The French Voter: Before and After the 2002 Elections (French Politics, Society and Culture)

The French Voter Before and After the 2002 Elections

Edited by

Michael S. Lewis-Beck

The French Voter

French Politics, Society and Culture Series General Editor: Robert Elgie, Paddy Moriarty Professor of Government and International Studies, Dublin City University. France has always fascinated outside observers. Now, the country is undergoing a period of profound transformation. France is faced with a rapidly changing international and European environment and it is having to rethink some of its most basic social, political and economic orthodoxies. As elsewhere, there is pressure to conform. And yet, while France is responding in ways that are no doubt familiar to people in other European countries, it is also managing to maintain elements of its long-standing distinctiveness. Overall, it remains a place that is not exactly comme les autres. This new series examines all aspects of French politics, society and culture. In so doing it focuses on the changing nature of the French system as well as the established patterns of political, social and cultural life. Contributors to the series are encouraged to present new and innovative arguments so that the informed reader can learn and understand more about one of the most beguiling and compelling of all European countries.

Titles include: Jean K. Chalaby THE DE GAULLE PRESIDENCY AND THE MEDIA Statism and Public Communications David Drake INTELLECTUALS AND POLITICS IN POST-WAR FRANCE Graeme Hayes ENVIRONMENTAL PROTEST AND THE STATE IN FRANCE David J. Howarth THE FRENCH ROAD TO EUROPEAN MONETARY UNION Michael S. Lewis-Beck (editor) THE FRENCH VOTER Before and After the 2002 Elections Sarah Waters SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN FRANCE Towards a New Citizenship French Politics, Society and Culture Series Standing Order ISBN 0–333–80440–6 hardcover Series Standing Order ISBN 0–333–80441–4 paperback (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and one of the ISBNs’ quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England

The French Voter Before and After the 2002 Elections Edited by

Michael S. Lewis-Beck F. Wendell Miller, Distinguished Professor of Political Science, University of Iowa, USA

Editorial Matter and Selection © Michael S. Lewis-Beck 2004 Chapters 1–12 ©Palgrave Macmillan Ltd 2004 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2004 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 0–333–99419–1 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The French voter : before and after the 2002 elections/edited by Michael S. Lewis-Beck. p. cm. — (French politics, society, and culture) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–333–99419–1 (cloth) 1. Presidents—France—Election—2002. 2. Elections—France. 3. France—Politics and government—1995–. I. Title: French voter before and after the 2002 elections. II. Lewis-Beck, Michael S. III. French Politics, society, and culture series. JN2959.F765 2004 324.944′084—dc21 10 13

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Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne

Contents

List of Tables, Figures and Maps

vii

Notes on the Contributors

xi

Preface

xv

French Election Theories and the 2002 Results: An Introduction Michael S. Lewis-Beck 1

2

3

4

1

France’s 2002 Presidential Elections: Earlier and Later Territorial Fractures Annie Laurent

12

Do Issues Matter? Law and Order in the 2002 French Presidential Election Nonna Mayer and Vincent Tiberj

33

Ideology and Party Identification: A Normalisation of French Voting Anchors? Jocelyn A.J. Evans

47

“Old Wine in New Bottles? New Wine in Old Bottles?: Class, Religion and Vote in the French Electorate” – The 2002 Elections in Time Perspective Bruno Cautrès

74

5

Strategic Voting in the 2002 French Presidential Election André Blais

6

Institutions and Voters: Structuring Electoral Choice Robert Elgie

110

7

Could there have Possibly been Economic Voting? Guy D. Whitten

126

8

Dual Governance and Economic Voting: France and the United States Michael S. Lewis-Beck and Richard Nadeau v

93

136

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Contents

9 Stuck between a Rock and a Hard Place: Electoral Dilemmas and Turnout in the 2002 French Legislative Elections Thomas Gschwend and Dirk Leuffen 10 Forecasting the 2002 Elections: Lessons from a Political Economy Model Bruno Jérôme and Veronique Jérôme-Speziari 11 Vote Functions in France and the 2002 Election Forecast Eric Dubois and Christine Fauvelle-Aymar

155

178 205

12 National Economic Voting in France: Objective versus Subjective Measures Éric Bélanger and Michael S. Lewis-Beck

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Index

243

List of Tables, Figures and Maps

Tables 1.1 The evolution of the Gaullist Right, the FN and the PS in the first round in the 1982 to 2002 presidential elections (the whole of France, in percentage points of valid votes) 1.2 The spectrum of contrasts: minimum and maximum results scored by the three leading candidates in the first ballot of the 2002 presidential election (96 French departments, in percentage points of recorded votes, metropolitan France only) 1.3 The Left, then in office, in the Pas-de-Calais first ballots held over the 1998–2002 period (Socialist Party + Communist Party + Greens + various Left-wing parties) 1.4 2002–1981: the resistance of the Socialist Party’s, RPR’s, Communist Party’s and National Front’s territorial structures (correlation coefficients measured on the basis of each metropolitan France’s departments) 1.5 The second ballot in presidential elections from 1965 to 1995: the evolution of standard deviations between most – and least – Left-leaning departments 1.6 Results of the presidential election (the whole of France) 2.1 Issue saliency in first round of the 2002 presidential election 2.2 Issue saliency in first round of the 1995 and 2002 presidential elections 2.3 The best candidate for each issue in 2002 2.4 Saliency of issues by voting intention in the first round of the 2002 presidential election 2.5 Voting intentions in the first round of the 2002 presidential election by issue saliency 2.6 Logistic regression on voting intentions for extreme right, extreme left and green candidates in the first round of the 2002 presidential election 3.1 Party proximity in France (1978–1997) 3.2 Strength of closed party identification in France (1988–1997) vii

14

16

18

20

22 26 35 36 37 39 40

42 50 54

viii

List of Tables, Figures and Maps

3.3

Left–Right ideological position and political interest (1988–1995) 3.4(a) Bloc recursive model of closed party identification (OLS estimates) 3.4(b) Bloc recursive model of open party identification (OLS estimates) 4.1 Alford index of “relative class voting” (left voting among working class compared to left voting among all other occupations) – France 1967–2002 4.2 Percentages of left voting according to social class in France, 1st round 4.3 Percentages of right voting according to social class in France, 1st round 4.4 Class voting odds-ratios in France (left/right), 1967–2002, 1st round 4.5 Percentages of extreme-right voting according to social class in France (1988–2002), 1st round 4.6 Extreme-right class voting odds-ratios in France (1988–2002), 1st round 4.7 Percentages of extreme-right voting and social integration to the working class in France (1988–2002), 1st round 4.8 Percentages of right voting according to religiosity in France (1967–2002), 1st round 4.9 Percentages of left voting according to religiosity in France (1967–2002), 1st round 4.10 Religious voting odds-ratios in France (left/right), 1967–2002, 1st round 4.11 Percentages of extreme-right voting according to religiosity in France (1988–2002), 1st round 4.12 Extreme-right religious voting odds-ratios in France (1988–2002), 1st round 4.13 Binary logistic regression of left voting, 2002 presidential election, 1st round 4.14 Binary logistic regression of extreme-right voting (as opposed to both left and right voting), 2002 presidential election, 1st round 5.1 Distribution of voters’ preferences 5.2 Perceived chances of winning 5.3 Relationship between vote and preference 5.4 The implications of strategic voting

55 66 67

78 79 80 81 82 82

84 85 85 86 87 87 89

90 97 98 99 104

List of Tables, Figures and Maps

7.1 Macroeconomic conditions and governing party fortunes in National Assembly elections (Basic Macroeconomic Model) 7.2 Macroeconomic conditions and governing party fortunes in National Assembly elections (Unexpected Macroeconomic Model) 8.1 The dual governance effect on the economics and popularity link, for France and the United States 8.2 Summary effects of economics on French executive popularity, cohabitation versus no cohabitation 8.3 The dual governance effect on economic voting in French and American national elections 8.4 The dual governance effect on economic voting in French and American elections 9.1 A logit model predicting turnout at the first round of the legislative elections 10.1 The 2002 French presidential election (1st round) Poll predictions of BVA, CSA, IFOP, IPSOS and SOFRES institutes 10.2 The 2002 French legislative elections (1st round and 2nd round) Poll predictions of CSA, IPSOS and SOFRES institutes and electoral simulations of Le Monde and Libération 10.3 The 2002 French presidential election (1st round and 2nd round) 10.4 Forecasting the 2002 presidential FN score (1st round) 10.5 The 2002 French legislative elections (1st round and 2nd round) 11.1 Vote equations (1986–2002) 11.2 Specifications of the departmental model 11.3 Specifications of the regional model 11.4 Ex post prediction (1986–2002) 11.5 Ex post prediction (1986–2002) 11.6 Seats for the 2002 elections (departmental data) 12.1 Correlations between objective and subjective economic indicators, and the vote 12.2 Objective economic voting under cohabitation, 1978–2002 12.3 Subjective economic voting under cohabitation, 1978–2002

ix

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131 142 143 145 147 163

183

185 190 193 196 213 216 216 217 220 222 232 235 236

x

List of Tables, Figures and Maps

12.4

12.5

Subjective national economic voting and the “value-added” from objective national economic indicators National economics and the presidential popularity function

237 238

Figures 1.1

The homogenisation of electoral behaviours in France under the Fifth Republic 2.1 Proportion of voters finding no best candidate for the issue (1995–2002) 3.1 Full path model of party identification and ideology on vote 3.2(a) Path model (closed party id.) – endogenous variables 3.2(b) Path model (open party id.) – endogenous variables 3.3(a) Path model (closed party id.) – direct effects of exogenous variables on vote 3.3(b) Path model (open party id.) – direct effects of exogenous variables on vote 7.1 The accuracy of Economic voting models over time 9.1 Cross-pressure effect for supporters of the left 9.2 How strong is the cross-pressure effect on the probability to turnout?

21 37 60 62 63 64 65 132 167 168

Maps 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4

The Le Pen vote on the first ballot of the 2002 presidential election The Chirac vote on the first ballot of the 2002 presidential election The Jospin vote on the first ballot of the 2002 presidential election The abstention on the first ballot of the 2002 presidential election

29 30 31 32

Notes on the Contributors Éric Bélanger is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Science at the Université de Montréal. His research interests include political parties, public opinion, and voting behavior. He has written or co-written articles published in Electoral Studies, the Canadian Journal of Political Science, and comparative Political Studies. André Blais is Professor in the Department of Political Science at the Université de Montréal and Research Fellow with the Centre de Recherche Interuniversitaire En Economie Quantitative. He holds a Canada Research Chair in Electoral Studies, and he is the principal co-investigator of the Canadian Election Study. His research interests are voting and elections, public opinion, and methodology. Bruno Cautrès is Director, Banque de données sociopolitiques (BSDP – Socio-Political Data Bank), University of Grenoble. He has written extensively on French elections, and been involved in different French national election surveys. Eric Dubois is a Teaching Assistant in Economics and a member of the Laboratoire d’Economie Publique (LAEP – Public Economy Laboratory) at the University of Paris-I Panthéon Sorbonne. He is writing a Ph.D. dissertation on the interactions between political forecasting and economic forecasting. Robert Elgie is Paddy Moriarty Professor of Government and International Studies at Dublin City University. He is the co-editor of the journal, French Politics, published by Palgrave. He is the author of many works on France, most recently Political Institutions in Contemporary France. Jocelyn A.J. Evans is Lecturer in Politics at the University of Salford. He has authored articles on French Euroscepticism, and the Extreme Right and party system theory, which have appeared in Electoral Studies, La Revue Française de Science Politique, and Party Politics, and is the editor of “The French Party System” with Manchester University Press (2003). He is also the author of “Voters and Voting: an Introduction,” (2003). xi

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Notes on the Contributors

with Sage Publications. His research interests also include Northern Ireland party memberships, on which he has co-authored a number of articles, and the European Extreme Right, co-founding the EREPS (“Extreme Right Electorates and Party Success”) European research network. Christine Fauvelle-Aymar is Assistant Professor of Economics and Associate Director of the Laboratoire d’Economie Publique (LAEP – Public Economy Laboratory) at the University of Paris-I Panthéon Sorbonne. Her research is in the field of political economy. She is currently working on the subject of economic voting in Eastern European countries. She has published in Electoral Studies, Kyklos and other journals. Thomas Gschwend received his Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, in 2001. Currently, he is a Post-doctoral Research Fellow at the Mannheimer Zentrum für Europäeisch Sozialforschung (MZES), University of Mannheim, Germany, where his research focuses on comparative politics, public opinion, and political psychology, as well as political methodology. His work has been published, among other places, in the British Journal of Political Science. Bruno Jérôme is Maître de Conférences in the Department of Economics, the University of Metz, France. He holds his doctorate (Hdr) in Economics from the University of Paris-I, Panthéon Sorbonne. He is also associated with the LEP-3DI, University of Paris II. He has published articles in political economy, electoral forecasting, local economics, and political business cycles. Veronique Jérôme-Speziari is Maître de Conférences in the Department of Economics, the University of Metz, France. She holds her doctorate (Hdr) from the University of Paris-I, Panthéon Sorbonne. Annie Laurent is Chargée de Recherche at CNRS-CRAPS, at the Université de Lille 2. Among other publications, she has recently edited, with Bernard Dolez, Des roses en mars: les elections régionales et cantonales de 1998 dans le Nord/Pas-de-Calais, Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 1999. She also directs l’Ecole d’Ete de Lille, a summer training program in quantitative methods. Dirk Leuffen is currently a Ph.D. student at the Mannheimer Zentrum für Europäische Sozialforschung (MZES), University of Mannheim,

Notes on the Contributors

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Germany. His dissertation project is on French European policy-making in the context of divided government. Michael S. Lewis-Beck is F. Wendell Miller Distinguished Professor and Chair of Political Science at the University of Iowa. His most recent book, which he edited, is How France Votes? He has published over 110 books and articles, many of them on French politics and economics. In 1995, he was National Science Foundation Principal Investigator for the French National Election Study. Currently, he is Data Editor of the new journal, French Politics. He has been Visiting Professor or Scholar at Sciences Po (Paris), Université de Paris-I (Sorbonne), CEVIPOF (Paris), and the Ecole d’Ete de Lille. Also, he has been Scholar-in-Residence at the Camargo Foundation, in Cassis, France, and now serves on their selection board. Among his other scholarly interests is quantitative methods. Presently, he edits the Sage Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences Series, and is an editor of the Encyclopedia of Social Science Research Methods, 2004. Nonna Mayer is Research Director at CEVIPOF (Centre for the Study of French Political Life), a research laboratory of the CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research) and Sciences Po (Paris Institute for Political Studies). She is also in charge of a Political Sociology Graduate Program at Sciences Po. Her research interests include electoral sociology, racism and anti-Semitism, and extreme right activism. Her recent works include La démocratie à l’épreuve: une nouvelle approache de l’opinion des Français (co-edited with G. Grunberg and P.M. Sniderman, Presses de Sciences Po, 2002) and Ces Français qui votent Le Pen (Flammarion, 2002). Richard Nadeau is Professor of Political Science at l’Université de Montréal. A specialist in voting behavior and public opinion, he has published extensively on these topics in professional journals, including the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, the British Journal of Political Science, Public Opinion Quarterly, Electoral Studies, the European Journal of Political Research, and Political Studies. Vincent Tiberj is Chargé de Recherche at CEVIPOF (Centre for the Study of French Political Life). He has an M.A. (1998) and a Ph.D. in Political Science from Sciences Po, Paris, and was a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University (2000–2001). He specializes in Voting, Political

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Psychology, and Political Methodology. His current research focuses on electoral decisions of ordinary French and American citizens. Guy D. Whitten is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Texas A&M University. His research interests focus on the relationships between mass publics and governments with respect to issues at the intersection of politics and economics in Europe. His publications include articles in the American Journal of Political Science, the British Journal of Political Science, Electoral Studies, and Political Behavior.

Preface Within France, the study of elections has a long and distinguished pedigree. Since André Siegfried in 1913, the electoral behavior of the French voter has been an object of serious research from French political scientists themselves. The interest of scholars from elsewhere gathered slowly, but by the 1960s leading political science departments in North America and Great Britain had given a firm place to the scientific examination of French elections. These French studies had arrived in the Anglo academies. But ideas were also flowing the other way. Ideas about party identification and the need for election surveys to test different theories crossed the Atlantic, to arrive on the French shore. Somewhat later, ideas about political economy and statistical tests on other kinds of data, besides surveys, began landing. Still later, ideas about rational choice disembarked. French political science accepted some of these ideas, rejected some, and of course made their own unique contributions to election study, such as the importance of left–right ideology, the strategic role of institutions, the changing place of social class, the evolution of religion and ethnicity as issues, the peculiar French dynamic of political participation. At international political science meetings, in North America and Europe especially, French and non-French students of elections in the hexagon have been increasingly mingling, exchanging research notions and findings. The volume at hand, which sprang from an inquiry first broached by Robert Elgie and Palgrave press, is a sophisticated product, born of this vital transcontinental debate. We have political scientists from France, the United States, Great Britain, French Canada and Germany, all writing on the French elections, albeit from different points of view. What holds them together is the language of scientific discourse, and a passion for the subject. Officially, the text is English, but the French “feel” of the text often makes felicitous breakthroughs. What the reader holds is a collection of papers by world scholars, representing the very best contemporary political science work on French elections, and on the 2002 elections especially. The authors manage to explain French voters, though not in a way that renders them dull. It is risking little to say that these chapters, by heightening our understanding of French elections, will only further the fascination of scholars for the subject. Michael S. Lewis-Beck xv

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French Election Theories and the 2002 Results: An Introduction Michael S. Lewis-Beck

The first round of the 2002 presidential election in France put an end, at least temporarily, to politics as usual. The impossible happened. Jean-Marie Le Pen, extreme right-wing candidate, head of the xenophobic National Front party, and pariah of the French political elite, knocked off the Socialist Prime Minister Jospin, so placing himself on the final ballot. He received 16.86 percent of the valid votes, compared to 19.88 percent for Jacques Chirac, who came in first. Lionel Jospin, in third place with 16.18 percent, was suddenly no longer a contender. The result surprised virtually everyone. No politicians, pollsters or pundits, of whatever political stripe, saw the first-round defeat of Jospin, or the imminent triumph of Le Pen, as even a remote possibility. The prime minister, after absorbing the news, made a silent withdrawal from the campaign arena. President Chirac, standing embarrassed in the eyes of the democratic world, pledged a defense of traditional republican values against the extremist threat. Essential leaders on the left, quickly enough, rallied to the cause and threw their support behind Chirac. In a victory unprecedented in the history of the Fifth Republic, Gaullist Chirac garnered 82.21 percent of the second-round vote, giving Le Pen a through drubbing. The dignity of French democracy appeared restored, as well as the usual norms of electoral politics. Or were they? And why did this embarrassing, not to say dangerous, result occur in the first place? Were French election rules no longer working, or at least working in a different way? Average French citizens, informed and ready with opinions, are seldom reticent when asked about what happened. Here is a selection of accounts, based on interviews I carried with a purposeful sample of voters in cities and towns of Brittany, just after the 2002 elections.1 1

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Introduction

Wine merchant, 40, male, La Baule: “Le Pen won because of a configuration of circumstances – low voter turnout, a moblized Le Pen vote, and people on the left who just thought they would show Jospin they disapproved of him on the first-round, then vote for him on the second. A Frenchman who works all day, leaves his shop and sees a car set fire by immigrants, he is not a racist. He just wants something done. 90% of the immigrants are OK. It’s the 10% who don’t want to work that cause trouble. If the immigrant is legal, their children get benefits even if the family doesn’t work. I think Chirac will do something. It’s his last chance. He will be in the history books as someone who did something or nothing.” Schoolteacher, late 30s, male, Fougères: “The Le Pen vote has nothing to do with anti-Semitism. Le Pen voters are ‘disconnected’ from the real world. They are lost, form another culture. Le Pen’s making it to the second round helps ‘legitimize’ his candidacy, which had been something people were ashamed to admit they supported.” Sales manager, dairy business, 30s, female, Fougères: “On the firstround Le Pen won because of the ‘vote contestataire’, people making challenges, expressing themselves, figuring they can be serious on the second round.” Bar owner, 60, female, Vannes: “I’ve worked 30 years, that’s enough. In France, retirement at 60 is obligatory. Artisans and independents like myself get much less in pensions. Teachers and bureaucrats have it much better. Who knows if Chirac will change things?” Public accountant, late 20s, female, Fougères: “Chirac says he will lower taxes by 5 percent, and he will. The tax will be fair, because it will give an equal percentage break to everyone. France has to lower taxes to remain competitive in the world.” Café server, 40s, female, Nantes: “The French government can’t do anything. It has no power. Chirac promised to give restaurant owners a break on the TVA tax but Brussels told him to wait in line.” This anecdotal evidence points to the salience of certain issues – immigration, crime, economic concerns, sovereignty – and the relevance of certain institutional mechanisms – the two-round ballot system, the centralization of bureaucracy and public services. The reasons given by these French voters for the rise of Le Pen, the fall of Jospin, and the limits of Chirac’s power serve several useful purposes. For one, they suggest that everyday folks have opinions, explanations, even theories, about why elections turn out the way they do, or have the consequences they do. Of course, because of the small sample of respondents, and its purposive design, these remarks can be no more than suggestive.

