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A trend is reversing: women are also supporting Le Pen’s RN party in the new elections in France. There is a long-standing strategy behind this.
Paris – Statistically speaking, women usually vote more left-wing than men – so often that the phenomenon even has a name: the ‘Racial Right Gender Gap’. According to surveys, however, women in particular could be the ones to win in the new elections in France that could give the final push to a possible radical right-wing government. A poll from the day of the European elections showed: more women than men chose the right-wing extremist party National Rally (RN).
The RN party was in the Opinionway poll for the news site The Echoes at 31.37 percent – close to the 31.4 percent of votes that the RN actually achieved in the European elections. Women voted slightly more often for Marine Le Pen’s party, with a total of 33 percent for the RN. For men, the figure was only 30 percent. The new election polls also showed Le Pen’s party is clearly ahead.
Protection issue is popular: Rassemblement National becomes a mass party
In the 2019 national elections, the figure for women was 21 percent and for men 25 percent. So where does the change come from? According to Erwan Lestrohan, research director at the French polling institute Odoxa, the broader understanding of “protection” is fundamental to the party’s development.
Gender | RN results according to the 2019 survey | RN results according to the 2024 survey |
Men | 25 percent | 30 percent |
Women | 21 percent | 33 percent |
Party leader Jordan Bardella has turned the RN into a “catch-all party … with the support that goes with it,” Lestrohan told PoliticoThe topic of migration is nevertheless linked to it: “In fact, these two topics are intertwined.”
Le Pen showed the way: Dédiabolisation should create a new image for the Rassemblement National
The change certainly includes the fresh wind that Marine Le Pen into the party after her father Jean-Marie Le Pen had repeatedly made derogatory comments towards women. According to The World In 2002, Jean-Marie Le Pen received only 11 percent of the female vote, while men voted for him with 26 percent.
Marine Le Pen was instrumental in introducing the so-called “dediabolisation” (de-demonisation), which was intended to replace negative stigmas with a positive image. analysis The Jean Jaurès Foundation showed that Le Pen’s strategy enabled her to retain a large proportion of her original electorate and also convince a larger proportion of swing voters.
According to an interview by the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) with election sociologist Nonna Mayer, the normalisation of Marine Le Pen as a right-wing candidate also played a role. “She presented herself as a modern, professionally and politically emancipated French woman with whom women can identify,” said Mayer.
Bardella shows himself to be a womanizer – continues Le Pen’s line
The RN has also repeatedly claimed feminist issues for its new strategy, as Bardella, who in an election campaign announcement at the Online platform X on 17 June, he would be a “Prime Ministerwhich guarantees the rights and freedoms of all women and girls in France”. He also took aim at the “extreme left” which is trying to “gain a monopoly on the defence of women’s rights”.
Added to this is the potential of women’s rights, which the right-wing party is using against liberal migration policies. “Our European values will always be superior to those that enslave women and lock them behind headscarves,” he said in a speech to the European Parliament in 2023.
Nevertheless, the RN’s strategy, which Bardella is now continuing, is successful. “France was for a long time a perfect example of the ‘radical right gender gap’,” says political scientist Anja Durovic, according to TV5 Moons the AFP. “But those days are over, gender no longer has any influence on the choice of RN.” (lismah)
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