polling trends

Technorati Tags:polls, election, France, élection présidentielle, Sarkozy, Royal, Bayrou, sondages, predictions

French elections - new polls, new predictions

Two polls released today yield a tie between Royal and Sarkozy in the runoff election. Is that realistic? Is that possible? Should Royal supporters rejoice? I am not a polling expert, but from what I understand, trends matter more than actual poll numbers. In that regard, there seems to be a slight uptick in favor of Royal in the past week or so. It is hard to say if this is noise or a key reversal. If anything, it points to the inability of the polling outfits to figure out France's electorate. Libération pins this volatility on the "popular classes" which are usually much less engaged in politics, and therefore much less likely to identify with a party (let alone an ideology).

Let's take a quick look at the numbers (summary of the CSA poll here - the changes are compared to the previous CSA poll).

1st round

Sarkozy: 27% (+1)
Royal: 25% (+2)
Bayrou: 19% (-2)
Le Pen: : 15,5% (+0.5)
Other left-wing: 10,5% (+0.5%)
Other right-wing: 3% (-0.5%)


2nd round

Sarkozy: 50%
Royal: 50%

Sarkozy: 46%
Bayrou: 54%


The way the get to that result is mystifying. If you add Royal+left-wing+1/3 Bayrou, she's still stuck at around 41%. If you assume 1/2 of Bayrou's voters come from the Socialist Party, then she's at around 44%. Again, the only way Royal pushes Sarkozy into a close race is if she makes a serious dent in Le Pen's constituency (the 15.5% is I think somewhat underweighted, perhaps by 2%). Possible, but unlikely.

Most other polls (including one released today/wednesday in Paris) give a 51/49 in favor of Sarkozy. So it all points to tightening of the race. The key for Royal will be to score very well in the first round, so as to create a sense of momentum in public opinion.

I don't see how Bayrou gets to the second round. The numbers and the trend are pointing to a third-place finish. The real question is whether he will negotiate something with the Socialists or fall back to his no-no position (which would be the same as tacitly endorsing Sarkozy). One should remember that his party - however tiny - largely depends on right-wing voters and the UMP apparatus. If he goes in with Royal, a lot of his party members will be in danger of losing their seats in Parliament (especially if Sarkozy wins : the knives will be drawn, and whatever is left of the UDF will be on the chopping block). On top of that, what can he negotiate? They will need to present a governing platform and campaign together. Somehow, it doesn't seem possible. The Socialist party hacks won't stand for that - they'd rather lose than having to deal with Bayrou as prime minister and Royal as President for 5 years. That would not necessarily be a bad scenario for France, though. Bayrou is an honorable guy.

Intrade.com still predicts a Sarkozy win by a wide margin. I'd guess the 1st round will dramatically readjust the numbers.

Technorati Tags: Sarkozy, Royal, Bayrou, elections, France, French presidential elections, predictions, élection présidentielle, prédictions

new poll

In the latest poll (to be published tomorrow by the Journal du Dimanche), Nicolas Sarkozy is rising. Here are the numbers (IFOP/Journal du Dimanche):

First round :

• Sarkozy : 29.5% (+2 - compared to the last IFOP poll)
  
• Royal: 22% (-1)
  
• Bayrou: 19% (-1)
• Le Pen : 14% (=)
• Left-wing residuals (including greens) : 12.5% (=)
  
• Right-wing residuals : 2.5% (-0.5)

Second round :

• Sarkozy : 54% (+2)
  
• Royal : 46% (-2)

Royal is stuck. Even in the unlikely event that she captures 1/2 of Bayrou's votes and all the left-wing vote besides her own, she's still at 44.5% in this poll. Sarkozy manages to attract most of Le Pen's voters, plain and simple. He was quoted in yesterday's Le Monde as a saying that he believes the election will be decided on the right. So far, the numbers bear out his analysis. Of course he will always be better at deploying right-wing, I-love-France, law-and-order, tough-on-crime discourse than Royal.

A friend of mine was noticing that none of the mainstream is really talking about the Banlieues. As a matter of fact, only Le Pen is addressing the Banlieues. He pulled a stunt yesterday by going to Argenteuil, described by the New York Times' Elaine Sciolino as an "ethnic enclave." Woooooo. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

In reality, Argenteuil is a somewhat diverse town, with a cute little center by the Seine - painted by Monet and the impressionists. I've been there in the past. It's like most small towns outside of Paris : not much going on, but cute. There are a bunch of housing projects on the outskirts. Argenteuil's location in the Northwest of Paris indicates that it is fact a somewhat wealthy suburb, where the contact between the well-off and the poor tends to create more frictions than in more socially homogeneous places (think Neuilly and Saint-Denis on both ends of the spectrum). So Argenteuil, "ethnic enclave?" Only by a gross editorial stretch of the imagination. Come on Sciolino! Don't be that lazy! And stop listening to your fixer, Ariane Bernard, who is obviously repeating the talking points of Sarkozy's UMP.

Technorati tags: France, élection présidentielle, presidential election, Sarkozy, Royal, Le Pen, New York Times, Elaine Sciolino, Ariane Bernard

back of the envelope calculations (II)

A new CSA poll to be published tomorrow by Le Parisien/I-télé shows the following results :

• Sarkozy : 26% (=)
  
• Royal : 23% (-1)
  
• Bayrou : 21.5% (+1.5)
  
• Le Pen : 16% (+1)
• Residual left-wing candidates : 8.5%
• Residual right-wing candidates : 2.5%

These results do not seem to significantly alter our previous assessment. If you split Bayrou's support 60%-40% in favor of Sarkozy, it still leaves Sarkozy's second round support (without Le Pen) in the vicinity of 42%. The same goes for Royal. Both still need to appeal to the National Front first round voters, and therefore cannot really change their strategy.