Michael S. Lewis-Beck 3

But they do serve to introduce us to many of the concerns that receive systematic treatment in this compendium. Each chapter offers an electoral theory, applied to the 2002 elections and, commonly, to French national elections generally. A broad question the volume tries to answer is, Why do French voters act as they do? Within that context, there is the specific question of why 2002 turned out as it did, and what implications that may have for explaining future elections. Below, I consider these questions, and in the course of this explication, I highlight each of the chapters. The most venerable tradition in the study of French voting patterns is electoral geography, begun by André Siegfried in 1913. The essential idea is that the geographic context, directly or indirectly, shapes the vote choice. Generations of French political scientists have assembled choropleth (shaded) maps exhibiting the faithful transmission of left (or right) party votes in a department or region, from election to election. Certain patterns have shown remarkable persistence, for example, the bastions of right strength in the West and, the bastions of left strength in the South. Annie Laurent (Chapter 1), drawing on this tradition, explores such patterns in recent Fifth Republic national elections. Certain things still hold true, such as the high correlation of party voting by department across elections. For example, from the 1981 to 2002 presidential elections, the correlations, respectively, of the Communist, the Socialist, and the Rassemblement pour la République (RPR) votes are 0.83, 0.54 and 0.85. However, some important changes can be observed. In particular, the departments have become less and less different from each other in their vote preference over time (1965–1995), suggesting a nation-wide homogenization of the electorate. Also, with respect to the 2002 presidential election specifically, the electoral maps indicate break-up more than continuity for the key traditional right- or left-voting regions in the country. An interesting geographic pattern that does emerge is that of higher Le Pen support in the departments bordering the frontier, where immigrants are more likely to come and stay. The strong implication is that the Le Pen vote is an issue vote, based on attitudes toward immigration. That sort of question, of course, cannot be answered directly with the aggregated geographic data, which risks the ecological fallacy. But it can be explored with survey data, which Nonna Mayer and Vincent Tiberj do in Chapter 2. According to the polling results they report from their 2002 presidential election survey, the top issues were unemployment and crime, followed at some distance by social inequalities, pension funds, and immigration,

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Introduction

in that order. When asked, voters declared that Jospin was “the best candidate” on the issues of unemployment and pensions. Chirac was not declared the best candidate on any of these five issues. However, remarkably, Le Pen was declared the best candidate on the questions of crime and immigration. Mayer and Tiberj go on to conclude that it was candidate preferences on these two law and order issues that brought success to Le Pen on the first round. The French voter is moved by short-term forces, such as the issues of crime and immigration, and by long-term social-psychological forces, such as party identification and left–right ideology. Jocelyn Evans, in Chapter 3, aims to lay bare the relative impact of party versus ideology. After the discussion of the special difficulties of measuring party identification in the French context, he concludes from a path analysis of survey data that, at least for the first-round legislative vote choice, party identification holds more sway than ideology. He ends with the speculation that much of Le Pen’s 2002 support came from a strong sense of party identification with the National Front. Another long-term force acting on the French voter is social cleavages, “the heavy variables,” as they have been called, of class and religion. In Chapter 4, Bruno Cautrès presents a through analysis of the effects of these variables over time, examining national surveys from the 1967 legislative elections thru the 2002 elections. The strength of traditional class voting – working class tending to vote left, middle class tending to vote right – is limited, with some indication of decline over the period. Indeed, in the 2002 presidential elections, first round, it all but disappeared, only to bounce back to its more normal pattern in the 2002 legislative elections, first round. Religion, in contrast to class, exercises a strong and persistent influence across the period. For example, in the 1967 legislative elections, 84 percent of regularly practicing Catholics expressed a vote for the right, compared to only 38 percent who were non-practicing or who had no religion. In the 2002 legislative elections, the numbers were not dissimilar, at 72 percent versus 38 percent, respectively. For the 2002 presidential election, religious practice was not related particularly to the Le Pen vote, according to a logistic regression analysis that Professor Cautrès performed. He concludes that class and religion continue to play their fundamental role in orienting the French voter and that, while Le Pen may have shaken these moorings a bit, he still did not create the “big bang” he was seeking. The foregoing arguments for Le Pen’s unexpected showing – issues, party identification, and perhaps social class – assume that the vote choice is sincere rather than strategic. That is, that the Le Pen supporters

Michael S. Lewis-Beck 5

really support his party and what he stands for, and are not voting for him for other reasons, such as the desire to “teach Jospin a lesson,” or “clear the playing field for Chirac.” In the chapter by André Blais (see Chapter 5), the possibility is raised that a substantial number of voters on the first round were voting strategically, in particular abandoning strong candidates such as Jospin or Chirac. For example, a voter might favor Jospin but vote for Laguiller (of LO, the Worker’s Struggle) to send a signal, perhaps that Jospin was drifting too far to the center. In another example, a voter might favor Chirac but vote for Le Pen, perhaps from the idea that Le Pen on the second round would be easy for Chirac to defeat (compared to Jospin). Blais estimates that 18 percent who preferred Jospin, and 15 percent who preferred Chirac, made such strategic defections. Taken together, these strategic defections cost Jospin the strong lead over Le Pen he would otherwise have had on the first round. Blais concedes that this is an unusual result, based on the widespread conviction, encouraged by the opinion polls, that Jospin and Chirac were destined to be on the second ballot. Robert Elgie, in Chapter 6, gives special emphasis to the role of the two-ballot system in shaping the French vote choice. He observes that the traditional logic – party identification dominates choice on the first ballot, ideological identification dominates choice on the second ballot – was not followed in the 2002 presidential election. Instead, in that contest ideology seemed to drive the vote on the first ballot as well, with Socialist Party identifiers going for candidates of the extreme left, and a significant share on traditional right party identifiers bolting for Le Pen. These breakdowns in party identification, coupled with the unusually large number of candidates (16), especially on the left, helped account for the Jospin defeat. Another institutional feature that Elgie debits against Jospin is cohabitation, where the prime minister and the president are of different party coalitions. Under cohabitation, it is the prime minister, rather than the president, who shares primary responsibility for the direction of the economy. Unfortunately for Jospin, heading into the 2002 election there were signs of economic deterioration, which many voters appeared to lay at his feet. The influence of certain institutional features on the French voter, such as the number of parties in the ruling coalition, has been neglected, according to Elgie. He argues that perceived responsibility for the economy should diminish, as the number of coalition parties increases, thereby blunting the effect of any economic vote. For example, Jospin’s government at election time was a four-party coalition of the Socialists, Communists, Left Radicals, and Greens. (It had been a five-party coalition,

6

Introduction

until Chevènement withdrew his Citizens’ Movement in 2000.) It may be that the hypothesized economic vote in 2002 was actually not that great, because of the diffusion of government responsibility under this large coalition. Guy D. Whitten, in Chapter 7, answers to this question, in an institutional, comparative, model. He poses the provocative question, Could there possibly have been economic voting in 2002? in the face of the issues of crime, immigration, low turnout, and the first-round Le Pen surprise. To answer this question, he predicted the 2002 first-round National Assembly election outcome from a previously built comparative voting model, estimated on 135 elections from 19 industrial democracies, including France. The equation holds incumbent vote to be a function, among other things, of macroeconomic indicators (growth, inflation, unemployment) and institutional features (clarity of responsibility, minority government status, number of parties in government). Note in particular that the model takes into account the institutional issue raised by Elgie, that is, the number of parties in the government coalition. Whitten plugged in the 2002 French scores on these institutional variables along with the 2002 French economy scores. In addition to the higher number of parties in the ruling coalition, he reports the economic variable scores for 2002, as well as for the nine French election years already in the analysis (1967–1997). Looking at this total of ten French election years, one sees that the 2002 inflation score ranks second best, but the unemployment and growth rank only sixth and seventh best, respectively. These 2002 values, along with the other 2002 independent variable values, yield the prediction that the ruling Socialist-led coalition would lose 4.1 percentage points on the first round. In fact, they experienced a net loss of 5.7 percentage points, yielding a prediction error of 1.6 points. That error is actually below the median error for all the French elections in the sample. Whitten concludes that, contrary to popular expectations, these 2002 elections were no more than politics as usual, including with that the usual amount of economic voting. The evidence that economic voting exists in France seems clear. Hence, the more lively questions relate to concerns about what conditions, especially institutional conditions, influence its strength. The 2002 national elections occurred under cohabitation, as have those of 1988 and 1995. Lewis-Beck and Nadeau, in Chapter 8, argue that cohabitation diffuses responsibility, ultimately diluting the impact of the economic vote. They attempt to extend this argument to the United States, asserting that the same effect should occur there, under divided government. Their comparative analysis, in which they test the same model

Michael S. Lewis-Beck 7

against both nations, reveals the expected effects in France, but not in the United States. They resolve this paradox by arguing that in France, dual governance really does bring about a shift in political economic leadership, away from the president and to the prime minister. In the United States, by way of contrast, political economic leadership remains with the president, regardless of the partisan complexion of the congressional majority. The 2002 French elections are viewed as a challenge to the generality of their model, because of the Le Pen surprise, and because that cohabitation was the first ever with a prime minister from the left and a president from the right. Nevertheless, as it turns out, these presidential and legislative election outcomes are quite well predicted once they are incorporated into the model, yielding within sample errors that are small. The implication is that, after all, the 2002 results were product of the normal rhythms of the French electorate. While Lewis-Beck and Nadeau look at the effect of cohabitation on the economic vote, Thomas Gschwend and Dirk Leuffen, in Chapter 9, look at the effect of cohabitation on turnout. This is an especially important question in 2002, since first-round turnout for the legislative elections set a Fifth Republic record, with a 35.6 percent abstention rate. Might part of this have come from voters who were cross-pressured, with a regime preference (e.g. unified government) that worked against their partisan preference (e.g. left)? Going into the first round of the 2002 legislative elections, voters knew that Jacques Chirac was elected President. Therefore, they also knew that a left legislative win meant cohabitation. These authors formulate a carefully specified model of turnout, and test it against survey data gathered between the presidential and legislative elections. They find that failure to turn out was determined by usual suspects, such as low political interest or efficacy. But in addition, they show that left partisans who favored the principle of unified government (over cohabitation) were more likely to abstain. However, a comparable sort of cross-pressure on the right (for those favoring cohabitation) was not found. Thus, this asymmetric demobilization, coming from the threat of cohabitation and affecting only the left, helps explain the magnitude of the left defeat. To this point, all the chapters have tried to explain elections. Bruno Jérôme and Veronique Jérôme-Speziari, in Chapter 10, have a different focus, for they wish to forecast elections. While good forecasting of course involves good explanation, it does tend to dictate different research design, and different measures. In particular, the research design is aggregate, in order to account for national-level election

8

Introduction

outcomes, rather than individual-level vote choices. Further, measures on the independent variables are available well before the election itself, so that the forecast not be made trivial by a lack of lead time. They propose models for presidential and legislative elections, and estimate them on a pooled time series of French regions, 1974–2002. The presidential model holds first-round vote for the government coalition to be a function of, among other things, past legislative vote, unemployment change, regional strength, the popularity gap between the prime minister and the president, and the absolute popularity of the prime minister. The model forecasts that the first-round combined vote share for left candidates, who represent the government coalition, would be only 42.39 percent, not far from their actual share of 42.89 percent. The accuracy of this forecast is especially noteworthy in light of the poor forecasting performance they report for the polls. Before the presidential election, first round, the poll estimates were grossly biased toward the left, consistently giving it between six to nine percentage points more than it finally won. Further, a left bias in poll projections persisted throughout the campaign for the legislative races. Forecasting is also the theme of Chapter 11, by Eric Dubois and Christine Fauvelle-Aymar. They take a somewhat different tack from Chapter 10, aiming more to resolve some general issues of data and measurement in the French vote function literature. They restrict analysis to legislative contests, and make the suggestion that the preferred dependent variable should consistently be left-party coalition support. This proposal recognizes the ambiguities of where to place the National Front when the dependent variable is incumbent-coalition and that coalition is headed by a traditional right party. A further innovation comes in the measurement of one of the independent variables. Political influences are to be captured by the popularity of the ruling parties. The importance of economic voting is also acknowledged, and unemployment selected as the key indicator, in part because of data availability. A new question that is thoroughly explored is whether national, regional, or departmental data are to be preferred. After a series of different pooled time series procedures, on elections from 1986 to 2002, the conclusion is that departmental data models, with adjusted R2 of 0.83, yield the least prediction error. Considering the 2002 result in particular, a conclusion is that neither the errors from the ex poste prediction nor the ex ante forecast indicate that this legislative contest was special compared to others. The forecasting models, and French popularity and vote function equations generally, have in common a political economy approach to the

Michael S. Lewis-Beck 9

explanation of the French voter. Two conceptual variables are central – national political performance and national economic performance. The former is measured usually by the popularity of the president or the prime minister, while the latter is usually measured by the macroeconomic indicators of growth, unemployment, or inflation. Dubois and Fauvelle-Aymar remind us that political performance might be better measured by examining the popularity of the leading parties, rather than the popularity of the leaders themselves. In Chapter 12, Eric Bélanger and Michael Lewis-Beck suggest that economic performance might be better measured by subjective rather than objective economic indicators. According to their analyses, subjective indicators, such as aggregated citizen perceptions of national business conditions, account for the French election outcomes more satisfactorily than traditional macroeconomic indicators, such as economic growth. They do not actually include these subjective indicators in any forecasting models. The implication, however, is that subjective indicators might replace objective indicators of the economy, in forecasting models, and in vote functions generally. After reading this chapter review, one sees that the current study of French elections can be organized in different ways. First, it can be organized in terms of whether the primary unit of analysis is micro or macro. Is it the individual voter? Or is it the nation as a whole? With the former, the natural dependent variable is vote choice, and the data are survey. With the latter, the natural dependent variable is the overall election outcome, and the data are aggregate. The studies are balanced in terms of level of analysis, with six at the macro level (Chapters 1, 7, 8, 10, 11 and 12), and six at the micro level (Chapters 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 9). Micro and macro approaches are useful in their own right, but do dictate to some extent the theory up for test, pointing to the second way these chapters can be organized. In the micro chapters, the following theories of vote choice are emphasized: issues (Chapter 2); partisan or ideological identification (Chapter 3); social cleavages (Chapter 4); strategic voting (Chapter 5); institutions (Chapter 6); preferences (Chapter 9). In the macro chapters, the following theories of election outcome are emphasized: geographic context (Chapter 1); institutions, especially cohabitation (Chapters 7 and 8); political economy (Chapters 10 and 11); economic voting (Chapter 12). Given each chapter features a different electoral theory, one might be tempted to call them rival theories. I would instead call them complementary theories. No one model, no one chapter, fully explains the French voter. Rather, each adds a piece to the puzzle. This

10

Introduction

perspective rides a contemporary wave of methodological thinking in political science and econometrics. The notion that there is one unique true model, to be correctly specified and estimated, is coming to be replaced by the notion that there may be alternative models of equal validity, worthy of support as long as they fare well in competitive, rigorous testing. These chapters show the value of that view for the understanding of French elections and, by their very range and variety, point to scholarly challenges that remain. How do the varied theories help explain the strong, decisive, showing of Le Pen, on the first ballot of the 2002 presidential elections? First, a number of things directly helped Le Pen. Issues of law and order had unusual importance in that election, and Le Pen was seen as especially capable in that policy area. Further, party identification with the National Front, and ideological identification with the extreme right, appeared to exhibit more pull than usual. In addition, there was some strategic defection to Le Pen on the part of Chirac supporters. Second, a number of things indirectly helped Le Pen, in that they cost Jospin votes. The proliferation of candidates, who were disproportionately from the left, led Socialists away from Jospin. Often, these Socialist defections to an extreme left party were strategic, based on the belief that a message was being sent to Jospin, who would hear it on the second round. Further, the year before the election saw rising unemployment and declining consumer confidence, conditions for which Prime Minister Jospin received much blame, given his cohabitation role as economic chief. Indeed, the poor showing of the left on the presidential first round appears predictable, once the conjunction of cohabitation and economic conditions are taken into account. The 2002 legislative results, where the left also did badly, are similarly predictable, with economic forces looming large there as well. Interestingly, the failure of the left here, unlike the presidential race, did not benefit the extreme right. The National Front received 11.3 percent of the first-round vote, with the Megret faction receiving an additional 1.1 percent, for a total of 12.4, comparable to the 13 percent share the National Front received in 1997. The usual balance of partisan forces in France seems pretty much restored, with the classical right in power. Soon enough, alternance will occur, and the classical left, headed by the Socialists, perhaps even Jospin himself, will return to govern. The fundamental rhythms of the French political system appear back to normal. When the 2002 elections strained the system, its institutions and its citizens responded with resiliency. The ballot returns can be explained

Michael S. Lewis-Beck 11

within a traditional framework for the understanding of French political behavior, especially when coupled with an appreciation of their institutional interactions. Even the lack of a leading left alternative on the second presidential round is not unprecedented, having also happened in 1969. In that contest, as in 2002, the Gaullist presidential candidate went on to an overwhelming second-round victory. Under the Fifth Republic, the attitudes and behavior of the French electorate appear to have changed remarkably little. Some twenty years ago, I wrote that “the 1981 election results do not undercut the conclusion that the French electorate is ‘stalled’ in past habits” (Lewis-Beck, 1984: 446). It is still not far off the mark to conclude, in the aftermath of the 2002 elections, that the French electorate is stalled. While the workings of French electoral politics is obviously not the same now as twenty years ago, the continuities are much more impressive than the changes. Note 1. The author wishes to thank the college of Liberal Arts & Sciences of the University of Iowa and its F. Wendell Miller Research Grant to me, which made possible this field work. The translation of the interviews is my own.

Reference Lewis-Beck, M.S. 1984. “France: The Stalled Electorate,” in Russell J. Dalton, Scott C. Flanagan and Paul Allen Beck (eds), Princeton University Press, pp. 425–448.

1 France’s 2002 Presidential Elections: Earlier and Later Territorial Fractures Annie Laurent

Twenty-first April will long remain a day to remember for the French who watched in shock as election returns appeared on their TV sets: the Left had been voted out of the second round of balloting in the presidential election, the two contenders for the run-up being Jacques Chirac and Jean-Marie Le Pen. Two weeks later, the incumbent who benefited from the support of practically all political forces was re-elected with the Fifth Republic’s highest results ever (82 per cent of recorded votes). Odd as it may have seemed, this presidential election saw two dramatically different ballots which the media encapsulated with phrases taken from the geographical lexicon: ‘political earthquake’ to refer to 21 April and ‘electoral tidal wave’ for the 5 May returns. Though these phrases are first and foremost metaphors coined by the media, they amply illustrate the vocabulary of electoral geography, born with André Siegfried’s soon-to-become famous founding book on electoral behaviours in Western France under the Third Republic (Siegfried, 1913). This writer, who based his analysis of votes on real results collected on a territorial unit basis such as departments or ‘cantons’, endeavoured to typify the reasons of voters’ behaviours according to the area in which they lived. In this book, as in the ones which he was to publish later on, the cartographic approach was paramount. It enabled him to highlight two major factors: on the one hand, the territory-based relation of voters’ behaviours and, on the other hand, the permanence over time of territorial contrasts which, as he put it, pointed to ‘political 12

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13

temperaments’. Later on, François Goguel and Alain Lancelot, just to mention two leading authors, would take over the systematic research into each ballot from a territory-based approach (Goguel, from 1945 until 1985; Lancelot, from 1965 until 1985). Both writers are part and parcel of the ‘Siegfried tradition’. Yet, the former also focused on the specificities of territories and on the fact that the significance of a vote differs from one place to the next (Goguel, 1969), while the latter conducted an in-depth research on the political conditions of the different ballots, thus raising the question of the effects caused by a wide range of candidates on electoral behaviours. Nowadays, in spite of the vast amount of work based on survey-data which tends to smooth out the territorial dimension of the vote, most ballots are the subject of geography-based analyses.1 The latter, whether based on a nationwide or a European scale (Delbos, 1994), bear witness to the twofold perspective highlighted by André Siegfried: in other words, the geographical vote gap as well as the existence of long-lasting territorial patterns. Still, whenever these analyses are based on a long-time period, the permanence of electoral territories has to be put into perspective, as witness among other works, the comparison of maps drawn over a long-time period (Salmon, 2001). Therefore, the vote distribution based on the territory is not set once and for all. The territory-based grassroots support of the different forces is deeply rooted but this does not preclude territorial vote reconstructions. While electoral territories are eroding, or even at times disintegrate, others are born or gain a foothold. Such an evolution cannot be assessed in terms of percentage points only, as recorded in result-maps; it can also be measured in terms of structure. Over the years, a hypothesis could even be raised, that territorial reconstructions, at least in the second round of balloting in presidential elections from 1965 until 1995, had taken precedence over permanence (Dolez and Laurent, 1996). These transformations are due to several factors, among which is the emergence of new political forces on the electoral scene. They are also the fruits of a homogenisation process of votes triggered in the 1965 presidential election and which are generalised to all types of elections (Lancelot, 1969; Dolez and Laurent, 2001). The 2002 ballot provides us with a fresh opportunity to analyse the results from a geographical perspective. As will be examined later on, the electoral map has remained contrasted and relatively stable since 1995. Still, this election contributed to the transformation of France’s political landscape. At the end of the series of ballots in 2002, new territorial fractures emerged, which may be a harbinger of things to come.

