Paris, the city that refuses to vote for Le Pen

Navy blue dominates the map of France after the wide victory of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) in the first round of the legislative elections last Sunday. But if we look closely, a bit like Uderzo and Goscinny in The Adventures of Asterixit is observed that a small portion of France, concentrated around some large cities, has decided to resist The far-right has been on the attack. This is particularly the case in Paris, where the xenophobic party won around 10% of the vote – compared to 33.2% nationwide – and only one of its candidates has made it to the second round. Left-wing candidates, on the other hand, have received the most votes in most of the electoral districts in Paris (and to a lesser extent those of President Emmanuel Macron’s party).

Julie, a 40-year-old Parisian, an executive in a medium-sized company and a resident of the wealthy 5th arrondissement of the capital, is one of those citizens who are part of the resistance to the RN. The result obtained by the party on a national scale does not surprise her because she is aware of “the feeling of exclusion” that drives this vote. In a way, she even understands it, given the hyper-centralism of the French economic and political system, although for her and those around her, voting for the RN would be “inconceivable”. “It is a question of values. No one around me has that anger, that fear of the other,” she says. The same is true for Yves, a 68-year-old pensioner who feels above all sadness, despite being aware, like Julie, of the benefits of living in a place where there are efficient public services and less insecurity on the streets. “We have allowed the extreme right to rise without doing anything,” laments this former administrative officer of a ministry.

“There is a real urban resistance to voting for the RN. The smaller the municipality, the more the vote for the RN and vice versa,” explains Hervé Le Bras, historian, demographer and director of studies at the School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS), who links the result obtained by Le Pen’s party to the economic dynamism and sociology of the city, which is eminently bourgeois, made up of 50% senior executives and liberal professionals, and where a large proportion of young people and immigrants live. “As soon as you move 30 or 40 kilometres away from Paris, it is the RN that prevails. In essence, there is a regional France with more unemployment, more unskilled young people, more single-parent families, more poverty, and a France of the big cities that is doing much better,” explains the historian, who points to the feeling of abandonment and relegation of rural and peri-urban France as the main factor explaining the support for the extreme right.

Although he does not doubt that the reluctance of Parisians to support the RN is explained by sociological factors specific to a metropolis, the geographer Christophe Guilluy believes that a cultural element related to the dominant values ​​imposed by the capital’s bourgeoisie must also be taken into account, which he summarises as follows: “Voting for the extreme right means taking the risk of being perceived socially as a loser.” “Today, the values ​​that allow an individual to rise socially in a large city like Paris are ecology, feminism, anti-racism,” says the author of No society: the end of the western middle classwho also sees in this position a certain form of hypocrisy rather than sincere convictions. “If you listen to the dominant Parisian bourgeoisie, the blackshirts will march on Paris within a week, but in reality that will not prevent them from going on holiday,” he says ironically.

Guilluy, who is accused by a section of the French academic world of fuelling the theories of the extreme right by referring to a peripheral France as opposed to a France of the elites in his essays, firmly believes that the class contempt that he attributes in particular to the left-wing bourgeoisie is one of the main driving forces behind the RN in the most disadvantaged population centres. A view that is not shared by Le Bras, who does not believe in any alleged contempt on the part of Parisians or of the cultural or academic elites. “If there is any class contempt, it is that of the current government elite.” [en referencia al partido de Macron] who considers others to be uneducated, who do not understand anything, as during the pension reform,” he argues.

Calling Macron a “populist,” Le Bras believes that the president’s disconnection with the French is profound. Having managed to break the old divide in 2017 between left-wing Paris (Paris East) and right-wing Paris (Paris West) and winning 14 of the 18 constituencies in 2017, managing to hold on to nine of them in 2022, the president has seen how in the last elections the New Popular Front (NFP) has won 13 constituencies, with nine of its candidates elected in the first round. “The last refuge of Macronist voters is in the very rich districts of western Paris, because these are people who have a certain amount of wealth and for whom the end of the wealth tax (ISF) [aprobado por Macron en 2017] “It has been a blessing,” he adds.

The Socialist Emmanuel Grégoire, first deputy to Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, was elected in the first round with almost 51% of the votes in his constituency against the Macronist candidate and symbolises the change of direction like no other. “Paris has a strong tradition of cosmopolitanism. Historically, it is a land that has always welcomed immigrants and where the alchemy of integration works well,” says the politician, who describes the president’s decision to dissolve the National Assembly as “a kind of cynical whim” that the mayor would have preferred to do without just a few weeks before the start of the Olympic Games, although he says that “everything is ready.”

A single district in the entire capital has seen significant gains for the far right, going from 3.9% of the vote in the first round of the 2022 legislative elections to 10.7% last Sunday thanks to the votes of Éric Zemmour’s Reconquête party. In the constituency of the very chic In the 16th arrondissement of Paris, Louis Picquet, the candidate of the far-right coalition that brings together the split from Les Républiques led by Eric Ciotti, Reconquête, and the RN, will contest the second round against the Macronist candidate, Benjamin Adad. “This is a very different electorate sociologically from that of the RN, made up largely of liberal professionals, who already supported Jean-Marie Le Pen in the 1980s,” explains Le Bras.

There, on Wednesday, the LR activist and Ciotti supporter Pascal Boiteux was campaigning in front of the market on Place Jean Lorrain. “There is less and less reluctance to vote for the RN in this district because what really scares people is Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise,” says the 55-year-old businessman. Approaching him, France, a woman in her 70s who has lived in the district for more than 20 years, says that she is tired of “the dirty deals of the politicians” and of the Republican front, because, according to her, “the alliance of all the right-wing parties will end up being formed.” She will vote for the far-right coalition because she is convinced that “Macron will appoint a left-wing prime minister” and because the RN “is the only one concerned about immigration and security.”

A few metres away, a market vendor, who is mainly staffed by French people of Maghrebi origin, who prefers to remain anonymous, admits that it saddens him to see the RN gaining ground in the neighbourhood. Racism is still alive in the area, he says,
although “it is hidden”. “People often say things to me like: your colour brings us the sun, or you must know a lot about exotic fruits,” says this mixed-race man in his 40s. “I still don’t feel real extremism, but I know it can come at any moment.”

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