The only potential wild-card is a resurgence of Bayrou. If he resumes his upward trend, he might very well be Sarkozy's adversary in the runoff election. In which case he will most likely win. To achieve that he needs to chip away at Ségolène Royal's base. It is quite possible, as long as he continues to appeal to the college-educated professionals who usually vote for the Socialists. He must remind them of Royal's courting of the lower-class angry vote. He must call upon their self-representation as enlightened, moderate, rational and urban. A socialist member of Parliament said the other day that he would turn off the TV, plug his ears and vote for Ségolène Royal. Many voters on the left feel the same. To close the deal, Bayrou needs to convince them that he is truly one of them. For instance, he said today that Sarkozy's campaign strategy is to deliberately "pit people against one another." He also expressed the view, in today's Libération, that France's main problem stemmed from the fact that the "the country is run by guys from privileged families who won an academic competition at age 20." See my post on that topic. Even though, as François Hollande bitingly remarked, Bayrou plays the traveler without baggage, I can't help but like the guy. Expect more straight talk on his part in the final two weeks of the campaign.

Technorati tags:Sarkozy, Ségolène Royal, François Bayrou, France, election, présidentielle, polls, sondages

La France and the good life (cont'd)

Let us dispel once and for all the notion that the good life is the exclusive province of the French. There are certain social arrangements, in France, that make it possible for a large proportion of the population to enjoy heavily discounted education, health care and decent retirement benefits. But is that the good life?

It's all a matter of proportions : if you live in Paris, have an advanced degree in something and come from an old family (i.e. that owns some real estate), then you're most likely to be fine. A French upper class professional probably makes significantly less money than her American counterpart. However, her kids will go for free to the best high schools in all of France (Louis-Legrand/Henri IV/Fénelon, all within a square kilometer on the Left Bank). They will then go on to attend a Grande Ecole, the French Harvard and Princeton and Columbia rolled into one neat little package. These vaunted Great Schools are also located, for the most part, on the Left Bank. Some are more expensive than others. For instance Sciences-Po is semi-private and charges something like 3000 euros a year. Pretty cheap for your entry ticket into the French governing elite. Some like the Ecole Normale Supérieure actually pays its students a full entry-level government job salary. So in the best case scenario, your kids will actually get significant money (at least for a 20 year-old) and lifetime job security if they manage to get into the equivalent of Harvard. Point is, in France, if you're rich, educated and live in Paris you're basically set.

Being from Paris is in fact crucial. What applies to educational institutions also applies to hospitals, museums, government and economic life. To my knowledge, France is the only country of such import that is that heavily centralized. This is a unique situation, which goes back centuries. Everything that really matters happens in Paris. The French economic, cultural and political elites live, work and play in Paris. Sure, they might temporarily migrate to the South or the West in the summer. But all in all, they overwhelmingly gravitate towards the City of Lights. Compare that to the US, where New York is the cultural and financial center, D.C. handles the government, LA does entertainment, San Francisco takes care of high-tech growth, Boston leads in education, etc, etc... In the same vein, France has no equivalent in Europe or Asia. Germany or Spain are proudly decentralized, and so are England and Italy. Even Turkey, that herald of Jacobin orthodoxy, balances between Ankara and Istanbul.

But let's go back to the question of the good life. France's centralization heavily determines who has access to the good life. The closer you are to the center, the cheaper it is to access the best schools, the best jobs, the best services, the best shopping, the best museums, the best theaters and the best hospitals. So yes, provided you are in Paris, you'll enjoy the good life, international-class, for a very modest cost. You'll be connected to the global cities, you'll be part of that other Internationale of decision-makers and opinion-makers and money-makers, and you'll live like a bourgeois new-yorker for a third of what it would take in New York City, LA, London or Kowloon. I suspect this is precisely what enrages so many American journalists.

Now, for the rest of France, I don't know. It's all very picturesque and charming, but would you ever want to live in Bitche or Gueret on the French median salary (about $1800 per month)? or worse, be treated for cancer there?... I didn't think so.

Technorati tags:France, elections

French elections

There's a presidential election in the old country next month. I never voted, never registered and never participated in the political process in that way. I believe this gives me more of a right to criticize than anybody else.

I have my reasons - as a trained historian, I know for a fact that voting and representative government were devised to prevent the expression of the popular will. Throughout the past two centuries, in Europe and North America, voting has been consistently used to disenfranchise the majority while preserving and furthering the interests of the owners of the means of production. By the way, this is no secret or anything, look no further than the Federalist Papers, or Siéyès' writings for instance. Besides, representative government is 18th century political technology - time for an upgrade, no? (To be perfectly fair, there is another side to that story - i.e. the gradual appropriation and extension of voting by underrepresented populations. Plus, this is an issue specific to the core, Europe and America. I've always supported the Chileans' or South Africans' right to vote.)

So here's a pictorial prediction regarding the future of France. The photo was taken in February. Employees of Alcatel-Lucent were demonstrating against layoffs at the transatlantic telco conglomerate. It so happens that Sarkozy's right wing party's headquarter is located across the street from Alcatel-Lucent Parisian offices. The riot police - tellingly deployed just in case demonstrators got angry - is hanging out underneath Sarkozy's campaign slogan "let's imagine France after" (meaning, after Sarkozy is elected - strange slogan, by the way, given these guys have been in power for the past five years - does it in fact mean "more of the same," so as to reassure shopkeepers and investors?)

The picture says it better than a thousand words. Sarkozy's afraid of the French, and the French are afraid of Sarkozy. That's why they are a match made in heaven.

Let's imagine France after... I can't wait.

Technorati tags:Sarkozy, France, élections présidentielles, French elections