14

France’s 2002 Presidential Elections

21 April–5 May, 2002: from a ‘political earthquake’ to an ‘electoral tidal wave’ To begin with, the first ballot returns are an apt illustration of the wide spectrum of candidates and of the way votes are scattered: 16 candidates entered the fray, 7 of whom made it to the 5 per cent mark of valid votes.2 The proportional representation (PR) logic therefore dominated in the first round, characterised as it was by the lack of any meaningful political issues. Moreover, the results also highlighted the credibility gap between major political parties since abstention had never been that high in this type of ballot (28.4 per cent). The Rassemblement pour la République (RPR), which had backed Jacques Chirac since 1981, enjoyed its former results of 1988 and 1995 (Table 1.1). Yet, its Republican allies made quite a poor showing with pretty low results: less than 7.0 per cent for François Bayrou’s Union pour la Démocratie Française (UDF) and less than 4 per cent for ‘Démocratie libérale’ led by Alain Madelin. The Socialist Party (PS), led by Lionel Jospin since 1995, made its poorest showing ever since 1969 (16.2 per cent). This drop was all the sharper as the Communist Party and the Greens did make poor showings as well (with respectively 3.4 and 5.3 per cent). The ‘gauche plurielle’ (L. Jospin, R. Hue, N. Mamère, Ch. Taubira, to whom one might add, though arguably, J.-P. Chevènement)3 garnered only 32.4 per cent of recorded votes. But the first round also bore witness to the ever-increasing grassroots appeal of the far Right and of the far Left. Jean-Marie Le Pen made his party’s greatest showing ever in a presidential election (16.9 per cent). Since the 1984 European Parliament elections in which he had garnered 10.6 per cent of recorded votes, the far Right had steadily improved its showing, even though some observers had first thought that the breakthrough could be nothing but short-lived. They were to be proved wrong in spite of the split within the far Right movement itself in the

Table 1.1 The evolution of the Gaullist Right, the FN and the PS in the first round in the 1982 to 2002 presidential elections (the whole of France, in percentage points of valid votes)

J. Chirac F. Mitterrand–L. Jospin J.-M. Le Pen

1981

1988

1995

2002

18.0 25.9 –

19.9 34.1 14.4

20.8 23.3 15.0

19.9 16.2 16.9

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1999 European elections with the founding of the MNR (Mouvement pour la France) set up by Bruno Mégret. The latter then garnered 3 per cent of recorded votes to 6 per cent for Jean-Marie Le Pen. He was to get 2.3 per cent of the votes in April 2002. The far Left, represented by three contenders, Arlette Laguiller for ‘Lutte Ouvrière’, Olivier Besancenot for the ‘Ligue communiste révolutionnaire’ and Daniel Gluckstein for ‘le Parti des travailleurs’, in all garnered 10.4 per cent of recorded votes. These results are an apt confirmation of the showing made by the far Left over the last few years. But, up to then, these had been PR-based elections or elections with at least a measure of PR 4 which traditionally favour the far Left. Jean-Pierre Chevènement, the leader of the ‘Pôle républicain’, a movement set up in January 2001, who had for some time been regarded as ‘the third man’, 5 came in only sixth with 5.3 per cent of votes, just beyond the mark to have his campaign expenditure reimbursed. Despite the high hopes he had entertained, he did not manage to ‘give the system a good shake’ 6 although the latter was to come out of the process in quite a bad shape. The second round exemplified the passage from a ‘political earthquake’ to an ‘electoral tidal wave’. The incumbent, who was to capitalise on the republican anti-Le Pen reflex, was re-elected with 82.2 per cent of recorded votes to 17.8 per cent for his far Right opponent. Elated as he was by his showing after the first round, the latter had declared on TV on the election night: ‘Economically, I am a right winger, socially, I am a left-winger, and nationally I am an all-out Frenchman.’ Accordingly, the outcome of this election was paradoxical: Jacques Chirac became the Fifth Republic’s best-elected President although his electoral basis was the weakest. Contrary to what had occurred in the first ballot, voter mobilisation was especially high on 5 May: over 81 per cent of voters (that is an increase of more than 8 percentage points). Compared with 21 April, the National Front (FN) dropped in percentage points in almost 30 departments but significantly it made a better showing in some of its strongholds: in the Somme department in the ProvenceAlpes-Côte d’Azur region, in Pyrénées-Orientales and in Corsica. It also improved its results noticeably in northern France and in many areas in southwestern France. Jacques Chirac improved his score most dramatically in traditionally Left-leaning areas, places where Lionel Jospin had scored his best results in the first ballot. He made a more than 70 points increase in Hautes-Pyrénées, Jean Glavany’s (then Lionel Jospin’s campaign manager) current home constituency: 16.3 per cent in the first ballot compared with 86.6 per cent in the second. The same also occurred in Loire-Atlantique, home constituency to Jean-Marc Ayrault,

16

France’s 2002 Presidential Elections

President of the Socialist group in the National Assembly (respectively 18.8 per cent and 88.8 per cent). The Left’s mobilisation in support of republican values was also very strong (more than 65 per cent) in Ariège and Haute-Garonne, an area where Lionel Jospin had also held a seat in the General Council Assembly. Just after the 5 May ballot, all eyes were set on the general election scheduled one month later. Eight thousand four hundred and forty four candidates were to enter the fray to be elected to one of the 577 seats of Members of the French Parliament, 555 of which are located in metropolitan France (that is, an average of 15 candidates per constituency).

2002: a still sharply contrasted electoral map The first ballot returns of the presidential election were not identical all over France’s national territory, far from it. The magnitude of the contrasts variously affected all political forces but the very nature of the election also has to be taken into account. The geographical disparities of the vote The department by department analysis of the maximum and minimum results garnered by the first three leading candidates at the end of the first ballot of this presidential election makes it possible to gauge the scale of territorial disparities (Table 1.2).7 They are especially sharp for Jean-Marie Le Pen and Jacques Chirac while Lionel Jospin enjoys a somewhat more even grass-roots support. Jean-Marie Le Pen garnered only 8.9 per cent of votes in Corrèze but 26 per cent in Alpes-Maritimes, thus highlighting a 17-point gap and a 4.3 standard deviation. Le Pen’s vote map illustrates a wide gap between western France and eastern France, with a stronger appeal in the latter region. He made his best showing in the Mediterranean area

Table 1.2 The spectrum of contrasts: minimum and maximum results scored by the three leading candidates in the first ballot of the 2002 presidential election (96 French departments, in percentage points of recorded votes, metropolitan France only) National score J. Chirac J.-M. Le Pen L. Jospin

Minimum score

Maximum score

Deviation

Standard deviation

14.2 8.9 9.9

34.2 26.0 23.7

20.0 17.1 13.8

3.4 4.3 2.5

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(Alpes-Maritimes 26 per cent, Bouches-du-Rhône 22.4 per cent), in Alsace (23.4 per cent), in Picardy (20.3 per cent) as well as in the RhôneAlpes area (19.8 per cent). The National Front’s President made it beyond the 10 per cent mark in practically all metropolitan France’s departments, three excepted, Paris being one of the hold-outs. Likewise, Jacques Chirac got only 14.2 per cent of the votes in Ariège and the ‘territoire de Belfort’ but 34.2 per cent in Corrèze, his home department (a 3.4 standard deviation). His strongholds are essentially located in Corsica (27.6 per cent), in the Limousin area (26.9) and in the ‘Pays de Loire’ area (23.4 per cent). His following remains low (near 17 per cent) in the Midi-Pyrénées region, in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais or in Rhône-Alpes. The differences in results between departments are less noticeable, though appreciable for Lionel Jospin: 9.9 per cent in the ‘territoire de Belfort’ to 23.7 per cent in Ariège (a 2.5 standard deviation). He made his greatest showing in western and southwestern France, more specifically in the Midi-Pyrénées region (Ariège, 23.7 per cent; Aveyron, 22.2 per cent), in the Aquitaine area (Landes, 21.9 per cent; Dordogne, 21.7 per cent), in Limousin (Haute-Vienne, 19.7 per cent) and in Brittany (Côte-d’Armor, 19.3 per cent). But the Socialist Party’s showing remained poor in the entire Provence region, the Southeast Rhône valley and in Alsace. It came in first in the first ballot in only one out of twenty-two regions, in Midi-Pyrénées. In 16 departments, its results were even lower than 13.5 per cent of recorded votes. Broadly speaking, the parties that were in office incurred voter discontent less in the west east than in the east where the Le Pen vote and abstention were definitely more marked. Nature of the election and the geographical disparities of votes Still, the geographical disparity of votes is not specific to the presidential election, far from it. Thus, the more fragmented a territory is, in other words, the more locally based an election is, the more sharply contrasted electoral behaviours are. It must be underlined that such a trend is beneficial to the prevailing political force. The effects of such territorial fragmentation on electoral behaviours can be illustrated with the example of the Pas-de-Calais ‘department’, located in Northern France and which is one of the Left’s strongholds. The research is based on the results of the Left, then in office, during the elections in the 1998–2002 period (Table 1.3). In the 1998 cantonal elections which enabled voters to elect local ‘department’-based administrators, there was a 16-point gap between the incumbent Left and the nationwide average. In the 2002 general election, the gap was narrower: 9.4 per cent. It was narrower still in the 1998 regional election which was held within the ‘department’

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France’s 2002 Presidential Elections

Table 1.3 The Left, then in office, in the Pas-de-Calais first ballots held over the 1998–2002 period (Socialist Party + Communist Party + Greens + various Left-wing parties) Regional elections 1998 Pas-de-Calais Metropolitan France P-d-C – France

Cantonal elections 1998 1er t

European election 1999

Presidential General election election 2002 1er t* 2002 1er t*

45.3

60.1

39.6

33.1

46.6

39.3 +06.0

43.9 +16.2

38.5 +1.1

32.6 +0.5

37.2 +9.4

*In 2002, the results of the incumbent Left take the results garnered by the ‘Pôle républicain’ into account.

framework with the PR system. In the election to the European Parliament in 1999 and in the 2002 presidential election in which the territory was not fragmented, the gaps were narrow, not to say residual, respectively 1.1 and 0.5 point.

A fairly stable electoral map Even though the emergence of new political forces on the electoral scene has contributed to changing France’s political landscape over the last ten years, such a reconstruction has dealt a bigger blow to the level of traditional political forces than to their geographical grassroots support structure. Over the different ballots, the latter has remained fairly stable even if, in the long run, it is likely to change. From the 1995 to the 2002 presidential election At the end of the first ballot of the 2002 presidential election, the ‘department’-based electoral structures of the RPR, Socialist and National Front votes remained extremely stable, as witnessed by Pearson’s correlation coefficient, measured on the basis of the 1995 and 2002 election results: 0.83 for Jacques Chirac; 0.85 for Lionel Jospin and 0.94 for JeanMarie Le Pen. Accordingly, each of these three forces increased or fell back in relation to its traditional strongholds. This did not hold true for ‘great’ political forces only. Even the smallest ones also capitalised on a fairly steady permanence of their territorial grassroots support structures (Boy, 1997). All political forces then abide by such a pattern, whether they be enjoying greater popular support such as the far Left or suffer

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a downward trend like the Communist Party. Between 1995 and 2002, the far Left enjoyed a 5 per cent increase (respectively 5.4 per cent and 10.4 per cent). 8 Its growth is not even but hinges on its territorial structure back in 1995 (with a 0.66 coefficient).9 In the same way, even though the Communist Party did collapse (− 5.2 points compared with 1995), its degree of structuring remains extremely strong (a 0.96 coefficient between the 2002 and 1995 ballots). Despite that drop, the Communist Party has remained firmly entrenched in its traditional support areas. Besides, this was to allow it to make a come-back one month later in the general election since it was to retain 22 constituencies, thus enabling it to maintain a group in Parliament.10 In terms of electoral geography and in comparison with 1995, Jacques Chirac fell back in 61 out of 96 metropolitan France’s departments. He held his ground in his strongholds, all located in rural areas,11 especially in western and central France where he kept strengthening his following. On the other hand, his grassroots support remained weaker in the north, the east and the south-east. Lionel Jospin fell back in all departments and his drop exceeded 10 percentage points in about 10 departments that were once regarded as his traditional strongholds.12 Conversely, Jean-Marie Le Pen’s party enjoyed a boost in almost all French departments (91 out of 96) but such an upsurge does not make it necessary to reassess the National Front’s vote map which is characterised first and foremost by its permanence. It kept scoring its best results in its strongholds: in Alsace, in industrial north eastern France, in the Rhône valley and on the Mediterranean coast. It has also made a breakthrough in rural areas. 13 Still, Brittany, central and western France, not to mention Paris, kept resisting the temptation of a far Right vote. From the 1981 to the 2002 presidential election In their 1986 study of the communist vote from 1967 to 1981, François Platone and Jean Ranger underlined that the time-span between two ballots contributed to the weakening of the scale of such territorial structures, as measured with correlation coefficients (Platone and Ranger, 1986). The 2002 election still proved their findings for the Communist Party, whose coefficients tend to decrease slightly over the years: 0.96 for the 2002–1995 period but 0.83 over a longer period, 2002–1981 (Table 1.4). This relation also holds true, though more markedly and more regularly, for the Socialist Party whose correlation coefficients steadily decrease as the reference time-span between two ballots gets longer: 0.85 (2002–1995); 0.63 (2002–1988); 0.54 (2002–1981). The same pattern applies to the

20

France’s 2002 Presidential Elections

Table 1.4 2002–1981: the resistance of the Socialist Party’s, RPR’s, Communist Party’s and National Front’s territorial structures (correlation coefficients measured on the basis of each metropolitan France’s departments)

Presidential 2002 → Presidential 1995 Presidential 2002 → Presidential 1988 Presidential 2002 → Presidential 1981

PC

PS

RPR

FN

0.96 0.96 0.83

0.85 0.63 0.54

0.83 0.87 0.85

0.94 0.83 –

National Front, but over a shorter time-span since Jean-Marie Le Pen did not run in the 1981 election: 0.94 (2002–1995) and 0.83 (2002–1988). On the other hand, such an erosion of the territorial structure does not affect Jacques Chirac’s party which remains surprisingly stable over the 1981–2002 period: 0.83 (2002–1995); 0.87 (2002–1988); 0.85 (2002–1981). Even though territorial structures resist quite well from one ballot to the next, they often tend to erode over a longer period, which entails a territorial reconstruction of votes.

An ever-changing territory Such changes are due to several factors, one of which is the emergence of new political forces on France’s electoral scene. But they are also the fruits of the homogenisation process of votes. The latter factor, which started with the 1965 presidential election (Lancelot, 1969), now affects all types of elections (Dolez and Laurent, 2001). The 2002 ballot did not put this pattern into question. On the contrary, it tended to reinforce it even further. Over a longer period, 1965–1995, such homogenisation went along with a restructuring of grassroots territories, a process which could also be confirmed in 2002 by the emergence of new space-related fractures between ‘dynamic’ areas and economically depressed ones. An ever-more homogeneous territory Over the years, voter behaviours have kept homogenising owing to the erosion of local specificities, in other words, owing to the narrowing gap of contrasts between the strong areas and the weak ones of the different political forces. Even though those contrasts live on, as witness the abovementioned data, their intensity tends to decrease regularly. This evernarrowing gap is obvious, be it assessed on the basis of the scale of the vote gap (i.e. the difference between the departments where the Left obtained their best scores and the one where they collected their poorest scores)

Standard deviation (by department)

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14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 P

65 19

P

02 20

19

L

20

99

79

02

67

L

E

19

E

19

98

86

R

19

R

19

Figure 1.1 The homogenisation of electoral behaviours in France under the Fifth Republic.

or on the standard deviation (Figure 1.1). In the first round of balloting in the 1965 presidential election, the Mitterrand vote standard deviation was twice as high as the one concerning the overall vote garnered by Robert Hue, Lionel Jospin, Christiane Taubira, Noël Mamère and Jean-Pierre Chevènement in 2002: 8.3 and 3.8 (per ‘department’ standard deviation). An identical pattern can also be observed during general elections since the standard deviation for Left-wing votes (to which the votes garnered by the different Green candidates can also be added) between 1967 and 2002 went from 11.7 down to 6.414 (on a per ‘department’ basis). A similar pattern, less markedly though, can also be observed in the elections to the European Parliament (6.6 in 1979 and 4.3 in 1999), for what came to be known as ‘the Plural Left’, and in regional elections (6.4 in 1986 and 5.6 in 1998). Such a homogenisation process must not conceal the fact that contrasts are not always sharp from one ballot to the next. Local elections, such as the ‘canton’-based ones provide us with more contrasted results than other types of ballots in terms of territories. In the 1994 and 1998 cantonal elections, standard deviations for the overall Plural Left/Green coalition were respectively 8.9 and 8.5 (on a per ‘department’ basis), hence slightly higher figures than those seen in previous elections (Dolez and Laurent, 2001). 1965–1995: territorial reconstructions15 The homogenisation of the vote map was also shown in the second rounds of the 1965 to 1995 presidential elections and went along with profound vote reconstructions as well. Over a 30-year span of presidential elections, the gap between strong and weak areas has kept narrowing,

22

France’s 2002 Presidential Elections

thus highlighting the homogenisation process of votes. Over that period, the scale and standard deviation of the Left vote has practically been halved: 45.1 per cent down to 25.3 per cent; 8.86 per cent down to 4.79 per cent (Table 1.5). In 1969 as in 2002, the Left did not run in the second round of balloting. Such findings lead to a twofold conclusion. First and foremost, the homogenisation of votes in the second round is not a steady process. The narrowing gap of contrasts is essentially due to the 1965–1974 period and was followed by a time of stability (1988–1995). Later, the homogenisation of voter behaviours seems to have been caused mainly by the erosion of weak areas, be it on the Left as well as on the Right. Back in 1965, the most staunchly anti-Left ‘department’ gave it only 20 per cent of recorded votes; ten years later, in a weak area, the Left was to garner at least 33 per cent of recorded votes (Table 1.5). Such a pattern makes one wonder about the changes in the geographical structures of the vote France has been experiencing since 1965. Those last thirty years of elections have been marked by outstanding electoral fractures. First and foremost, the presidential changes of both 1981 and later, 1995; then, the two ensuing power-sharing systems (the 1986 and 1993 ‘cohabitations’). Electorally, those breaking points had uneven consequences on the geography of votes since nearly half of metropolitan France’s departments (49, more specifically) illustrated such in-depth changes over the period concerned with the research paper. Out of the 49 above-mentioned departments, 27 experienced a markedly Rightleaning course,16 22 of them had a Left-leaning course,17 while the rest of the departments had a less noticeable evolution ranging between those two poles. The major changes concerned weak areas. Such an observation is more relevant for the Left than for the Right. Therefore, the chances of voting for the Left markedly increased in areas where François Mitterrand had made his poorer showing back in 1965: in Alsace, Lorraine and in Table 1.5 The second ballot in presidential elections from 1965 to 1995: the evolution of standard deviations between most – and least – Left-leaning departments Minimal score 1965 1974 1981 1988 1995

20.1 330.0 34.9 40.9 34.5

Maximal score

Deviation

Standard deviation

65.2 63.5 63.7 64.7 59.8

45.1 30.5 28.8 23.8 25.3

8.86 6.67 5.55 4.74 4.79

Annie Laurent

23

western France. Likewise, the chances of voting for the Right increased in areas where Charles de Gaulle had scored poorly: the Paris area, Limousin, part of southwestern France as well as on the Mediterranean coast. What is more, the pace of such reconstruction is not alike from one presidential election to the next. Those of 1981 and 1995 altered the geographical structure of the previous election only marginally, although politically speaking, these were milestones. Conversely, the 1974 and 1988 elections dramatically contributed to reinforcing territorial reconstructions. What elements can we focus on so as to account for such a paradox? The 1974/1981 and 1988/1995 periods were not marked by any major political upheavals, the political situation was the sole element that changed. On the contrary, during the 1965/1974 period on the one hand, and the 1981/1988 on the other hand, France’s political landscape was to change dramatically. Indeed, 1965/1974 was marked by the demise of the Center electorate and bipolarisation; 1981/1988 was, on the contrary, characterised by the unravelling of the four major-party pattern and by the emergence of the National Front. It is commonly held that the end of the Center as a politically autonomous force and the emergence, and later, grassroots appeal of the National Front led to an overall political recombining with part of the Christian-Democratic electorate eventually joining hands with the Left while part of the blue-collar electorate (from the working class) which had rallied the National Front was to make the Right their political home. Until further research has been carried out, one can put forward the hypothesis that such political reshuffling translates into a geographical reconstruction in the MRP’s former strongholds and in the National Front’s newly-won bastions. It thus ensues that the electoral structure was profoundly altered in the elections after which there was no political change in office. On the contrary, it was not, or little, affected by the elections which signalled major political upheavals. Political stability can hide great geographical reconstruction while change occurs in a constant or almost constant geographical structure: in 1995, one was under the impression that Jacques Chirac had regularly and evenly improved his showing in all French departments. Indeed, the Right/Left relationship did change whereas its geographical structure remained the same (Dolez and Laurent, 1996). 2002: new territorial fractures On election night of the first round during the 2002 presidential election, profound social and territorial reconstructions appeared. Even though the National Front vote, as in 1995, was higher among blue-collars than the national average (+13 percentage points), 18 it had not encroached

24

France’s 2002 Presidential Elections

on the middle- and upper-ranking executive electorate (−8 percentage points). Yet, the Far Right vote had increased sharply among the unemployed (an 18-point rise in 2002 compared with the national average, to a 3- to 4-point rise in 1988 and 1995) and also, though less markedly, among farmers (a 3-percentage point rise in 2002 compared with −1 point in 1995 and −9 points in 1988). Beyond the sociological dimension, these election returns highlighted a major territorial fracture between areas voters viewed as ‘dynamic’, and those viewed as economically depressed areas. In the former situation, Lionel Jospin’s campaign themes on economic recovery, a lowering unemployment rate or, more broadly speaking, the Plural Left’s themes were heeded and materialised in the ballot-box. Some departments ringing Paris, Hauts-de-Seine or Yvelines, but also the Rhône ‘department’ are apt illustrations of such a phenomenon. In Paris, the Plural Left improved its showing by 5 per cent compared with 1995 while the rise of the Far Left and of the Far Right were contained (respectively 2.0 and 0.9). On the contrary, such campaign themes went unheeded in economically depressed areas as voters felt they were being left out of the economic recovery. Such an ‘exclusion’ process was to make itself felt in the polls through an overall weakening of the Left and through the rise of far Right and Left votes, as well as of abstention. This situation can be epitomised by the example of the Pas-de-Calais ‘department’, a Socialist stronghold still reeling from the trauma of pit closures, where the Plural Left lost more than eight points while the Far Left improved its score by seven points and the Far Right gained five points. Likewise, the Plural Left’s campaign themes did not catch the country folks’ attention. Therefore, in Ardennes, Somme, Nièvre or in Brittany, the Left lost ground dramatically and such a drop went along with the rise of both far Right and far Left parties in each instance. This territorial fracture was also to be confirmed in the second round of balloting of the presidential election since, from one Sunday to the next, Jean-Marie Le Pen’s showing was broadly speaking stable compared with the overall Le Pen + Mégret vote in the first round in most so-called ‘dynamic’ areas while it often increased in economically-depressed areas or in areas geographically remote from urbanised regions. One month later, the general election was to bear out this territorial fracture. From such a perspective, Paris is indeed emblematic since the Left gained three constituencies. On the contrary, in economically depressed areas, the Left collapsed in terms of votes and far Right and far Left parties gained a firm foothold. But those elections to France’s National Assembly also highlighted further territorial fractures between big city-centers and their surrounding suburbs. Generally speaking and

Annie Laurent

25

in a somewhat caricatural manner, the further from the downtown area one resides, the less the Left resisted. Such a phenomenon can partly be accounted for by the sociological reconstructions that have affected France as a whole. Over the past few years, a sizable part of the middleand upper-middle class have moved back to the city-centers after making it to the city-outskirts in a flight-from-the-city move whereas low-ranking white collars and blue-collars have found themselves left out in the city-outskirts and in the country, this being due to the price of housing and higher taxes levied in city-centers. The Socialist Party’s change in grassroots appeal, which has less focused on less privileged classes since the 1990s, 19 can partly explain why the Left kept a firmer grip in citycenters than in suburbs. Likewise, the Right gained a firm foothold in rural and blue-collar, sometimes populist France. One must bear in mind that the far Right’s showing in the presidential election was especially good in rural areas (21 per cent in rural constituencies). In the general election, a return to a more pragmatic, ‘utile’ vote enabled the moderate Right to reclaim some of the votes that had been cast for the far Right in the presidential election. At the end of the general election, the gap between Right and Left in terms of seats was overwhelming (399 for the Right, 178 for the Left) while the National Front did not get a single seat. The distortion between the number of seats and votes again raises the question of the choice of the ‘right’ type of election system. In August 2002, two months after the legislative elections, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, the Prime Minister, tackled the subject, announcing that electoral reforms were in the works for threes types of elections – legislative, regional, and cantonal. In the end, after numerous debates and violent controversies, the method of balloting for the legislative elections remained unchanged. In contrast, from 2004, regional elections would unfold according to a mixed two ballot system (majoritarian with a bit of proportionality), that will take place at the regional level instead of the departmental one. The European elections would remain proportional, but would be organized at the level of eight big regions, rather than the national level. These modifications will limit considerably the effects of proportionality. This was a goal of some, because the last presidential elections showed that the major parties were in a minority position nationwide (Table 1.6). Nevertheless, while these reforms will contribute to the modification of the party system since they will reinforce the two great political forces – the PS and the UMP – they will not manage to exclude the National Front from the national political landscape.

