouse, therefore thinks that participation should be higher on Sunday April 24: “The second round is a moment of greater dramatization: the debate is a confrontation between two candidates, which does not appear clearly in the first round since the range of proposals is much more fragmented. In the second round, there is a head-on clash between two designs. And, additional phenomenon, it is an opposition whose polls suggest that it is not completely arbitrated. So there will likely be an increase in participation.”
For Jean-Michel Ducomte, the debate between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen could be decisive: “So far, the inter-round debate has been a pivotal moment: the moment of affirmation or collapse. We can consider that in 2012, the debate was the moment of the affirmation of François Hollande and that in 2017, it was that of the collapse of Marine Le Pen.