26

France’s 2002 Presidential Elections

Table 1.6

Results of the presidential election (the whole of France) First ballot

Inscrits Votants Exprimés Abstentions (inscrits – votants): Blancs et nuls (votants – exprimés): M. Chirac Jacques M. Le Pen Jean-Marie M. Jospin Lionel M. Bayrou François Mme Laguiller Arlette M. Chevénement Jean-Pierre M. Mamere Noël M. Besancenot Olivier M. Saint-Josse Jean M. Madelin Alain M. Hue Robert M. Megret Bruno Mme Taubira Christine Mme Lepage Corinne Mme Boutin Christine M. Gluckstein Daniel

%

41 194 689 29 495 733 28 498 471

%

41 191 149 32 832 295 31 062 988

11 698 956

28.40

997 262 665 855 804 713 610 113 949 170 630 045

19.88 16.86 16.18 6.84 5.72

1 518 528 1 495 724 1 210 562 1 204 689 1 113 484 960 480 667 026 660 447 535 837 339 112 132 686

5.33 5.25 4.25 4.23 3.91 3.37 2.34 2.32 1.88 1.19 0.47

5 4 4 1 1

Second ballot

8 358 854

20.29

1 769 307 25 537 956 5 525 032

82.21 17.79

Notes 1. Please refer to the ‘Chroniques électorales’ collection published by Presses de Science-Po, Paris, or to ‘Revue française de Science politique’ for an example. 2. By comparison, nine candidates had run for the 1995 presidential election, six of whom had made it beyond the 5 per cent mark. 3. Insofar as part of his votes come from the Republican Right. In a phone public opinion poll conducted by IPSOS on 21 April 2002 with 3949 respondents, with the quota method, 7 per cent of voters who had cast their vote for Edouard Balladur and 4 per cent of those who may have voted for Jacques Chirac in 1995 were reported to have voted for Jean-Pierre Chevènement. 4. The 1994 and 1999 elections to the European Parliament, but also 2001 municipal elections. 5. In January and February 2002, J.-P. Chevènement still garnered more than 10 per cent of vote intentions according to pre-election public opinion polls. 6. To quote him verbatim. 7. Metropolitan France comprises 96 departments. 8. Back in 1995, Arlette Laguillier was the far Left’s sole candidate. In 2002, three contestants were vying for votes: Arlette Laguillier pour LO, Olivier Besancenot pour LCR and Daniel Gluckstein pour PT.

Annie Laurent

27

9. It is still surprising to note how stable the structure remained compared with the 1981 presidential election in which Arlette Laguillier garnered 2.3 per cent of recorded votes only (a 0.64 coefficient). 10. At least 20 M. P.s are necessary to set up a group in France’s National Assembly. 11. Cantal, South Corsica, Upper Corsica, Creuse, Mayenne, Manche, Vendée, Lozère and so on. 12. ‘Territoire de Belfort’, Haute-Saône, Lot, Lot-et-Garonne, Tarn-et-Garonne, Charente, Doubs, Landes, Ariège and Nièvre. 13. Aude, Haute-Saône, Ardennes, Ardennes, Ariège, Saône-et-Loire, Gard and so on. 14. In 2002, the 6.4 standard deviation is identical, whether Jean-Pierre Chevènement’s Republican Pole be taken into account or not. 15. The core of this chapter is taken from an article published in 1996 at the RIPC (Dolez and Laurent, 1996). 16. Measured with odds ratios which, over the 1995–1965, were lower than 0.8. 17. The 1995–1965 odds ratios were superior to 1.25. 18. Data taken from the IPSOS public opinion poll (references quoted). 19. 15 per cent of blue-collars and employees are reported to have voted for Lionel Jospin, compared with 22 per cent back in 1995, which means 1 point lower than his score nationwide. Conversely, upper-ranking executives and the professionals may have voted for the Socialist contender more than the national average (+2 points), like in 1995.

References Boy, D. «Les petits partis: niveau, structure et sens» in Les petits partis. De la petitesse en politique, A. Laurent and B. Villalba (eds) (Paris, Edition L’Harmattan, 1997). Delbos, G. “De l’isolement comme déterminant du “Non” à Maastricht, l’exemple de l’Aveyron”, RFSP, 1 (1994) 3–22. Dolez, B. and Laurent, A. «1965–1995. Trente ans d’élections présidentielles françaises: les dynamiques territoriales», RIPC, 3 (1996) 647–668. Dolez, B. and Laurent, A. «La nationalisation des comportements électoraux» in Dictionnaire du vote, P. Perrineau and D. Reynié (eds) (Paris, PUF, 2001). Goguel, F. “Géographie des élections du 21 octobre 1945”, Esprit, 11 (1945) 935–956; “Géographie du référendum et des élections de mai-juin 1946”, Esprit, 14 (1946) 27–54; “Géographie du référendum du 13 octobre et des élections du 10 novembre 1946”, Esprit, 16 (1947) 237–264; “Géographie des élections du 17 juin 1951”, Esprit, 19 (1951) 343–364; Modernisation économique et comportement politique (Paris, A. Colin, 1969); Géographie des élections françaises de 1870 à 1951 (Paris, A. Colin, 1961); L’élection présidentielle française de décembre 1965, RFSP, 2 (1966) 221–254. Lancelot, A. «Les élections des 23 et 30 Juin 1968» Projet, 28 (1965) 935–952; «Les résultats de l’élection présidentielle» Projet, 2 (1966) 159–178; «Comment ont voté les français le 27 Avril et les 1er et 15 Juin 1969», Projet, 38 (1969) 926–947; «La relève et le sursis» Projet, 88 (1974) 940–958; «Une métaphore économique en sociologie politique. L’analyse de l’offre électorale» Revue européenne des sciences sociales, 23 (1985) 55–75.

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France’s 2002 Presidential Elections

Platone, F. and Ranger, J. «L’échec électoral du Parti communiste» in 1981: Les élections de l’alternance, A. Lancelot (ed.) (Paris, Presses de la Fondation nationale des Sciences politiques? 1986). Salmon, F. Atlas électoral de la France. 1848–2001 (Paris, Seuil, 2001). Siegfried, A. Tableau Politique de la France de l’Ouest sous la Troisième République. (Paris: Armand Colin, 1913).

Annie Laurent

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>21% 18%–21% 15%–18% 12%–15% <12%

Map 1.1

The Le Pen vote on the first ballot of the 2002 presidential election.

30

France’s 2002 Presidential Elections

>23% 21%–23% 18%–21% 15%–18% <15%

Map 1.2

The Chirac vote on the first ballot of the 2002 presidential election.

Annie Laurent

31

>21% 18%–21% 15%–18% 12%–15% <12%

Map 1.3

The Jospin vote on the first ballot of the 2002 presidential election.

32

France’s 2002 Presidential Elections

28%–>30% 26%–28% 24%–26% <24%

Map 1.4

The abstention on the first ballot of the 2002 presidential election.

2 Do Issues Matter? Law and Order in the 2002 French Presidential Election Nonna Mayer and Vincent Tiberj

A large body of literature explains the growing electoral volatility in Western democracies by the decline of “cleavage voting” and the rise of “issue voting” (Franklin et al., 1992). Citizens are supposed to become more autonomous and more critical of political elites because they are more educated, more exposed to information and more influenced by post-materialist values (Nye et al., 1997; Norris, 1999). They would tend to vote less according to their party identification and their class or religious affiliations, but they would be more responsive to the political supply and the issues at stake. The last French presidential and parliamentary elections offer a good opportunity to explore such trends, with the help of the “2002 French Electoral Panel” survey data. Ten thousand interviews were conducted in three waves, on national samples representative of the French registered voters, before the first round of the presidential election, after the second presidential round and after the parliamentary second round.1 This double election took place in an unusual context, after five years of “cohabitation” between a socialist Prime Minister, Lionel Jospin, and a Gaullist President, Jacques Chirac, which blurred the traditional left– right cleavage. Most voters, before the first round, saw actually “little difference” between the two challengers’ proposals about taxes, pension funds, dialogue between unions and employers, the public sector and criminality (respectively 64, 60, 56, 57 and 70 per cent). Political dissatisfaction was exceptionally high. Eighty two per cent of the respondents in our first wave considered that “politicians do not care what people like us” think and 58 per cent that “most politicians are somewhat corrupt”. Political interest was at its lowest level in a presidential race, 62 per cent 33

34

Law and Order in the 2002 French Presidential Election

thinking that the campaign did not encourage them to go to the polls and only 15 per cent that the result of the election was going to improve things in France (1 per cent a lot and 14 per cent somehow). As a result, there was a sharp drop in voting turnout, from 80 per cent in the first round of the 1995 election to 72 per cent in 2002, and a spectacular scattering of the votes on minor candidates, at the expense of the mainstream parties. Together the three extreme left candidates, Arlette Laguiller, Olivier Besancenot and Daniel Gluckstein, drew 10.4 per cent of the valid votes, the left-wing sovereignist Jean-Pierre Chevènement 5.3 per cent and the left-wing radical Christiane Taubira 2.3 per cent. While on the right Jean Saint-Josse (Hunters), Christine Boutin (fundamentalist right) and Corinne Lepage (ecologist) attracted over 7 per cent of the voters (respectively 4.2, 1.2 and 1.9). But the surprise came from the score of the extreme right, which had seemed to be declining since the FN’s split in 1999. Together Jean-Marie Le Pen (Front National, FN) and Bruno Mégret (Mouvement national républicain, MNR) almost drew 20 per cent of the valid votes and the leader of the FN qualified himself for the second round, coming ahead of the socialist candidate Lionel Jospin by less than 200,000 paper ballots (16.2 per cent). On the whole, roughly one quarter of the votes went to the governmental Left (socialist, communist, radical and ecologist) and less than one third to the presidential Right (RPR, UDF and Démocratie libérale), Jacques Chirac alone getting the lowest score ever achieved by an incumbent president of the Fifth Republic (19.9 per cent). Which were the salient issues in these elections? What was the linkage, in the voters’ mind, between these issues and the sixteen candidates running for the presidency? To what extent did “issue voting” break through party lines and cleavage voting? These are the questions we will try to answer, exploring systematically the relationship between voters, issues and candidates in the first round of the 21 April election, compared with the 1995 election.2

The salient issues In the first wave of our 2002 panel, respondents were asked to select, from a list of twelve problems, “the three that will be the most important for you when you vote. Tell me which is the first one? The second one? The third one?”. If one takes into account the problem that ranked first (Table 2.1), unemployment clearly came ahead, followed by criminality (31 versus 20 per cent). If one also considers the second and third choice, though, then criminality was quoted as often as unemployment

Nonna Mayer and Vincent Tiberj 35 Table 2.1

Issue saliency in first round of the 2002 presidential election

Pollution Unemployment Immigration Social inequalities Political scandals Criminality School Retirement funds European Union construction Fight against terrorism Sovereignty of France Tax reductions

Ranked 1st (in %)

Ranked 1st, 2nd or 3rd (in %)

5 31 10 13 2 20 3 6 2 3 1 3

16 61 23 36 9 60 15 28 9 16 5 19

Electoral French Panel 2002, wave 1.

(60 versus 61 per cent). Law and order was not necessarily perceived as problem number one, but was clearly present in the preoccupation of voters on 21 April (Table 2.1). Actually as soon as his speech for the celebration of 14 July 2001, Jacques Chirac had placed the issue at the centre of the political debate, criticising the socialist government’s action and coining the goal of “zero impunity”. In August, police statistics had shown a sharp rise in registered offences in the first semester of 2001 (+9.6 per cent as compared with first semester of 2000).3 And during the presidential campaign, in March–April 2002, there was a succession of spectacular aggressions – hold ups, attacks against security guards and against police stations, carnage in the municipal council room of Nanterre – followed by a new wave of anti-Semitic violence, against French Jews, synagogues, schools and buses. 4 Lastly, just before the first round, the ordeal of an old man, “Papy Voise”, mugged by a group of young people, who also burnt down his house, was shown on all television channels. On the whole, since 1 January, people watching or hearing the news were three times more often exposed to law and order issues than jobs and employment ones.5 And many other signs showed the voters’ concern with criminality, such as the record proportion of respondents in the second wave of our panel saying they agree with “the ideas of Jean-Marie Le Pen about security” (55 per cent, while only 30 per cent say they agree with his ideas in general), or the support expressed for tougher measures to fight crime, such as detention centres

36

Law and Order in the 2002 French Presidential Election

Table 2.2 elections

Issue saliency in first round of the 1995 and 2002 presidential

Pollution Unemployment Immigration Criminality European Union construction

Score 10 in 1995

Ranked 1st, 2nd or 3rd in 2002

18.5 57 22 27 14

16 61 23 60 9

Electoral French Panel 2002, wave 1, on issues asked in both surveys.

for juvenile delinquents or cutting off welfare to their families (69 and 58 per cent). In such a context, even though less than one third of the sample felt personally “unsafe” in everyday life, there was, at the eve of the presidential election, a general feeling of insecurity, both social and economic, nurtured both by crime statistics and economic uncertainty. And compared with the issues salient in 1995, it is clear that if concern about unemployment did not change, concern about crime shot up by 33 percentage points (Table 2.2).6

The credibility of candidates The respondents were then asked to select, for the three problems they chose as the most important, the candidate the most capable of finding a solution. Their greatest perplexity is the main result shown by Table 2.3. On one third of the problems, more than half see “no candidate” capable of tackling the issue or do not answer, and almost half on the two main issues of the election, unemployment and crime (respectively 49 and 45 per cent). In 1995, the credibility of presidential candidates was much greater, for on these two same issues, only 20 and 22 per cent of the sample found no best candidate (Figure 2.1). Another interesting result is that in spite of his defeat in the first round of the 2002 election (with 16.2 per cent of the valid votes versus 19.9 per cent for Jacques Chirac), Lionel Jospin was quoted three times more often than the latter, especially on social problems (unemployment, retirement funds, social inequalities) and also on the European issue. Chirac came first only on tax reductions and fighting against terrorism. Lastly, two candidates stood out by the very high level of credit each of them got on one single issue. Noel Mamère, the Green candidate, was seen as the best on environmental problems by more than 72 per cent of the sample, and Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader

Nonna Mayer and Vincent Tiberj 37 Table 2.3

The best candidate for each issue in 2002 No candidate (in %)

1st best candidate (in %)

2nd best candidate (in %)

Pollution Unemployment Immigration Social inequalities Political scandals

28.5 49 30 40 46

Lepage 15 Laguiller 16 Chirac 9 Laguiller 21.5 Laguiller 9.5

Criminality School Retirement funds European Union construction Fight against terrorism Sovereignty of France Tax reductions

45 54 54.5

Mamère 72.5 Jospin 38 Le Pen 59 Jospin 29.5 Jospin/ Chevènement 20.5 Le Pen 20.5 Jospin 28.5 Jospin 30

32

Jospin 30

Bayrou 23

50.5

Chirac 29

Jospin 22.5

20 51.5

Chevènement 30.5 Chirac 31.5

Chirac 26 Jospin 27

Chirac 19 Bayrou 23 Chirac 19

Electoral French Panel 2002, wave 1.

60%

49%

50% 45% 40%

30%

32%

30%

29%

2002 1995

22%

22%

20%

20% 15% 12% 10%

0% Pollution

Immigration

European Integration Issues

Criminality

Unemployment

Figure 2.1 Proportion of voters finding no best candidate for the issue (1995–2002).

of the Front National, as the best on immigration, by 59 per cent. It was essentially the same result in the 1995 presidential election. To a lesser extent, Jean-Pierre Chevènement appeared as the most credible on the defence of France’s sovereignty and the fight against corruption, while

38

Law and Order in the 2002 French Presidential Election

Arlette Laguiller, leader of the Trotskyite formation Lutte ouvrière, got a fairly good score on social issues, unemployment and social inequalities. These are minor candidates, but they appeared as specialised on a given theme, on which they were perceived as competent by a far larger share of respondents than their actual voters.

Issue voting How much, though, does the perception of issues and candidates depend on party identification and political leaning? Whatever the indicator used – position on left–right scale, self-definition as left-wing or right-wing, party proximity or vote in presidential first round – there is a tight correspondence between the importance attached to these issues and political orientation. Table 2.4 presents the issues ranked first, second or third position by voting intentions for the main candidates in the first round of the 2002 presidential election. We set apart left-wing voters, those who in the first wave of our sample said they intended to vote for extreme left, socialist, communist or Green candidates and who were a majority to define themselves as “left-wing” and feel close to leftwing parties, from right-wing voters, who intended to vote for right wing or extreme right-wing candidates, and who were a majority to define themselves as “right wing” and identify with right wing or extreme right-wing parties. 7 The saliency of issues is different from one group to another. Left-wing voters are generally more concerned about unemployment than crime. And they are in general more sensitive to social issues. For the voters of Robert Hue, Olivier Besancenot and Noel Mamère, crime even comes in third position, after unemployment and social inequalities. Green voters also clearly stand apart by the exceptional importance they give to the issue of pollution, which they rank at the same level as unemployment and social inequalities (59 per cent). Only Chevènement supporters appear as an exception to the rule, attaching more importance to law and order (64 versus 57 per cent) than to any other problem, just as right-wing voters do. On the right, Le Pen voters stand apart by the importance they give to immigration (68 per cent, as much as for crime). So in spite of the party fragmentation and blurring effects of the “cohabitation”, there is still a clear left–right cleavage that builds on occupational and religious cleavages structuring issue saliency. Churchgoers and self-employed lean more to the right and appear more sensitive to law and order issues, non-practising Catholics and salaried workers, especially in the public sector, are more left wing and more concerned about

Table 2.4 Saliency of issues by voting intention in the first round of the 2002 presidential election Right-wing voters

Left-wing voters

Pollution Unemployment Immigration Social inequalities Political scandals Criminality School Retirement funds UE construction Fight against terrorism France’s sovereignty Tax reductions

Laguiller

Besancenot

Hue

Jospin

Mamère

Chevènement

Bayrou

Chirac

Madelin

Saint-Josse

Le Pen

Abstention

Total

15 68 14

26 63 14

9 81 10

17 73 8

58 59 8

17 57 19

13 48 16

11 62 19

13 46 23

21 60 22

7 52 68

17 62 19

16 61 23

50 12 54 15

57 13 41 20

65 7 38 20

47 10 54 16

59 12 33 22

38 11 64 20

33 11 58 22

23 7 68 15

22 8 61 22

25 15 62 4

21 6 68 9

37 10 62 14

36 9 60 15

32 7

23 18

32 9

27 13

14 13

26 13

34 25

29 10

38 8

36 10

23 3

28 7

28 9

8

5

9

16

8

12

14

23

17

20

16

16

16

3 18

2 13

5 13

2 15

2 9

9 13

7 13

7 24

7 31

3 21

9 20

3 22

5 19

Electoral French Panel 2002, wave 1.

39

40

Law and Order in the 2002 French Presidential Election

unemployment and social issues. But there are three groups one can consider as issue voters. The Greens appear disproportionately concerned about the environmental issue. The proportion of them who find it important is 42 percentage points above the average proportion in our sample. Le Pen voters’ outstanding concern is about immigration (+45 percentage points above the average). Centrist voters appear more concerned about the European union (+15 percentage points above the average among Bayrou voters). Conversely, knowing which issues are ranked as important allows us to predict certain votes (Table 2.5). Voters concerned about pollution were more likely to cast a ballot for one of the eight left-wing candidates on 21 April (58 per cent) and among them Noel Mamère’s score reached a record of 18.5 per cent (instead of 5.3 per cent). Those who gave more importance to the issue of social inequality were also more likely to support the left-wing candidates (61 per cent) and particularly the extreme left (16 per cent). Those for whom criminality and fighting terrorism mattered more were conversely more likely to support right or extreme right-wing candidates (respectively 64 and 69 per cent). So were those concerned about retirement funding problems, tax reductions (61 and 67 per cent), and the defence of France’s sovereignty (72 per cent). Yet the most striking case of issue voting is the support for Le Pen or Mégret among voters considering the immigration issue as most important. More than half said they were going to vote for one of the two extreme right-wing candidates (54 per cent). Table 2.5 Voting intentions in the first round of the 2002 presidential election by issue saliency

Pollution Unemployment Immigration Social inequalities Political scandals Criminality School Retirement funds UE construction Fight against terrorism France’s sovereignty Tax reductions Total sample

Extreme Left

Left

Right

Extreme Right

Total

13 12 6 16 14 9 11 11 11 5 6 9 10

45 36 13 45 36 27 39 28 38 26 20 24 32

34 36 28 28 36 41 39 44 45 48 43 46 38

8 16 53 11 14 23 11 17 6 21 31 21 20

478 1711 703 1029 266 1675 456 784 308 450 151 516 2868

French Electoral Panel 2002, wave 1.

Nonna Mayer and Vincent Tiberj 41

The last step of this chapter will be to assess the influence of issue voting. The main statistical and theoretical problem is to measure pure issue voting, solely driven by the attention given to a particular problem, controlling for party or ideology effects. Individuals’ focus on a set of issues can be caused by their political preferences. For example, to feel close to the National Front can be explained by a special concern for immigration, but simultaneously this particular party proximity can reinforce such a concern. Positions on issues and political preferences are often coherent: partisans have more chance to give attention to the issues their party puts forward and simultaneously to agree upon the solutions it proposes. Otherwise, if an individual disagrees on an important topic with his or her own party, the probability that he or she will change his or her political linkage will grow stronger (see Carmines and Stimson, 1989). To distinguish between these two possible determinants of individual votes and to evaluate the net impact of issue voting in the 21 April election, we shall therefore use multivariate methods. We have chosen to run logistic regressions on three votes: for the extreme right candidates (Bruno Mégret and Jean-Marie Le Pen), for the three extreme left candidates (Arlette Laguiller, Daniel Gluckstein and Olivier Besancenot), and the vote for the Green candidate, Noël Mamère. We assume that these three votes are the most likely to include a significant share of issue voting, because of their political positioning and their insistence on a small number of issues (immigration and crime for Jean-Marie Le Pen, pollution for Noël Mamère, social inequalities and unemployment for the extreme left). We selected as independent variables self-definition as “somewhat leftwing”, “somewhat rightwing” or “neither left nor right”, party proximity recorded in five positions (Extreme Left and Communist Party, Socialist Party, Green party, UDF–RPR and FN/MNR) and the relevant issues in four positions (ranked first, second, third or not selected), each position being treated by the program as a dummy variable (Table 2.6). The results are that issues have no statistically significant impact on votes for the extreme left in the first round of the 2002 presidential election, in spite of a campaign celebrating its image of social rights defenders. Respondents who selected social inequalities as the most important problem in their vote had a 1.7 per cent greater chance to choose one of the three Trotskyite candidates, compared to those who did not pick this issue. The electoral gain remained quite marginal. Actually on 21 April extreme left voters expressed a general dissatisfaction with the socialists incumbents and their allies, nearly one out of two identifying with one of the three parties of the “Gauche plurielle”. It was a “sanction vote” more than an “issue vote”.

42 Table 2.6 Logistic regression on voting intentions for extreme right, extreme left and green candidates in the first round of the 2002 presidential election

Independent variables Left/right self-placement Left Right Neither left nor right Party Proximity Ext. left/PCF PS Greens FN UDF, RPR Crime Quoted first Quoted second Quoted third Not quoted

B

−0.83*** −0.04

Standard Error

0.29 0.30

Vote for Noël Mamère

Vote for extreme left

Vote for extreme right Exp(B)

0.44 0.96

0.26 0.76 0.23 4.85***

0.47 0.35 0.36 0.35

1.29 2.14 1.26 127.57

0.65*** 0.21 0.50***

0.23 0.23 0.24

1.92 1.23 1.66

Independent variables Left/right self-placement Left Right Neither left nor right Party Proximity Ext. left/PCF PS Greens FN UDF, RPR Unemployment Quoted first Quoted second Quoted third Not quoted

B

−0.17 −0.75*

Standard Error

0.26 0.38

Exp(B)

0.84 0.47

2.55*** 1.34*** 1.23*** −0.61

0.42 0.41 0.41 0.57

12.77 3.83 3.43 0.54

−0.11 −0.22 −0.15

0.19 0.22 0.26

0.89 0.80 0.86

Independent variables Left/right self-placement Left Right Neither left nor right Party Proximity Ext. left/PCF PS Greens FN UDF, RPR Pollution Quoted first Quoted second Quoted third Not quoted

B

Standard Error

Exp(B)

0.89*** −0.46

0.31 0.50

2.44 0.63

−0.48 0.33 3.48*** −1.11

0.81 0.62 0.56 1.33

0.62 1.40 32.37 0.33

1.80*** 1.06*** 1.08***

0.32 0.34 0.34

6.04 2.88 2.95

Immigration Quoted first Quoted second Quoted third Not quoted Constant Pseudo R2

2.81*** 1.94*** 1.76***

−3.21*** 0.38

0.22 0.25 0.27

0.33

16.59 6.95 5.83

0.04

Dependent variable coded 1 if respondent voted for Le Pen or Mégret, 0 for all other votes

Social inequalities Quoted first Quoted second Quoted third Not quoted Constant Pseudo R2

Constant 0.53** 0.30 0.15

0.21 0.21 0.26

1.71 1.35 1.16

Pseudo R

2

1.08***

0.34

0.01

0.18

*** p < 0.01; ** p < 0.05 −3.05*** 0.10

0.40

0.05

Dependent variable coded 1 if respondent voted for one of the three extreme left candidates, 0 for all other votes

Dependent variable coded 1 if respondent voted for Noël Mamère, 0 for all other votes

*For each of the three equations, N = 2346. The independent variables are also split into dummy variables. For instance, the issue variables have four positions: the issue can be ranked first, second, third, or not quoted as important. This last position (issue not quoted) has been chosen for reference (coded 0), and each issue variable is split into three dummy variables, opposing 1st rank/not quoted, 2nd rank/not quoted and 3rd rank/not quoted issue. The left/right self-placement variable is split into two dummy variables (“left” or “right” coded 1 versus “neither left nor right” coded 0) and the party proximity variable is split into four dummy variables (Extreme left and PCF, PS, Greens or FN versus UDF/RPR proximity). Thus the B for all the positions of each variable can be compared as they are always computed in regard to the same reference position.

43

44

Law and Order in the 2002 French Presidential Election

Issues definitely had a statistically significant impact on two votes, though, the immigration issue for the extreme right and the pollution issue for the Greens. The results are consistent with those we found for the previous 1995 presidential election (Chiche and Mayer, 1997). For both votes, the models provide a satisfactory statistical fit (with a Cox and Snell Pseudo-R2 of 0.38 and 0.18). As far as the vote for Noël Mamère is concerned, our model certainly does not explain all the reasons behind such a choice, but it clearly shows the significant impact of the pollution issue, after controlling for the effects of party proximity and left/right self-placement. Compared with individuals who did not quote pollution as one of their three top priorities, those who ranked it first were six times more likely to choose the Green candidate, nearly three times more if they ranked it second or third. In fact, 34 per cent of Mamère’s voters did not feel close to the Green party, yet 45 per cent picked pollution as one of their three most important issues. And among individuals who quoted pollution as one of their three most important priorities and who do not feel close to the Greens, 50.5 per cent intended to vote for Noël Mamère. But the best case of issue voting, whatever the voters’ party proximity or left/right self-placement, is offered by the extreme right supporters. The explanatory power of the model is quite exceptional for this kind of data. Immigration is far more discriminating among French voters than crime: if immigration is their first priority, they have 16.5 times more of a chance to vote for the extreme right than individuals not selecting immigration as one of their main topics of concern, and 5.9 times more if they rank immigration among the three most important problems. Placing crime in the three most important issues increases far less the probability for an extreme right vote (1.9 if quoted first and 1.6 if quoted third). This difference stems from the kind of public interested in each issue. Criminality was at the time a general concern, because of the way media and candidates treated the issue during the campaign, and it was taken into account by a large and diverse share of the electorate. Immigration was less often seen as important, and by a more restricted public, but one far more likely to vote for Le Pen or Mégret. In fact, among individuals who intended to vote for an extreme right candidate without feeling close to the FN or the MNR, 70 per cent of them placed crime as one of their three main concerns, 60.5 per cent immigration and 90.5 per cent one or the other of these two issues. But only 23 per cent of the respondents concerned with criminality actually chose an extreme right candidate, compared with 54 per cent among those concerned with immigration.

Nonna Mayer and Vincent Tiberj 45

This is one of the main reasons for Le Pen’s success on 21 April. Immigration still is his key issue. But concern for immigration has not increased in the French electorate in the last seven years. It is the focus on criminality during the presidential campaign that benefited the National Front’s leader. It provided him with enough extra votes to qualify himself for the second round of the election, his credibility on that topic being particularly recognised among right-wingers (Tiberj, 2002). Indeed, law and order mattered in the 2002 French presidential election. Notes 1. The first wave was a 35 minute CAPI questionnaire, interviews conducted before the first round of the presidential election, by face to face interviews, from 8 April to 20 April, with 4107 people representative of the French registered population (actually two samples of 2000, one each week). Fifty-five per cent gave a written agreement to be reinterviewed. The second wave was a CATI 35 minute questionnaire, interviews conducted over the phone, after the second round of the presidential election, between 15 and 31 May, with a national sample of 4017 people, among which 1822 panelists already interviewed in the first wave (rate of refusal 8 per cent). The third wave was a CATI 20 minute questionnaire, interviews conducted over the phone after the second round of the parliamentary electron, 20–28 June, on a sample of 2013 people, among which 1417 panelists already interviewed in the first two waves (rate of refusal 5 per cent). On the whole, there were 10,137 interviews, with 6898 people, 1417 interviewed three times and 1822 two times. They form an exceptional database that will provide clues for understanding the spectacular electoral upheavals that happened in France between April and June 2002. First results were presented to the press on 11 July 2002, CEVIPOF, CIDSP, CECOP, “Premiers résultats. Panel électoral français 2002”, juillet 2002 (see CEVIPOF’s website http://www. sofres.com/etudes/pol/12 0702_elections_n.htm). The data should be available to the scientific community at CIDSP in July 2003. 2. We refer mainly to our study of issue voting in 1995 (Chiche and Mayer, 1997) based on the 1995 CEVIPOF national election survey (in Boy and Mayer, 1997). On the economic issues see Lewis-Beck, 1997 (ibidem). 3. 20,21,111 offences versus 18,44,493. 4. 395 violent actions between March and April, according to police statistics. 5. Le Monde, 8 March 2002. 6. One should note though that the wording of the question was different, respondents were shown a list of 13 problems and asked to give each of them a score between 1 and 10 (Chiche and Mayer, 1997: 221–222). 7. Respective proportion of respondents defining themselves as “somewhat left wing” among those intending to vote for Laguiller 67 per cent, Besancenot 71 per cent, Hue 97 per cent, Mamère 74 per cent, Jospin 92 per cent, Chevènement 49 per cent (versus 20 per cent somewhat right wing) and proportion defining themselves as “somewhat right wing” among those intending to vote for Chirac 78 per cent, Madelin 70 per cent, Bayrou 49 per cent (somewhat left wing 17 per cent), Le Pen 55 per cent. The voters of the Hunters party are split into

46

Law and Order in the 2002 French Presidential Election three equal groups (33 per cent right wing, 33 per cent left wing and 33 per cent neither left nor right) but on most of the indicators they are closer to right-wing voters.

References Boy (Daniel) and Chiche ( Jean), “Les enjeux de l’élection”, pp. 219–238 in Boy (Daniel), Mayer (Nonna) eds, L’électeur a ses raisons (Paris: Presses de la FNSP, 1997). Boy (Daniel) and Mayer (Nonna) eds, L’électeur a ses raisons (Paris: Presses de la FNSP, 1997). Carmines (Ted) and Stimson, James A., Issue Evolution: Race and the Transformation of American Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989). Franklin (Mark), Mackie (Tom) and Valen (Henry) et al., Electoral Change: Response to Evolving Social and Attitudinaal Structures in Western Countries (Cambridge: Cambridge university Press, 1992). Lewis-Beck (Michael), “Le vote du porte-monnaie en question”, pp. 239–262 in Boy (Daniel), Mayer (Nonna) eds, L’électeur a ses raisons (Paris: Presses de la FNSP, 1997). Mayer (Nonna), Ces Français qui votent Le Pen (Paris: Flammarion, 2002). Norris (Pippa) ed., Critical Citizens. Global Support for Democratic Governance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). Nye ( Joseph, S.), Zelikow (P.D.), King (D.C.) eds, Why People don’t Trust Government (Cambridge (Mass.), London: Harvard University Press, 1997). Tiberj (Vincent), Le choix d’un président, les modes d’évaluation des électeurs français (1995) et américains (1996) (Ph.D. Dissertation in Political Science, July 2002, Institute for Political Studies, Paris). Tiberj (Vincent), “Vote et insécurité”, unpublished report (Paris: CEVIPOF, 2002).

3 Ideology and Party Identification: A Normalisation of French Voting Anchors? Jocelyn A.J. Evans

Introduction Like fine wines, social science concepts are often thought not to travel well from their country of origin. One of the most contentious of such concepts in European political science has been that of party identification. Developed in the 1950s at the University of Michigan, party identification was used to explain the stable partisan alignment of an American electorate who for the most part did not possess sufficient or consistent ideological awareness to promote a so-called ‘normal’ vote – a socialised default setting for party choice from which voters might stray in the short term but to which they eventually returned. Instead, Michigan researchers ascribed voting choice to a psychological attachment to a particular party. Disagreement arose in the application of the concept to European cases, and especially to France. For its French critics, there were a number of problems – the differing role and public perception of French parties to their US counterparts; the different underlying political socialisation processes; and the consequent use of different types of political cues, in particular ideological position, by the French voter in his/her voting choice. Yet the perception is now that this spécificité française has been normalised so that contemporary French voters identify with parties in much the same way as their traditional American counterparts. As such, the controversy has shifted from ‘Do French voters identify with parties?’ to ‘To what extent has party identification superseded ideological cues?’ This chapter will examine four aspects of this debate. Firstly, it will revisit the arguments against the use of party identification in France 47

48

Ideology and Party Identification

and assess the extent to which these were and still are relevant. Secondly, it will consider empirical evidence as to the apparent convergence of French politics on a party identification norm, and look at possible flaws in this argument. Thirdly, it will test a series of vote models to ascertain the role of both party identification and ideological predictors in party choice. Finally, in the light of the 2002 elections, it will assess the extent to which party identification can provide added value in explaining party choice in contemporary electoral competition.

Party identification in France: square peg in a round hole? As the authors of The American Voter themselves surmised, ‘American voting behaviour is influenced in a variety of ways by the fact that it is set in a two-party system, and research within this system cannot fully establish what differences would be found if the number of major parties were greater or less than two.’ (Campbell et al., 1960: 7) In transferring their pivotal concept of party identification to the European setting, the multiplication of the number of parties is indeed a problematic issue on a number of fronts, but so is the question of whether the concept has any basis in mass political decision-making at all (Inglehart and Klingemann, 1976; Thomassen, 1976). And indeed, in initial comparisons of the countries, party identification amongst the French was lower than amongst Americans (Converse and Dupeux, 1961). Let us briefly summarise the key tenets of the party identification model before turning to their applicability in France. 1. Voters are socialised politically from an early age, both implicitly (through the adoption of their family and peer groups’ general values and attitudes) and explicitly (through the adoption of their family and peer groups’ political tendencies and in particular partisan affiliation). 2. Voters consequently experience a feeling of psychological attachment to ‘their’ party, irrespective of membership or political participation, which lasts for the entirety of their (voting) lives. 3. Political parties provide the main element of political identification as well as being the main providers of cues to voters on policy issues. 4. Voters may vary from this normal vote in the short term, on the basis of candidate or policy considerations which differ from the partisan cues, but will return to their normal vote at subsequent elections.

Jocelyn A.J. Evans

49

5. Ideological intensity along issue-dimensions is positively correlated with the strength of party identification, the former usually being dependent upon the latter. 1 Considering these in turn, their historical applicability to the French case has either been weak or needs to be conceptualised differently to the American case. The first obstacle to the use of party identification in France came from the party’s function as cue-provider and focus of identification tout court. Given the experience of the Third and Fourth Republics, in which political parties tended to be small collections of cadres often held to be more interested in representing themselves than their constituents and ready to overthrow governments to halt individual policies (Weber, 1994; Williams, 1964), the political party per se held negative connotations for many that it did not hold in the United States. Secondly, the average lifespan of these parties was short, with parties fragmenting or amalgamating with other actors. Such ephemeral groupings provided little scope for voters to develop a psychological attachment or indeed, given their often pragmatic nature, to give consistent ideological cues as to policy positions. Thirdly, the number of parties within the system provided an additional obstacle to party identification. In the American context, two parties with opposing ideologies compete for the support of the electorate. Essentially, each has a monopoly of their political bloc, ceteris paribus. In the French case, however, a number of different parties have had to compete for voters on one or other side of the Left–Right political divide. As such, there has not necessarily been a clear cue as to which party a voter should identify with. In some cases, other factors have provided a cue – for instance, regions in France have often had strong party traditions, especially for the Socialists and Communists. However, for a large number of voters, no single party provided clear mobilisational cues, and more has depended upon the voter choosing a party on the basis of ideology. Indeed, the French voter has always been seen as being motivated by ideology more than by parties, the explicit socialisation prescribed in tenet (1) being missing and tenet (2) consequently being redundant. Moreover, this suggests that in France party identification has been a result of, and not the cause of, ideological proximity – at odds with tenet (3). A complementary alternative hypothesis has also been proffered – that voters identify with actors other than parties. Unlike the United States, where political life traditionally focuses upon the Republican

50

Ideology and Party Identification

and Democratic parties, French citizens are mobilised by or identified with a number of other actors, including the Church and trades unions. These two hypotheses find much support in the work by Philip Converse and Roy Pierce on political identification in France during the late 1950s and 1960s. In September 1958, only 38.5 per cent of respondents cited a party of identification – over 47 per cent did not cite any identification whatsoever. In 1969, although the level of identification had risen to 45 per cent, 17 per cent were citing a left–right location as their ‘party of identification’ and 10 per cent were citing a group other than a political party (Converse and Pierce, 1986; Table 3.1). To what extent was this caused by unstable party formations, rather than an a priori failing of the concept of identification? The only parties to exist unchanged throughout the post-war period were the Socialist Party and the Communist Party. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, these two parties plus the Radical-Socialists registered greater levels of party identification early on (Pierce, 1995: 41). However, despite these seemingly less than ideal conditions for party identification, the French voter has demonstrated remarkable levels of stability in his/ her voting behaviour, once the supply-side instability of voting is controlled for (Converse and Pierce, 1986). In other words, even during the ‘unstable years’ of the 1950s and 1960s, French voters would in all

Table 3.1

Party proximity in France (1978–1997)

Party (%) Extreme Left Communist Party Citizens’ Movement Socialist Party Left Radicals UDF RPR FN (Extreme Right – 1978) Movement for France Greens (Ecologists) Other Subtotal identifiers None No response

1978

1988

1995

1997

12 4 – 24 2 20 18

0.9 4.8 – 39.5 1.6 11.0 17.8 3.8

1.3 5.0 – 32.0 1.6 8.1 26.8 4.5

1.3 5.8 1.7 26.1 1.8 9.7 18.5 5.0

– 4.3 – 83.7 10.6 5.6

2.8 4.5 – 86.6 10.2 3.1

2.4 7.8 0.2 80.3 17.1 2.7

1 – 3 – 84 16

Source: Capdevielle, 1981: 291 (1978); SOFRES/CEVIPOF post-electoral surveys (1988–1997). Rounded figures only available for 1978.

Jocelyn A.J. Evans

51

likelihood have chosen whom to vote for in as consistent a manner as the US voter, if only the parties had let them. Thus tenet (4) may be inaccurate in making parties the focus of stability, but this does not mean that French voters were inherently unstable in their voting choice. What was the basis for this choice, then? Recall that party identification was not just weak because of conjunctural changes in party supply; voters also did not identify with parties for a number of demand-side reasons. As we have already noted, the traditional explanation states that the French electorate orients itself politically using ideology, and in particular the Left–Right schema, rather than parties per se. Given the intense ideological debates since the Revolution, first between secular Jacobins and reactionary Royalists and Catholic fundamentalists, then between Communists and the conservative/authoritarian Right, the French voter is conditioned to these eternal oppositions, is implicitly socialised with one or other camp according to his/her family and peer groups’ social profile, and then votes for the party representing this bloc according to the political supply of their region or district. Thus, whilst families refrained from providing explicit partisan cues to younger generations,2 they still provided sub-conscious conditioning according to their position in society and the values that were embedded in it – the cornerstone of sociological explanations of political attitudes (Percheron, 1977: 61–62). This is clearly somewhat at odds with tenet (5), however. In the US case, Campbell and associates clearly stated that party identification was positively correlated with ideological intensity and that direction of causation tended to be from identification to ideology. In France, this cannot have been the case. Granted, where party identification existed, ideological intensity may have been found, but where ideological intensity existed – for instance, an Extreme Left-wing or Extreme Right-wing position – party identification need not have been responsible, and as such an association must be fallacious. This means that either ‘ideological orientation’ in France must simply have been a Left-wing or Right-wing orientation with no greater nuancing – unlikely – or that the French electorate was more ideologically sophisticated than the US electorate, able to nuance its own ideological positions beyond simple bloc belonging and choose a party accordingly. Unfortunately, this problem threatens to remain an enigma, given that no sufficiently robust data exist to test the French electorate’s ideological sophistication, at least not according to the preferred Michigan method, namely attitudinal constraint and consistency across time (Converse, 1964, 1966). 3

52

Ideology and Party Identification

Happily, this particular problem is apparently only a historical one, because in the more recent period of French electoral studies, France is held to have ‘normalised’ in terms of party identification, and thus the emphasis is now less upon divining ideological consistency and more upon examining the extent to which party identification has become a replacement for ideological positioning as a voting cue at elections.

The normalisation of party identification in France It is somewhat ironic that in the period that the US electorate was seen by many as becoming more knowledgeable of and mobilised by politics during the late 1960s and 1970s (Nie et al., 1976),4 and hence party identification was giving way to a more informed, rational politics, so in France increased political knowledge and mobilisation was apparently contributing to increasing levels of party identification (Haegel, 1993). At the most basic level, the number of identifiers appeared to be increasing (Cameron, 1971). This development was partially a result of the expansion of education with greater numbers of French achieving the baccalauréat or higher. However, the lower educated strata were also demonstrating a higher level of political mobilisation. This is explained firstly by greater awareness of politics due to the expansion of access to televisions in French households; secondly, by a clearer structure to the party system with only a small number of relevant parties; thirdly, by a greater acceptance of parties as legitimate and credible political actors, thus able to mobilise voters more easily; and finally, similar to the United States, by a greater saliency of politics – the presidential races of the Fifth Republic, the protest politics of 1968 and the rise of the New Politics agenda, and perhaps the zenith of political conflict at the popular level in post-war France, the victory of the Left in the 1981 elections (Pierce, 1995: 45–46). This greater interest and mobilisation corresponded closely to a rise in partisanship during the same period. Evidently, a smaller number of stable actors in the system from the early 1970s onwards meant that there were now mass party actors on both the Left and the Right to which voters could develop a psychological attachment. Secondly, the executive format of the system meant that presidential candidates as well as parties became entrenched – personality politics at the national level which was almost entirely absent from previous democratic regimes in France. Such a presence provided a new anchor for individual’s political affiliation. Thirdly, the greater mobilisation around political issues more

Jocelyn A.J. Evans

53

generally meant that politics came out of the closet in the household, and hence explicit partisanship increasingly complemented implicit socialisation. We would therefore expect party identification, through this normalisation process, to have increased since the 1960s, and given the simplification of the system in the late 1970s and early 1980s, to have carried on increasing throughout the 1980s. However, we might expect the normalisation of party identification up until the present day to be a two-stage process. From 1988 onwards, growing levels of dissatisfaction began to manifest themselves amongst the electorate. How one measures this is largely irrelevant – rising abstention; dissatisfaction with how democracy is working; distrust in politicians; vote for extremist parties: all point to growing disenchantment, and in particular with governing elites and their formations (Mayer and Perrineau, 1992: 131–132). As such, we might expect to see party identification drop after its spurt in the 1970s and 1980s. Looking for such trends amongst survey data causes a problem, however. Only the 1995 election survey contains an open party identification item; 1988 and 1997 contain a question which asks respondents whether they are close to a party or not, and then provide a closed question for them to identify which party this is. The researcher is then free to eliminate those who initially responded that they were not close to a party. What differences emerge between the two indicators? 5 In their recent test of partisan and ideology effects on voting in the 1995 presidential elections, Lewis-Beck and Chlarson used the open question and estimated 46.9 per cent of the sample who identified with a party (Lewis-Beck and Chlarson, 2002: 493). We come up with a slightly more conservative estimate of 42.5 per cent identifiers.6 Looking at the ‘closed’ question in comparison (Table 3.1), these figures are clearly biased upwards. However, assuming that this bias is consistent, there is evidently a drop in party identification subsequent to 1997, but the level is still rising slightly in 1995 – not convincing evidence of a clear decline from the 1980s onwards, but rather a drop since 1995. If we now look at the intensity of identification with the parties and compare these with the open coding, the figures come closer to the ‘ideal’ open question. Moreover, a similar pattern emerges from 1988 onwards (Table 3.2). Indeed, the increase in 1995 disappears with a marginal shift downwards and a similarly steep drop in 1997. However, in comparison with Converse and Pierce’s figures for 1969, when 45 per cent identified with a party, the supposed rise in identification in the 1970s and 1980s has not noticeably occurred.

54

Ideology and Party Identification Table 3.2 Strength of closed party identification in France (1988–1997) Strength of identification (%)

1988

1995

1997

Strongly Not strongly

47.9 52.0

47.6 52.4

42.9 57.1

Note: In 1988 and 1997, ‘strongly’ includes ‘very close’ and ‘quite close’; ‘not strongly’ includes ‘not very close’ and ‘not close at all’.

However, even allowing for the decline in the period 1988–1997, there is still a substantial proportion who identify with a party and, taking into account tenet (5), presumably have an ideology concomitant with this vote, either by adopting the cues of their party or who identify with the party because their own ideology matches its policy position – or both. And therein lies the crux of the argument: it is almost certain that the relationship between party identification and ideology is nonrecursive – that there is reciprocal causality between the two factors – and this is where the major debate in the French electoral literature has taken place over the past decade. The debate has in fact been a simple one (Converse and Pierce, 1993; Fleury and Lewis-Beck, 1993a,b): which is more widespread as a robust measure of political orientation – or, to quote Key (1961) as a ‘standing decision’ – party identification or Left–Right affiliation? Using data pertaining to the 1967 elections, more individuals allocated themselves a Left–Right position than identified with a party to which they felt closest. On this basis alone, if a causal link can be assumed to exist between either/both of these and vote, then Left–Right placement would seem to be a more widespread predictor within the French electorate. In defending their finding that party identification had become normalised in the French context, Converse and Pierce also argue that, despite being more widespread, the Left–Right indicator is unreliable because it is too heterogeneous: firstly, people allocate too many different meanings, or indeed no meaning at all, to the scale and hence often choose randomly amongst positions; and, secondly, the centre position is notoriously difficult to interpret, being a mixture of centre ideologues and the ideologically disengaged – the infamous marais alluded to by Deutsch et al. (1966). Empirically, they also find that although the Left–Right positioning of the ideologues remains constant over time, that of the least politically involved category varies massively. 7

Jocelyn A.J. Evans

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Lastly, they feel that party identification is a more robust empirical measure, because the question which asks people to cite it is open (at least in their dataset), preventing respondents with no knowledge of French politics from providing a random answer; whereas anyone can pick a number between one and seven. Overall, these authors stay true to the American Voter perspective in doubting the cognitive capacity of most French voters to align themselves using such an ideological scale and thus despite its narrower applicability, choose party identification as a better measure and hence explanans of French voting. In defending their use of Left–Right identification, Fleury and Lewis-Beck support previous research into the French electorate’s ideological stances, claiming that Left and Right mirror distinct issue positions with a distinctive structure (1993b: 1121). Moreover, they believe that the marais argument – that the disengaged centres are not choosing an ideological position but rather are simply placing themselves in a non-committal position – is overstated. Looking at the levels of political interest manifested by voters placing themselves to the Left and to the Right, there are similar levels of disengagement despite being accompanied by an ‘ideological’ position (1993b: 1122). 8 Looking at Table 3.3, we can see the equivalent levels of ideological identification in this period, cross-tabulated according to political interest. The centre apparently occupies an intermediate position, not as politically interested as the Left and Right blocs but more politically Table 3.3

Left–Right ideological position and political interest (1988–1995) No position

Left (1–3)

Centre (4)

Right (5–7)

All

1988 (%) High interest Low interest

17.5 82.4

51.0 49.0

29.2 70.8

43.0 57.1

41.6 58.5

N

137

1672

1133

1087

4029

1995 (%) High interest Low interest

23.7 76.3

56.8 43.2

33.9 66.1

53.9 46.1

49.4 50.6

N

488

1526

1460

602

4076

Notes: No Left–Right placement was included in the 1997 survey, except a simple bloc placement which combined ‘no position’ and ‘centre’ as a single category and hence is incomparable. We did not have access to the 1978 data to be able to crosstabulate with political interest. Source: As in Table 3.1.

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Ideology and Party Identification

interested than the ‘no position’. If the Left–Right blocs are disaggregated into their separate positions, a greater level of political interest is found at the extremes than in the moderate centre. As such, whilst there clearly is a lesser level of political interest in the centre, it is unclear which benchmark separates this from the Moderate Left or Moderate Right identifiers in terms of being a non-ideological response. Moreover, we are using a measure of political interest as a proxy for ideological sophistication and consequently the basis for voting. It is certainly not clear that someone at position four with a self-proclaimed lack of interest in politics will necessarily be unable to distinguish parties or relate them to his/her own ideology and thus must be using party identification as the basis for their choice. As such, we do not feel that to include the centre in an ideological measure is any more contentious than excluding it.9 Overall, then, it is not clear that party identification has increased between the 1960s and 1990s, if strong identifiers give a better estimate of the true figure. However, there is evidence of a sharp decline occurring since 1995, corresponding to perceived disenchantment amongst the electorate with parties. But the question of reciprocal causation present between party identification and ideology still remains. Which is the stronger direct determinant of voting behaviour in France in recent years?

Modelling party identification and ideology as voting anchors The researcher intent on testing such a relationship faces a dilemma. Because of their close conceptual and empirical connection, some researchers argue that they cannot simply be tested by including them side by side in a single-equation model, which will be biased by not taking into account the element of reciprocity (Fleury and Lewis-Beck, 1993a). Instead, by using causal modelling techniques known as structural equation models or path analysis, the different relationships can be unpicked. Not so, argue critics of path analysis. Whilst this technique is appropriate for modelling recursive direct and indirect effects, it is inappropriate for disentangling non-recursive relationships unless there is prior knowledge of temporal precedence – one of the three conditions of causation – and in such a case, the use of lagged endogenous variables in a single-equation model is preferable. Certainly crosssectional data cannot be employed in such a way (Converse and Pierce, 1993: 1114).

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In this chapter, rather than come down squarely on one side or the other, we employ two techniques. Firstly, we present a path analysis employing a full information maximum likelihood estimation and interpret this as if it were an optimal strategy. For those in the sceptical camp, we also note what may be regarded as weaknesses in this modelling strategy, and subsequently present the ‘next best thing’, namely a simple bloc recursive model employing identical variables to the path model but which does not claim to unpick the party identification/ ideology reciprocity. It can, however, at least provide a clearer picture of the relationship between socio-structural background variables and party identification/ideology in France. The variables The most recent dataset which can be used in the analysis is the 1995 presidential dataset. 10 Because we are interested in the relationship between party, ideology and vote, we prefer not to use the presidential vote in 1995 to test for the effects of party identification – in French politics, as elsewhere, a presidential candidate’s personality can have a strong independent effect on vote.11 Consequently, we use recall of the 1993 legislative election first-round vote. Some have questioned the use of vote recall, both in terms of accuracy of recall (van der Eijk and Niemöller, 1979) and in terms of predictive utility when included in a model with party identification, given the possibility of a self-fulfilling prophecy (Converse and Pierce, 1993). Its use might also bias our model in favour of party identification as a predictor. However, in this case, our options are limited as to what dependent variable to use instead – by their very nature, party identification and vote will necessarily rely on similar response patterns and we can do little but bear this possibility in mind when interpreting our results. Evidently, there is also the possibility that the respondents’ party identification and/or ideology may have changed in the two years subsequent to the elections. However, given that party identification is only a useful measure if it is a long-term phenomenon and assuming that the identification measure accurately taps such a feeling in the French case, we would not expect this to bias the model overly. Similarly, changes in ideology are likely to be slight changes in intensity rather than full-blown shifts in bloc belonging. To approximate the interval-level variables appropriate to structural equation modelling and to retain similar scale lengths for the three principal variables – vote, party identification and ideology – we have coded the 1993 vote on seven positions: ‘1’ for Extreme Left, through

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Ideology and Party Identification

PC, PS/Left Radicals, Greens, Union pour la Démocratie Française (UDF), Rassemblement pour la République (RPR) and other Right to ‘7’ for National Front (FN). Party identification is similarly coded. Ideology simply uses the Left–Right self-placement, also coded along a sevenpoint scale. Given the debate over the use of items to tap party identification, and to look at the different outcomes which may result, we estimate two models, one using only those respondents naming a party in the open question and the other using all individuals naming one of the parties in the closed question, as used in Table 3.1. We have excluded from the analysis those respondents with a missing value for one or more of the three endogenous variables due to the structural nature of many of these missing values – abstainers and party non-identifiers, most notably. However, to retain a reasonable sample size in the path models (N = 2526 rather than N = 1714 for closed identifiers and N = 1351 rather than N = 969 for open identifiers only), we have not excluded respondents with missing cases amongst the exogenous variables. From a conceptual and methodological point of view, the majority of explanatory variables included in the two models are social background variables. Conceptually, party identification and ideology both derive principally from the social background of voters wherein primary socialisation has occurred, as well as from the social context of the voter at the time of the election which includes the secondary socialisation effects where these may differ from their primary counterparts. Methodologically, we need to provide a number of predetermined exogenous variables in the path analysis to determine the explanatory endogenous variables, party identification and ideology, which in turn determine the third endogenous variable, the 1993 vote. In addition, a number of exogenous variables will potentially exercise a direct effect on vote itself. In previous outings of this approach (Fiorina, 1981; Fleury and LewisBeck, 1993a), a specific form of path analysis, namely 2SLS (two-stage least squares regression) has used a range of exogenous variables to construct instrumental variables which act as statistically independent proxies for the reciprocally related endogenous variables and hence allow estimation of a single-equation model using a limited information technique, that is, the structural equations within the model are estimated separately. The advantage which is usually cited in its favour is that it is less sensitive to model specification error, given the separate estimation of each structural equation in the model. In the equivalent full information technique which we use in our analysis – a maximum

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likelihood estimation – the entire model is estimated simultaneously, error terms of the endogenous party identification and ideology variables allowed to covary and each structural equation restricted by the specification of its counterparts, and thus the results should be more reliable. However, as a result of the simultaneous estimation, model specification error can have ramifications throughout the entire model (Miller, 1971: 285).12 In the current context, we feel that there is in fact little to choose between the two, given that model specification error is difficult to identify with confidence in behavioural models. Consequently, we have chosen the full information model because at least this allows us to specify a single model as accurately as possible and eliminate a proportion of the error terms which are present in the limited information approach. In this sense, our maximum likelihood (ML) model tests a potentially correct specification whereas the 2SLS provides an a priori less reliable estimation. In a race whose finish we will probably never see, we are putting all our money on one horse, whereas 2SLS hedges its bets. Again, however, the context is inauspicious for the use of either model, hence our inclusion of the bloc recursive version. The social background variables are as follows: age (coded into six categories as a pseudo-interval scale); gender (a dummy variable coded male); church attendance (trichotomised into monthly Catholic attenders, less frequent attenders and non-attenders/non-Catholics); class (derived from a five-category Goldthorpe occupational class variable and collapsed into a manual + routine non-manual/professional + selfemployed dummy); a public sector dummy variable for sector of employment; education (a four-point scale from ‘1’ for no education/ primary, through mid-school and lycée to ‘4’ for university); and patrimoine (another four-point scale derived from the number of financial resources, such as savings accounts, second homes, shares and the like, held by the respondent). Finally, we also include parents’ ideology (a three-point scale combining mother and father’s ideologies into ‘1’ where both parents were Left-wing, ‘3’ where both were Right-wing, and ‘2’ for any other combination or ignorance of either’s affiliation) as a separate predetermined variable, given its potentially key role in primary socialisation. We have also included two retrospective items as determinants – vote in the Maastricht referendum of 1992 (a dummy variable coded Yes); and a dummy variable derived from respondents’ assessment of the 1988–1993 Socialist government’s incumbency (positive or negative). Lastly, we have included two exogenous variables with potentially

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Ideology and Party Identification

important direct effects on vote, namely political dissatisfaction (‘how well is democracy functioning in France?’ along a four-point scale) to tap for possible protest motivation for voting; and a retrospective economic evaluation of the French economy over the last 12 months (a three-point improved-stayed the same-worsened scale13). The simplified path model looks like this (Figure 3.1):

Party identification

– Social background variables – Opinion of socialist govt – Maastricht vote

Economic evaluation

Vote

Ideology

Political dissatisfaction

*Covariance arrows and residual error terms omitted for the sake of clarity. Direct effects from ‘class’, ‘church attendance’, ‘opinion of Socialist government’ and ‘Maastricht vote’ to vote only. Figure 3.1

Full path model of party identification and ideology on vote.

The final methodological note concerns the exogenous variables’ relationship with the two explanatory endogenous variables. The issue of model identification in this case demands that not all exogenous variables determine both party identification and ideology, thus satisfying the so-called ‘rank condition’ of any testable model (Berry, 1984: 41). Consequently, we have removed links between party identification and education, and between age and ideology.14 The structural equations to be estimated are consequently: Party identification = Age + Gender + Church attendance + Class + Public sector + Parent’s ideology + Patrimoine + Maastricht vote + Socialist incumbency + Ideology

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Ideology = Gender + Education + Church attendance + Class + Public sector + Parent’s ideology + Patrimoine + Maastricht vote + Socialist incumbency + Party id. Vote = Party id. + Ideology + Vote + Economy + Protest + Class + Church attendance + Socialist incumbency + Maastricht vote The resultant R2 scores for variance of the endogenous variables explained by their determinants are acceptable, if not startling – 0.53 for party identification and 0.46 for ideology in the open question model; 0.44 for party identification and 0.42 for ideology in the closed question model. In the subsequent bloc recursive models, we include exactly the same variables but in three nested blocs: the social background variables (Model I); Maastricht vote, opinion of the 1988–1993 Socialist government, retrospective economic evaluation and the ‘protest’ evaluation of democracy (Model II); and finally party identification and Left–Right ideology, separately and simultaneously in three sub-models (Models IIIa, b and c). Analysis and discussion For the sake of clarity, we present two path models in two diagrams – the paths between the explanatory endogenous variables and vote in Figures 3.2(a) and (b), the direct effects of predetermined variables on vote in Figures 3.3(a) and (b). Relevant total effects are given in the tables below.15 It is apparent from Figures 3.2(a) and (b) that ideology, according to the path model, is no longer the principal determinant of voting in France amongst those who identify with a party – party identification has overtaken it as the main anchor. Given the changes in the French political system, this is unsurprising. Implanted stable parties, and the nationalisation and mediatisation of politics has removed the French specificity which had kept ideology salient in the immediate post-war period. However, ideology has not been removed entirely from the equation – it still influences a noticeable direct effect on vote.16 Returning to the tenets of the party identification model, there is a clear relationship between clear ideological stance and party identification, but identification provides the principal ideological cues, as expected by the Michigan model. Moving to the direct exogenous effects on vote (Figures 3.3(a) and (b)), the most striking thing is perhaps the lack of direct effect from those

62

Ideology and Party Identification

Party id. 0.53*

0.55

0.44

Vote (1993)

0.19*

Ideology *Critical ratio > 2.00 (p < 0.05) Total effects

Vote

L–R ideo.

Party id.

L–R ideo. Party id.

0.57 0.85

– 0.74

0.59 –

Figure 3.2(a) Path model (closed party id.) – endogenous variables.

variables traditionally held up as les variables lourdes in French voting behaviour, namely class and religion. The total effects in the tables demonstrate that the majority of their effect manifests itself indirectly via Left–Right ideology and party identification, however. Interestingly, church attendance exercises slightly greater effect on ideology than on party identification, though in both cases it exceeds the class effect. Both protest and retrospective economic assessment manifest almost no effect whatsoever, and are certainly not significant. On the other hand, Maastricht vote (in the closed model) and opinion of the 1988–1993 Socialist government manifest strong effects and in the expected direction – those who voted No to Maastricht (according to some commentators, as much a referendum on the Socialist President François Mitterrand as on Europe) were more likely to have voted for the Right in 1993; those who felt that the Socialists government was a positive thing came more from the Left than from the Right. A potentially important problem in these findings concerns the nonrecursive nature of the endogeneity between previous vote and political

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Party id. 0.57*

1.66

0.29

Vote (1993)

0.20*

Ideology *Critical ratio > 2.00 (p < 0.05) Total effects

Vote

L–R ideo.

Party id.

L–R ideo. Party id.

0.70 1.73

– 3.19

0.55 –

Figure 3.2(b) Path model (open party id.) – endogenous variables.

opinion variables. For, as surely as class and church attendance are causally related to these variables, so there is certainly reciprocal causation between them and party identification and ideology. Current ideology and party identification will have been affected by views of the Socialist government and reaction to the Maastricht issue; but equally positions on these will have been forged precisely by party identification and ideology. The problems of temporal precedence and the usefulness of lagged endogenous variables appear once again; and the logistic problems of numerous endogenous variables are increased by the introduction of reciprocal causation. Whilst we cannot hope to solve these issues given current data and techniques, we can sort out the direct effects of les variables lourdes and other traditional predictors of vote in France and their relationship to party identification and ideology using the bloc recursive model (Tables 3.4(a) and (b)). The first thing to notice of course is that in Model I, containing just social background variables, the class and church attendance effects are

64

Ideology and Party Identification

Church attendance

Economy

–0.05

0.00 –0.14*

Maastricht vote

Vote (1993) 0.06 Class

–0.04 0.27* Protest

Opinion of socialist govt.

*Critical ratio > 2.00 (p < 0.05) Total effects

Vote

L–R ideo.

Party id.

Church att. Class Opinion of Soc. Govt. Maastricht vote

−0.24 0.22 1.21 −0.27

−0.30 0.19 1.28 −0.30

−0.25 0.22 1.30 −0.25

Figure 3.3(a) Path model (closed party id.) – direct effects of exogenous variables on vote.

still strongly significant despite the inclusion of parents’ ideology, and conform to directional expectations. Only patrimoine and gender consistently fail to reach significance (age’s non-significance in the open model is probably due to sample size). The only notable change between the closed and open party identification models is the stronger effect of church attendance in the latter model, an effect also seen in the path model. Amongst strong party identifiers, then, church attendance divides much more clearly between Left- and Right-wing voters than it does amongst those defined by a lower threshold of identification. The same cannot be said of class, however, whose effect remains stable. Amongst a more general electorate, then, class is as effective a determinant as church attendance – but amongst clear identifiers, church attendance is still the better predictor of vote.17

Jocelyn A.J. Evans

Church attendance

65

Economy

–0.06

–0.04 –0.07

Maastricht vote

Vote (1993) 0.04 Class

–0.01 0.16* Protest

Opinion of socialist govt

*Critical ratio > 2.00 (p < 0.05) Total effects

Vote

L–R ideo.

Party id.

Church att. Class Opinion of Soc. Govt. Maastricht vote

−0.33 0.25 1.30 −0.16

−0.41 0.25 1.46 −0.07

−31 0.28 1.48 −0.13

Figure 3.3(b) Path model (open party id.) – direct effects of exogenous variables on vote.

In Model II, the inclusion of Socialist government opinion and Maastricht vote do significantly reduce the parameter estimates for class and church attendance, but do not eliminate their effects completely. Notably, the effect of the economy is significant though the parameter estimates vary, indicating a tendency amongst those who believe the economy has got worse to have voted for the Left. The interpretation of the parameter is made difficult by its ‘false’ retrospective nature, mentioned earlier. However, the relative strength of the effects does emphasise that amongst those with stronger party identification in the open model, economic considerations play a much greater independent role in vote choice. In this case at least, identification seems not to indicate blind obedience to the party with which one identifies but rather a greater awareness of broader political influences such as the economy. Conversely, however, Maastricht vote in 1992 manifests larger significant parameter estimates in the closed model, and in all three nested

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Ideology and Party Identification

Table 3.4(a)

Bloc recursive model of closed party identification (OLS estimates) Model I

Constant Age Gender Education Church attendance Patrimoine Parents’ ideology Class Public sector

Model II

3.74***

2.45***

0.96***

1.43***

−0.08** 0.11 −0.12*** −0.29*** 0.04 0.77*** 0.23** −0.18*

−0.03 −0.07 −0.05 −0.19*** 0.02 0.52*** 0.17* 0.08

<−0.01 0.09* −0.03 −0.06 <−0.01 0.14*** 0.05 0.02

<−0.01 0.05 <−0.01 −0.06 <−0.01 0.20*** 0.10* <.01

1.25***

0.31***

0.55***

0.22***

−0.34*** −0.10* −0.06

−0.16*** <−0.01 <−0.01

−0.28*** <−0.01 0.03

−0.17*** 0.01 <−0.01

0.51***

0.54*** 0.20***

0.56

0.67

Opinion of Socialist govt. Maastricht vote Economy Protest Party identification Ideology Adjusted R2

Model IIIa Model IIIb Model IIIc

0.67*** 0.21

0.39

0.65

0.86*** <.01 0.09* −0.01 −0.03 −0.01 0.09** 0.05 0.04

N = 1714 (all missing cases excluded). *p < 0.1, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001.

models. Those who voted Yes to Maastricht are more likely to have come from the Left, irrespective of party identification and ideology. Given the status of the referendum alluded to above, this is an expected result. However, the relative increase in effect noticed in the open model suggests that party identifiers were more likely to toe the party line on the subject than the general identifiers. There are numerous explanations as to why party identifiers are more cautious about Europe but take greater heed of the economy – information on the economy but not on Europe, refusal to vote on personality rather than ideology in the Maastricht debate and so on. Given that we cannot resolve the problem given the data, more research is clearly needed on this matter. In the full models (IIIa, b and c), a number of effects relevant to the debate about the role of party identification and ideology emerge. Firstly, once party identification is controlled in the closed model, a gender effect emerges. It is only slight, but is interesting in that it goes against the traditional view of women on balance being slightly more likely to vote for the Right than men. Given that this appears to be an effect encompassed by neither ideology nor party identification, but

Jocelyn A.J. Evans Table 3.4(b)

Bloc recursive model of open party identification (OLS estimates) Model I

Constant

Model II Model IIIa Model IIIb Model IIIc

3.57***

2.61***

Age −0.04 Gender 0.04 Education −0.12** Church attendance −0.39*** Patrimoine 0.05 Parents’ ideology 0.81*** Class 0.23* Public sector −0.21*

<.01 −0.07 −0.07* −0.27*** 0.02 0.51*** 0.16* −0.12

Opinion of Socialist govt. Maastricht vote Economy Protest

1.31*** −0.23** −0.19*** −0.11*

Party identification Ideology Adjusted R2

67

0.74**

1.45***

0.70**

0.02 0.03 −0.04 −0.04 −0.02 0.16*** 0.02 0.06

0.03 −0.02 −0.02 −0.06 −0.03 0.21*** 0.09 <.01

0.03 0.03 −0.02 <−0.01 −0.03 0.12** 0.03 0.07

0.21**

0.53***

−0.09 −0.06* −0.01

−0.17** −0.08* −0.04

0.72*** 0.28

0.48

0.74

0.14* −0.10* −0.05 <−0.01

0.51***

0.56*** 0.21***

0.67

0.75

N = 969 (all missing cases excluded). *p < 0.1, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001.

which is nonetheless a social rather than attitudinal indicator, it could well correspond to the male predominance on the Extreme Right, an effect which has been frequently noticed both in France and comparatively (Betz, 1994: 142–146; Evans, 2000: 30) but which is difficult to explain in terms other than men’s position in occupational structure without resorting to clichés about male disempowerment or conversely about male attraction to extremist/violent movements. What this should emphasise is that, whilst party identification and ideology both result from socialisation, not all socialisation necessarily manifests itself via these conduits. Similarly, and more persuasively perhaps, parental ideology remains significant even once party identification and ideology have been included in the equation. This suggests our path model may be misspecified – a direct effect on vote should have been included.18 It has been a given in electoral research that parental occupation has often been as powerful a predictor of an individual’s voting bloc as his/her own occupational position, a sign of the role that primary socialisation plays in the individual’s political make-up. The same can be said of

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Ideology and Party Identification

parental ideology (Boy and Mayer, 1998: 77). For those with weaker party identification or apparently ambivalent ideological positions, or where these do not correspond closely to vote, their voting patterns show a clear relationship with their parents’ ideology, if clearly enough defined. Again, this nuances our view of the Michigan ‘funnel of causality’ – where childhood and secondary socialisation produce unclear signals or where these signals are ignored, the earliest influences can still exert a direct effect on the vote. Overall, we would emphasise the following methodological and substantive points: 1. An open party identification question is a more robust indicator of party identification as envisaged by the Michigan model. The biases introduced by the use of the closed question do render findings which more resemble a basic voting model than a study of the identification phenomenon itself. That said, a comparison of the two questions can in itself reveal a number of points about identification which a single model would not. 2. Path analysis appears appropriate in its recursive path effects, and conforms to expectations in terms of relative change of the nonrecursive path effects (significance aside). Panel data would help to test further whether or not these findings were accurate. More importantly, panel data would prevent the recourse to such contested techniques. A suivre. 3. Party identification, where it exists, is a stronger voting anchor than ideology, and is the principal cue provider. Where it exists as a more generalised proximity sees a weakening of the dominance over ideology, and one must question the self-fulfilling prophecy that this variable evokes. However, whilst perhaps not fully blown identification, the use of a passive but nonetheless real sentiment of proximity to a party as a cue provider, particularly in the absence of a coherent ideological framework, should perhaps be considered a possibility in future research. Equally, it should not be forgotten that open party identification only exists in a minority of cases – in these cases, then, closed identification and/or ideology must by definition monopolise as anchors.

Conclusion – the 2002 elections and beyond The future test of party identification’s normalisation in the French system will of course be whether such a pattern can be found in the

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2002 electoral data. Given the growing dissatisfaction with political parties throughout the 1990s, it is not at all certain that party identification will prove as strong an anchor to vote as it has done in the data from the mid-1990s tested in this chapter. That said, the results of the 2002 presidential and legislative elections already suggest that party identification is important in a number of ways. Firstly, the clanging success of Jean-Marie Le Pen in the first round of the presidential elections may not have been built upon by his party in the subsequent legislative elections, but the loyalty of existing Extreme Right voters in both ballots was very strong indeed.19 Commentators had already noted the growing stability of FN voters in recent elections, belying their previous status as an electorate which comes and goes (Mayer, 1999: 191). The FN electorate is a disparate group of the so-called ‘modernisation losers’ with few social commonalties (Andersen and Evans, 2003) and the ideology which sustains them is hardly a broad Weltanschauung, being more a collection of key issues such as immigration, law and order and economic discontent. Consequently, there seem good grounds for thinking that this loyalty is in fact a manifestation of identification with the FN. Similarly, in the mainstream both the Moderate Left and the Moderate Right have shown dynamics hinting at identification being an important feature of their electorates. Despite the presidential debacle of the Socialist candidate Lionel Jospin and a gauche plurielle incumbency whose brain was not always in the right place, even if its heart usually was, the Socialist vote in the legislatives remained remarkably stable. In the face of record abstention levels, a remarkably cohesive Right-wing presidential majority, and embarrassingly undeferential coalition partners in the Greens, PC, pôle républicain and even the normally invisible Parti des Radicaux de Gauche (PRG), the PS managed to lose only just over 1 per cent of the vote from 1997.20 In a period when ideological differences between parties are apparently slight – an analysis which does not always bear close scrutiny, but which is certainly accepted by the majority of the electorate – ideology is an unlikely ground for mobilisation and loyalty; party identification is a far safer bet. Critics might point to the Fourth and early Fifth Republics and note that the Section Française de l’Internationale Ouvrière (SFIO) and the Gaullist Union pour la Nouvelle République (UNR) and its successors managed to hold onto loyal electorates without any evidence of high party identification. We would argue that firstly, as Pierce showed, the SFIO was precisely one of the parties which did show more ‘normal’ levels of identification. Moreover, such identification was supplemented in

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Ideology and Party Identification

the Socialists’ case by a localised, often candidate-centred identification which, since the nationalisation of the PS by Defferre and Mitterrand in the 1970s, has been prevalent only amongst the éléphants of the party. Similarly, the UNR was the first mass party of the Right in French politics, and largely a personality-based party to boot. Under the Fourth Republic and before, no such mass-based governing party existed and any identification was similarly locally inspired and personality-based. Under the contemporary Fifth Republic, one of the principal failings of the Right has been its inability to provide a cohesive party upon which an electorate could focus its support. Despite one of the most dismal presidential showings by an eventual winner, the presidential Union Pour la Majorité (UPM) managed to supplement its RPR-DL-UDF combined scores from 1997 by almost 10 per cent, winning support away from the Socialists and from the apparently terminally disenchanted FN electorate. We would not claim that the UPM electorate already identifies with the movement, but it is clear that the single predominant party of the Right has an attraction which its fragmented predecessors did not. One thing is clear – this is not the work of ideology. The noticeable thread in these concluding remarks on 2002 is the role that institutions have played in this rise in party identification. Institutional frameworks provide a set of dynamics which parties can learn to exploit. When parties are forced not to, or decide not to follow these dynamics, they usually meet with sub-optimal results. In the French case, the framework provided by the Fifth Republic has been one of consolidation – stable party blocs on the Left and Right, supporting a presidential candidate. To this extent, the French system has moved closer to the US system, even if it certainly does not resemble it outright. Under similar conditions, one would expect similar phenomena to flourish. To return to our opening analogy, fine wine can travel – one simply needs to provide a similarly accommodating environment at the other end. Notes The author would like to thank Robert Andersen for his suggestions concerning modelling options and comments on an earlier draft, Gidon Cohen for his better memory of missing cases, and the Banques de Données Socio-Politiques (BDSP), Grenoble, for supplying the SOFRES–CEVIPOF datasets upon which this analysis is based. He would also like to thank the Centre d’Informatisation des Données Socio-Politiques (CIDSP), Grenoble and the French Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) for funding part of the time devoted to this research. 1. These elements are a synthesis of the elements presented at various junctures of The American Voter. For those searching for specific references to these points, see pp. 146–149 (1); 122–128 (2); 128–136 (3–5).

Jocelyn A.J. Evans

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2. As Pierce states, ‘French families appear to have operated under a reticence norm relating to political matters that impeded the development of the kind of political orientations that contribute to the acquisition of partisanship in young adulthood.’ (Pierce, 1995: 45). 3. The paltry evidence that exists suggests that French ideological positions were generally as unstable as US ones, however (Converse and Pierce, 1986: 250). 4. This perception has been challenged by many as being a methodological artefact – see, for example, Smith (1989). More recent research confirms party identification as an ever-present phenomenon (Miller and Merrill Shanks, 1996). 5. The open question asked, ‘In general, is there a political party or political movement which you feel close to?’ with the interviewer being instructed not to prompt the respondent. The closed question asked, ‘Here is a list of political parties or political movements. Could you tell me the one you feel the closest to or in any case the least remote?’ 6. We coded the party identification questions on what might be called a ‘did they answer the question?’ basis. We would expect a true party identifier to give the actual name of his/her party in response to the question. Thus, anyone naming an existing party in the French system or giving at least its correct initials was coded as an identifier. Similarly, anyone giving the correct label with a simple spelling mistake, which might be attributed to interviewer rather than respondent error, or else to poor spelling, was also included. However, anyone producing a collective term – ‘the socialists’ or ‘the Gaullists’ – a party leader, an irrelevant organisation or a non-existent or unidentifiable party was not included by the simple logic that they did not answer the question. 7. The longitudinal data employed for this test are unfortunately still unavailable, despite being released for archiving many years ago (Converse and Pierce, 1993: 1115). 8. The seven-point Left–Right ideological question was as follows: ‘We usually classify the French on a scale of this type, going from left to right. Where would you personally locate yourself?’ 9. Lewis-Beck and Chlarson offer an alternative solution to the problem, regressing a scale made up of a number of issue positions on Left–Right position, and excluding those respondents with residual scores exceeding one standard error – in other words, those for whom their ideological position bore little relation to their issue stance (2002: 496). 10. The 1997 legislative election survey would be ideal for such a model, but crucially it lacks a Left–Right scale to tap ideology. 11. We highlight the methodological importance of this in the 1995 and 2002 French presidential elections elsewhere – see Andersen and Evans (2003). 12. For more on the differences between limited-information and full-information estimators, see Christ (1966: 400). 13. We hesitated a great deal over including this item, given that it refers to the 1994–1995 period, which in no sense precedes the 1993 election. However, for the sake of providing the full model of voting, we felt that it was likely to reflect general views on the economy preceding the immediate 12-month period. To our knowledge, despite the arrival of Edouard Balladur and his historic ‘loan’ from the French to try to offset the budget deficit left by the

72

14.

15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

Ideology and Party Identification Socialists, no sea-change occurred between 1992 and 1994 in the actual state of the economy. We accept this is a potentially unsafe assumption, however. Unsurprisingly, the proximity of party identification and ideology mean that amongst the predetermined exogenous variables the variance explained, and by which variables, is very similar. We chose to remove education from the party identification equation because it did not have a significant independent effect on party identification in an ordinary least squares (OLS) regression. Similarly, age manifested a weaker link with ideology in the equivalent setting. However, this is another reason to be wary of the findings of the model – the exclusion of exogenous variables from specific equations often verges on the arbitrary. The full path diagram plus tables of direct, indirect and total effects are available from the author. The lack of significance amongst the reciprocal effects is not surprising given the specification of the model, testing all relationships simultaneously. To note that the relative strengths remain between the standardised betas (not shown) of class and church attendance. Its inclusion in the path model does not change the substantive findings for the other variables, however. Pascal Perrineau, interview in Le Monde (24 April 2002). Granted, there is evidence that some Socialists moved to the UMP, and were replaced on the Left by decamping Communists (Abrial et al., 2002). However, this still leaves a core of Socialist support to account for.

References Abrial, S., B. Cautrès and J. Evans (2002) ‘Stabilité et recomposition du système de partis français’ in Revue Politique et Parlementaire, 1020/1021, September– December, 228–243. Andersen, R. and J. Evans (2003) ‘Values, cleavages and party choice in France, 1988–1995’ in French Politics 1(1), forthcoming. Berry, W. (1984) Nonrecursive Causal Models, Beverly Hills and London: Sage. Betz, H.-G. (1994) Radical Right-wing Populism in Western Europe, Basingstoke: Macmillan. Boy, D. and N. Mayer (1998) L’Electeur a ses raisons, Paris: Presses de Sciences Po. Cameron, D. (1971) ‘Stability and change in patterns of French partisanship’ in Public Opinion Quarterly 36(1): 19–30. Campbell, A. et al. (1960) The American Voter, New York: Wiley. Capdevielle, J. (1981) France de gauche, vote à droite? Paris: Presses de la FNSP. Christ, C. (1966) Econometric Models and Methods, New York: Wiley. Converse, P. (1964) ‘The nature of belief systems in mass publics’ in D. Apter (ed.) Ideology and Discontent, New York: Free Press. Converse, P. (1966) ‘The concept of the normal vote’ in A. Campbell et al. (eds) Elections and the Political Order, Free Press: New York. Converse, P. and G. Dupeux (1961) ‘Politicization of the electorate in France and in the United States’ in Public Opinion Quarterly 26: 1–23. Converse, P. and R. Pierce (1986) Political Representation in France, Cambridge (MA): Belknap. Converse, P. and R. Pierce (1993) ‘Comment on Fleury and Lewis-Beck: “Anchoring the French voter; ideology versus party”’ in Journal of Politics 55(4): 1110–1117.

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Deutsch, E., D. Lindon and P. Weill (1966) Les Familles politiques aujourd’hui en France, Paris: les Editions de Minuit. van der Eijk, C. and B. Niemöller (1979) ‘Recall accuracy and its determinants’ in Acta Politica 14(3): 289–342. Evans, J. (2000) ‘Le vote gaucholepéniste. Le masque extrême d’une dynamique normale’ in Revue Française de Science Politique 50(1): 23–53. Fiorina, M. (1981) Retrospective Voting in American National Elections, New Haven: Yale University Press. Fleury, C. and M. Lewis-Beck (1993a) ‘Anchoring the French voter: ideology versus party’ in Journal of Politics 55(4): 1100–1109. Fleury, C. and M. Lewis-Beck (1993b) ‘Déjà vu all over again: a comment on the comment of Converse and Pierce’ in Journal of Politics 55(4): 1118–1126. Haegel, F. (1993) ‘Partisan ties’ in D. Boy and N. Mayer (eds) The French Voter Decides, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Inglehart, R. and H.-D. Klingemann (1976) ‘Party identification, ideological preference and the Left–Right dimension among Western mass publics’ in I. Budge, I. Crewe and D. Farlie (eds) Party Identification and Beyond: Representations of Voting and Party Competition, London: Wiley. Key, V. (1961) Public Opinion and American Democracy, New York: Knopf. Lewis-Beck, M. and K. Chlarson (2002) ‘Party, ideology, institutions and the 1995 French Presidential elections’ in British Journal of Political Science 32(3): 489–512. Mayer, N. (1999) Ces Français qui votent FN, Paris, Flammarion. Mayer, N. and P. Perrineau (1992) ‘Why do they vote for Le Pen?’ in European Journal of Political Research 22(1): 123–141. Miller, A. (1971) ‘Logic of causal analysis: from experimental to nonexperimental designs’ in H. Blalock (ed.) Causal Models in the Social Sciences, Basingtoke: Macmillan. Miller, W. and J. Merrill Shanks (1996) The New American Voter, Cambridge (MA) and London: Harvard University Press. Nie, N., S. Verba and J. Petrocik (1976) The Changing American Voter, Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press. Percheron, A. (1977) ‘Ideological proximity among French children: problems of definition and measurement’ in European Journal of Political Research 5: 53–81. Pierce, R. (1995) Choosing the Chief: Presidential Elections in France and the United States, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Smith, E. (1989) The Unchanging American Voter, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Thomassen, J. (1976) ‘Party identification as a cross-national concept: its meaning in the Netherlands’ in I. Budge, I. Crewe and D. Farlie (eds) Party Identification and Beyond: Representations of Voting and Party Competition, London: Wiley. Weber, E. (1994) The Hollow Years, New York: Norton. Williams, P. (1964) Crisis and Compromise: Politics in the Fourth Republic, London: Longman.

4 “Old Wine in New Bottles? New Wine in Old Bottles?: Class, Religion and Vote in the French Electorate” – The 2002 Elections in Time Perspective Bruno Cautrès

Late in the evening of an incredible electoral night, on 21 April 2002, Jean-Marie Le Pen gave a speech from his campaign headquarters, as were doing all the main candidates for presidential election: the symbolic function of this kind of speech is, for the two candidates leading the first round and thus selected for the second one, to mobilize their electorates and “frame” the explanation of their success. In his speech, the National Front leader presented himself as the voice of the “have nots” “n’ayez pas peur de rêver, vous les petits, les sans-grade, les exclus”. In the continuation of his speech, he added: “je suis socialement à gauche, économiquement à droite et plus que jamais, nationalement de France”. The key function of that speech was to try to demonstrate that by its vote, the French electorate had realized a kind of political “big bang”: would it be still possible to say that left and right positions, old cleavages based on socio-economic issues, new cleavages based on values, were the main lines of understanding the French political life? Indeed, the “orthodoxy” about the role of “heavy variables” (les “variables lourdes” as Nonna Mayer has defined them) in the electoral alignments of the French voter, has, no doubt, been put into question by the 2002 elections. This questioning is the main topic of this chapter, focusing on class and religion as allegiances for the French electorate in the context of a new political map and electoral offer (not only the extreme right but now also the extreme left) and in the context of sociological trends in the French society: redefinitions of the salariat, secular decline of the artisans and farmers, new forms of relationship between work and 74

Bruno Cautrès 75

employment, and secularization of an “old European” Catholic country. Already, the 1995 presidential election had been an occasion to raise these kinds of questions: the theme of campaign chosen by Jacques Chirac (“la fracture sociale”) was, after all, nothing else than a recollection that exclusion and social divisions were still there, redefined by the context of France as a post-industrial society and by “new” forms of inequalities (access to knowledge and education, to networks and channels of communication and decision). These trends and evolutions are not specific to France, other European countries have also been places for such contexts (recall that some time after the 2002 French elections, the Dutch elections also showed an electoral success for an extreme-right populist party). Among these countries, France remains, anyway, a very interesting case because the analysis of “old politics” has been very much studied and developed. The links between social class position, religion and voting is probably one of the most traditional and studied relations in the French political behaviour research. This relation has been extensively documentated at the level of aggregate electoral returns or at the level of individual voting behaviours. Regarding the electoral geography perspective, research in France has been influenced by the Lispet/Rokkan and André Siegfried tradition. Even if these two traditions emphasized the relation between social cleavages and politics at the macro level (aggregate analysis), they have played a very influential role on the study of factors influencing individuals’ electoral behaviours. These factors have also been identified by many works done in the framework of the psycho-sociological or behaviorist approach of voting in France. Among these factors, social class, religion and partisan attachments have played a central role in the formalisation of a model combining sociological and psycho-sociological dimensions of voting. In that model, class position represents the translation at the individual level of the social cleavages approach inherited from the Lipset/Rokkan tradition. The link between social position and voting is mediated through the influences of socialization (in the family or through other sociopolitical identities and religious beliefs), party identification or left– right self-placement (see Michelat and Simon, 1977; Mayer, 1985, 1986; Mayer and Perrineau, 1992). An interesting difference between the electoral research tradition in France and in other western countries is that French electoral research has extensively studied the relations not only between class and vote but also between religion and vote and between the three variables all together. France is quite a unique case for the study of class voting and religious voting: France has characteristics of

76

The 2002 Elections in Time Perspective

an old European country, with traditional political alignments, predominantly Catholic but also has a political spectrum more complex than the simple left–right dimension. It is a multiparty system, dominated by a left–right continuum but with large exceptions, such as the National Front voting which has changed the nature of the political spectrum of France since the mid-1980s. France is in fact no longer defined by a dichotomized political space (the left–right cleavage) and must be analyzed as a political “trichotomy” (as shown by Grunberg and Schweisguth, 2003). In spite of the links between the class and religious voting with other socio-political variables (such as subjective class identities, attitudes towards politics and towards issues), the aim of this chapter is restricted to the study of the class-vote and religion-vote relationship over time in France. Our chapter is in that sense just a piece of a broader topic, just an element of a more complex puzzle.

The data Our French data cover the 1967 to 2002 period and come from the main post-election studies (conducted from 1978 to 1995 by the CEVIPOF and then by the CEVIPOF with other partners such as CIDSP). Seven elections are covered by this time series: legislative elections of March 1967, legislative elections of March 1978, the presidential election of May 1988, the presidential election of May 1995, legislative elections of June 1997, the presidential election of 2002 and legislative elections of 2002. The 1967 data come from the Converse and Pierce national post-election survey, the 1978, 1988, 1995 and 1997 data come from the national post-electoral surveys conduced by the CEVIPOF (Capdevielle et al., 1981; Mayer and Boy, 1990; Bréchon et al., 1999), the 2002 data come from the “Panel electoral français de 2002” conduced by the CEVIPOF, the CIDSP and the CECOP.1 There are some problems in doing this comparative study across time: first of all, the types of elections covered by these studies are not homogenous since we have both legislative and presidential elections. It means that we are doing a kind of “pseudo-comparative analysis”, a comparative analysis which has to choose a “common denominator”: we have decided to code as a right/left dichotomy the vote in these different elections. A second problem arises: the emergence of an extreme-right voting measured in our series from the 1988 election study. As mentioned above, the political spectrum of France has changed over our period from a “bi-polar” to a “tri-polar” situation: we have thus

Bruno Cautrès 77

decided to consider separately the extreme-right voting and to use for all the period a left/right dichotomy excluding this voting. The categorization of social class is also a key element of the empirical analysis. The most natural way to do the analysis is to use the French coding of socio-professional groups for occupation. To facilitate comparisons between our chapter results and other European analysis, we finally decided to use a six classes version of the Goldthorpe–Heath class schema, a class schema which is not so far from the French coding normally used but which is more directly comparable to analyses conducted in Britain or United States. This class schema is an adaptation of the Goldthorpe–Heath 11 classes as follows : Higher salariat (I) Lower salariat (II) Routine non manual (clerks) (IIIa and IIIb) Petty bourgeoisie (employers and self-employed) (IVa, IVb, and IVc) Skilled working class (foremen and skilled workers) (V, VI) Unskilled working class (semi and unskilled workers, labourers) (VIIa and VIIb). Regarding religion, France is a Catholic country, Catholicism being largely predominant. The focus of analysis has thus been about church attendance rather than religious denomination. Church attendance has been highlighted in France as having a clear and strong impact on voting behaviour (Michelat and Simon, 1977). Attendance at church is also a good indicator of religiosity and in France is often reported as being an indicator of «religious integration». It is remarkable that this indicator is still an efficient measure of religious integration in the context of changing and declining religious practices. Michelat and Simon have even shown that in this context church attendance is more relevant than before: to attend church is now probably, at least in the context of Catholicism in France, more discriminating. French electoral research has shown that religious integration as measured by church attendance is tied with a set of core values, a symbolic system of representations which is based on moral, ethical and socio-political values: family, tradition, patrimony and respect for political order. Our scale of religiosity separates four groups: regularly practising; irregularly or rarely practising; people who never practise their religion plus people with no religion; other religions.

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The 2002 Elections in Time Perspective

Still a “class vote”? Since most of the literature claiming a decline in class voting bases its conclusion on the Alford index values, our first step is to calculate its values for France (to calculate it we have dichotomized occupations as a contrast between working class either skilled or unskilled and other occupations; it is an arbitrary choice and one can calculate the index in many other ways, for instance in defining more strictly the “non-manual occupations” as high salariat, low salariat and routine non-manual). Note that the values obtained by the Alford index are always lower for France than for other European countries such as Britain in particular. The model of “class voting” is stronger in Britain than in France where class effects and belonging have been for a long time mediated through the effects of religion and other sociological attributes such as sector of activity and employment, status of employment, age, gender and patrimony. The values presented in Table 4.1 are declining over time, and the decline is very strong from 1988 to 2002: the value of Alford index of class voting for the first round of presidential election in 2002 is about 0! At first sight, the Alford index values seem coherent with the thesis we have mentioned above, namely that France is characterized by a decline in class voting and a reduction of the relevance of “old cleavages”. In 2002, France seems to be characterized by a new and impressive situation of “no more class voting” at all, or about none. As can be seen for the set of values in Table 4.1, it appears that France knows a continuous decline in class voting. This finding is surprising enough to be tested more strictly. The methodological and technical weaknesses of the Alford index are known and we first have to go back to the Table 4.1 Alford index of “relative class voting” (left voting among working class compared to left voting among all other occupations) – France 1967–2002 1967 (L) 1978 (L) 1988 (P) 1995 (P) 1997 (L) 2002 (P) 2002 (L) Alford index (first round)

20

18

21

10

14

1.2

4.4

Notes: The percentages on which the index is calculated are based on the trichotomy of voting (left/right/extreme right) for 1988 to 2002 but on a simple contrast between left and right in 1967 and 1978. For the legislative elections data, voting for candidates other than left, right or extreme right have been excluded from the calculation (most of the time these candidates are candidates with no political labels). Data have been weighted according to political weightings. (L) means legislative elections; (P) means presidential election. The same remarks apply to the following tables.

Bruno Cautrès 79

simple tables to understand the mobility of class voting during the period considered. Before looking at the trends in percentages of class voting, it is worth noting that the “class voting model” is indeed less relevant in France than in other European countries. Differences and distances between classes in terms of voting are substantial but, especially at the end of our time period, only in between special segments of the French electorate. During our period, one can see from Tables 4.2 and 4.3 a dramatic change in the left voting composition: working-class people, specially in the most skilled part of working class, are much less in support of the left candidates from 1995. Working-class support for the left weakened and, as Heath and Cautrès have shown, this evolution started in fact at the beginning of the nineties (Cautrès and Heath, 1996) and is not specific to the 2002 elections. This trend in class voting is shared by routine non-manual employees. By 2002, working-class and routine non-manual employees are no longer the strongest support for the left candidates. The decline in left voting of these two classes is quite impressive over the period: working-class left voting declines by 24 per cent, from the 1978 to the 2002 legislative elections; routine non-manual employees left voting declines of 12 per cent in the same time. This recomposition of the class voting bases of the French electorate was accompanied by a process of raising left voting among the non-working-class

Table 4.2 Percentages of left voting according to social class in France, 1st round High Low Routine Petty Skilled salariat salariat non-manual bourgeoisie working class 1967 (L) 1978 (L) 1988 (P) 1995 (P) 1997 (L) 2002 (P) 2002 (L)

32 34 43 51 47 41 39

38 49 52 51 58 51 48

48 51 56 43 54 39 39

27 28 32 25 33 20 25

60 67 65 53 57 44 43

Unskilled working class 60 66 69 56 54 38 53

Notes: For 1988, 1995 and 2002 presidential elections, “left” means the addition of all left candidates including extreme left candidates. The extreme left could be separated which will mean a quadri-polar political space. As shown by Gérard Grunberg and Etienne Schweisguth, the ideological consistency of extreme left is not like the one of extreme right and one can add up the percentages for left and extreme left candidates. The same applies to the 1997 and 2002 legislative elections. Percentages are calculated on the basis of a three categories voting variable (right/left/extreme right). All data are weighted.

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The 2002 Elections in Time Perspective

Table 4.3 Percentages of right voting according to social class in France, 1st round High Low Routine Petty Skilled salariat salariat non-manual bourgeoisie working class 1967 (L) 1978 (L) 1988 (P) 1995 (P) 1997 (L) 2002 (P) 2002 (L)

68 66 48 44 47 43 52

62 51 37 39 35 37 44

52 49 33 40 35 37 42

73 72 56 60 59 59 67

40 33 20 27 31 29 38

Unskilled working class 40 34 21 27 29 41 36

Notes: For 1988, 1995, 1997 and 2002 presidential elections «right» means «la droite modérée» (moderate right) which excludes voting for Jean-Marie Le Pen in 1988, 1995 and 2002. The same applies for the 1997 and 2002 legislative elections where “right” means voting for moderate right candidates, excluding voting for National Front or MNR. Percentages are calculated on the basis of a three categories voting variable (right/left/extreme right). All data are weighted.

element of the salariat. We will see later how the 2002 elections are framed or not by this trend. To have a better view about class voting in France and how the 2002 elections fit, or not, place into a process of time change, we have calculated the odds-ratios (see Table 4.4), a more appropriate measure of “relative class voting” than the Alford index. What appears much better now is the key process of class realignment occurring between the mid-1960s and 2002. This process, analyzed previously (Cautrès and Heath, 1996), is illustrated by the evolution of odds-ratios comparing different classes of employees. There is a progressive convergence between the values of these odds-ratios and some are even lower than 1 from 1995. The 2002 elections clearly take place in that framework. In other words, there is a reduction in the propensity of employees to differently support the left. As can be seen when comparing the odds-ratios among the salariat and the petty bourgeoisie, this process is accompanied by a larger divergence in voting of employees and self-employed. The above evolutions show that by the end of the period the main class cleavage in France divides the electorate according to a salaried/self-employed cutting line. In 1995 and 1997, as extensively documented by Nonna Mayer, the class cleavage in France is more a cleavage between the salaried, all together, and the self-employed than between working class and other salaried people. The highest values of class voting odds-ratios are obtained when the odds of a left vote

Bruno Cautrès 81 Table 4.4

Class voting odds-ratios in France (left/right), 1967–2002, 1st round

Left/right (Higher Sal./Petty Bgsie) Left/right (Lower Sal./Petty Bgsie) Left/right (Unsk. W./Petty Bgsie) Left/right (Unsk. W./Higher Sal.) Left/right (Unsk. W./Lower Sal.) Left/right (Routine/Higher Sal.) Left/right (Routine/Lower Sal.)

1967 (L)

1978 (L)

1988 (P)

1995 (P)

1997 (L)

2002 (P)

2002 (L)

1.27

1.32

1.56

2.78

1.78

2.81

2.01

1.65

2.47

2.45

3.13

2.96

4.06

2.92

4.05

4.99

5.75

4.97

3.32

2.73

3.94

3.18

3.76

3.66

1.78

1.86

1.33

1.96

2.44

2.02

2.33

1.58

1.12

0.78

1.34

1.96

2.02

1.89

0.92

1.54

0.95

1.23

1.50

1.08

1.20

0.82

0.93

0.88

0.85

Notes: For 1988, 1995, 1997 and 2002 presidential elections «right» means «la droite modérée» (moderate right) which excludes voting for Jean-Marie Le Pen in 1988, 1995 and 2002. The same applies for the 1997 and 2002 legislative elections where “right” means voting for moderate right candidates, excluding voting for National Front or MNR. “Left” means the addition of all left candidates including extreme left candidates. Odds-ratios are calculated on the basis of a three categories voting variable (right/left/extreme right) and the percentages of Tables 4.2 and 4.3.

rather than a right vote are compared between salaried people and petty bourgeoisie. The left–right cleavage is thus interpreted in France as a cleavage about the work status and all that relates to it. If class voting has significantly changed in France in the recent period, part of the explanation lies in the success of the extreme right among the working class in particular. As Table 4.5 shows, extreme-right voting grew between 1988 and 2002 among the working class, the petty bourgeoisie and the routine non-manual class while it actually declined somewhat among the salariat. The rise of extreme-right voting among high and low salariat in 2002 presidential election is worth noting anyway. Further research is needed on that but this rise is partly due to the rising level of extreme-right voting among all the electorates on 21 April in 2002. To analyse Table 4.5 more properly, we have again used odds-ratios. Variations in extreme-right voting according to class are not as strong as for right or left voting and the odds-ratios in Table 4.6 are generally weaker than those we have seen earlier. This suggests that extreme-right

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The 2002 Elections in Time Perspective

Table 4.5 Percentages of extreme-right voting according to social class in France (1988–2002), 1st round High Low Routine Petty salariat salariat non-manual bourgeoisie

1988 (P) 1995 (P) 1997 (L) 2002 (P) 2002 (L)

9 4 7 16 9.5

11 9 7 12 8

11 16 12 24 19

12 15 8 21 8

Skilled working class

Unskilled working class

15 21 13 27 18

10 17 17 21 11

Notes: In 1988 and 1995 extreme right means voting for Jean-Marie Le Pen at the first round of presidential election. In the 2002 presidential election it means voting for either Jean-Marie Le Pen or Bruno Mégret. For the 1997 elections it means voting for National Front candidates; for the 2002 legislative elections it means voting for National Front and MNR candidates. Percentages are calculated on the basis of a three categories voting variable (right/left/extreme right). All data are weighted.

Table 4.6 Extreme-right class voting odds-ratios in France (1988–2002), 1st round

Ext-r/left (Petty Bgsie/Unsk. W.) Ext-r/left (Unsk. W./Higher Sal.) Ext-r/left (Unsk. W./Lower Sal.) Ext-r/right (Unsk. W./Petty Bgsie) Ext-r/right (Petty Bgsie/Higher Sal.) Ext-r/right (Petty Bgsie/Lower Sal.)

1988 (P)

1995 (P)

1997 (L)

2002 (P)

2002 (L)

2.58

1.17

0.77

1.81

1.54

0.69

3.87

2.11

1.41

0.81

0.68

1.72

2.60

2.34

1.24

2.22

2.56

4.34

1.41

2.56

1.14

2.75

0.91

0.95

0.69

0.72

1.08

0.67

1.09

0.65

Notes: In 1988 and 1995 extreme right means voting for Jean-Marie Le Pen at the first round of presidential election. In the 2002 presidential election it means voting for either Jean-Marie Le Pen or Bruno Mégret. For the 1997 elections it means voting for National Front candidates; for the 2002 legislative elections it means voting for National Front and MNR candidates. Odds-ratios are calculated on the basis of a three categories voting variable (right/left/extreme right) and the percentages of Table 4.5.

voting is probably best explained by other socio-demographics, education and gender in particular. The extreme-right voting is not associated with class in the same way as right and left voting: the cleavage between employees and self-employed is not the one explaining extreme-right

Bruno Cautrès 83

voting. Since the mid-1980s, the National Front voting associates the “two sides” (patrons and employees) in the single issue of rejection of immigration. The 2002 presidential election is clearly placed in this framework: for the first time, Jean-Marie Le Pen got high scores among farmers and rural artisans. In the 2002 presidential election the level of voting for the leader of National Front is very close among routine manual employees, working class, and petty bourgeoisie. Higher and lower salariat still maintain a certain rejection of extreme-right voting. There are also some class differences in Table 4.6 in particular concerning the working-class propensities to support the extreme-right and the petty bourgeoisie propensities to support right candidates rather than the National Front. Table 4.6 shows one main difference between right and extreme-right voting since right voting is clearly dominant among the self-employed but extreme-right voting is particularly strong among the working-class component of the salariat. There are some interesting changes from 1988 to 2002. In particular, compared with the left, the National Front became relatively weaker among the petty bourgeoisie but relatively stronger among the working class. This suggests that there has been some realignment of the National Front – from being a party of the petty bourgeoisie in 1988 it has become more a party of the working class (especially of the lower working class) in the 1990s. This may well be one source of the declining relative strength of the left in the working class over the same period. The extreme right has taken advantage of this decline. Already in the 1995 presidential election, Jean-Marie Le Pen was leading among the workingclass electorate. The explanation lies in the disillusion of the working-class electorate with the left, Jean-Marie Le Pen organizing his political message about defending the deprived people, the “small” against the “big”, the “bottom France” against the “top France” (“la France d’en bas”). Jean-Marie Le Pen get his highest scores among the socially well integrated part of the working class in 2002 like in 1995 or 1988, as shown by Table 4.7. Table 4.7 shows the extreme-right voting according to the integration among the working class, defined by the number of social attachments to it.

Religion: the combat continues? Religion, as said before, is predominantly Roman Catholic in France. The impact of religious denomination exists in France: Catholics are more right-wing orientated than Protestants. The dominant religious denomination, as in many countries, is associated with a set of conservative

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The 2002 Elections in Time Perspective

Table 4.7 Percentages of extreme-right voting and social integration to the working class in France (1988–2002), 1st round

0 working-class attributes 1 working-class attribute 2 working-class attributes

1988 (P)

1995 (P)

2002 (P)

13 16 17

12 18 22

17 22 29

Notes: Working-class attributes are defined as having an occupation as working class or having social origins in the working class (father’s occupation). For the 2002 presidential election, extreme right means voting for Jean-Marie Le Pen or Bruno Mégret. All data are weighted.

values. Because of the small number of Protestants and other religions that can be found in most of the surveys, the study of religious voting in France has been more developed on the issue of integration into Catholicism. According to the second wave of the electoral panel conducted in 2002, people declaring themselves as Catholics represent 69 per cent of the French electorate.2 An important particularity of the French voter is that, even in the context of secularization and recomposition of religious attitudes and behaviours, religiosity still persists to be a fundamental factor for understanding voting. It is a very fascinating element of the political culture of France, since the old fights between clerical and republican are now over in many respects. Anyway, church attendance perfectly ranks voting behaviour and the ordering of the religious categories holds the same for the period studied here in Tables 4.8 and 4.9! Right-wing voting percentage differences between regular churchgoers and no religion or never practice are very large: 34 points up to 46 points over the period. Left-wing voting percentage differences also are very large: 29 points to 46 over the same period. No other sociological variable is likely to have such strength. Even if the definition of church attendance has changed 3 and if the actual number of people attending church regularly has declined, religion still has a very large impact on voting behaviour in France, and the cleavage on religious values is still a predominantly political one: the more frequent church attendance is, the more likely right voting is; the less frequent church attendance is, the stronger is left-wing voting. To understand the changes in relation to the strong impact of religiosity on voting in France, we have again used the measures of odds-ratios. The impact of religion on voting behaviour in France is indeed very

Bruno Cautrès 85 Table 4.8 Percentages of right voting according to religiosity in France (1967–2002), 1st round

1967 (L) 1978 (L) 1988 (P) 1995 (P) 1997 (L) 2002 (P) 2002 (L)

Regular Catholics

Irregular Catholics

No religion/ non-practice

Other religions

84 84 61 71 71 66 72

65 65 49 55 53 49 60

38 39 27 31 27 30 38

35 53 33 34 36 35 34

Notes: For 1988, 1995, 1997 and 2002 presidential elections «right» means «la droite modérée» (moderate right) which excludes voting for Jean-Marie Le Pen in 1988, 1995 and 2002. The same applies for the 1997 and 2002 legislative elections where “right” means voting for moderate right candidates, excluding voting for National Front or MNR. Percentages are calculated on the basis of a three categories voting variable (right/left/extreme right). All data are weighted.

Table 4.9 Percentages of left voting according to religiosity in France (1967–2002), 1st round

1967 (L) 1978 (L) 1988 (P) 1995 (P) 1997 (L) 2002 (P) 2002 (L)

Regular Catholics

Irregular Catholics

No religion/ non-practice

Other religions

16 16 29 21 24 21 19

35 35 41 34 39 30 27

62 61 61 54 61 50 48

65 47 55 51 56 50 54

Notes: For 1988, 1995 and 2002 presidential elections, “left” means the addition of all left candidates including extreme-left candidates. The extreme left could be separated which will mean a quadri-polar political space. As shown by Gérard Grunberg and Etienne Schweisguth, the ideological consistency of extreme left is not like the one of extreme-right and one can add up the percentages for left and extreme-left candidates. The same applies to the 1997 and 2002 legislative elections. Percentages are calculated on the basis of a three categories voting variable (right/left/extreme right). All data are weighted.

strong: non-religious people have five times more of a chance to vote for the left rather than for the right when compared to regular churchgoers. If we compare the odds-ratios of Table 4.10 with the ones in Table 4.4, it is immediately apparent that social class counts less than religion in explaining voting behaviour in France. With very few exceptions the

86

The 2002 Elections in Time Perspective

Table 4.10 Religious voting odds-ratios in France (left/right), 1967–2002, 1st round

Left/right (Irregular/ Regular Catho.) Left/right (No rel. and non-practice/ Regular Catho.) Left/right (No rel. and non-practice/ Irregular Catho.)

1967 (L)

1978 (L)

1988 (P)

1995 (P)

1997 (L)

2002 (P)

2002 (L)

2.82

2.82

1.76

2.09

2.17

1.81

1.71

8.56

8.21

4.75

5.88

6.68

5.15

4.79

3.03

2.90

2.70

2.81

3.07

2.81

2.80

Notes: For 1988, 1995, 1997 and 2002 presidential elections «right» means «la droite modérée» (moderate right) which excludes voting for Jean-Marie Le Pen in 1988, 1995 and 2002. The same applies for the 1997 and 2002 legislative elections where “right” means voting for moderate right candidates, excluding voting for National Front or MNR. “Left” means the addition of all left candidates including extreme-left candidates. Odds-ratios are calculated on the basis of a three categories voting variable (right/left/extreme right) and the percentages of Tables 4.8 and 4.9.

values of odds-ratios given by religious comparisons are always stronger than the one given by class comparisons. There are evolutions through time of the odds-ratios in Table 4.10: 1988 in particular shows a decline in every odds-ratio. This decline is particularly strong in the odds-ratio comparing no religion or no attendance to church with regular attendance. The fact that this decline occurs in 1988 and that it is more accentuated in the comparison between no religion (combined with never practice) and regular church attendance suggests two explanations: a contextual effect due to the 1988 election specificities (President Mitterrand, the incumbent left candidate, has attracted part of an electorate which normally is supporting a right-wing candidate) and a more structural effect. This latter effect is certainly due to the weakening of left support among the no religion or never practice category and this is also linked to the changing sociology of the Socialist Party from the end of eighties. This weakening attachment to the left of a traditionally left orientated category, is partly due to context (disillusion with the incumbent left government and president) but mainly due to a trend factor: more people are considering themselves as nonreligious and this category has lost part of its political cohesion. Odds-ratios are rising slightly in 1995 and 1997, then declining slightly in 2002. 4

Bruno Cautrès 87 Table 4.11 Percentages of extreme-right voting according to religiosity in France (1988–2002), 1st round

1988 (P) 1995 (P) 1997 (L) 2002 (P) 2002 (L)

Regular Catholics

Irregular Catholics

No religion/ non-practice

Other religions

10 8 5 13 9

10 12 8 22 13

12 16 12 20 14

11 14 8 15 12

Notes: In 1988 and 1995 extreme right means voting for Jean-Marie Le Pen at the first round of presidential election. In the 2002 presidential election it means voting for either Jean-Marie Le Pen or Bruno Mégret. For the 1997 elections it means voting for National Front candidates; for the 2002 legislative elections it means voting for National Front and MNR candidates. Percentages are calculated on the basis of a three categories voting variable (right/left/extreme right). All data are weighted.

The religious voting model, which clearly still holds in the French electorate in 2002, works differently when it comes to the extreme-right voting. Voting for Jean-Marie Le Pen or the National Front is indeed inversely related to church attendance (Table 4.11). Our analysis clearly shows that extreme-right voting and right-wing voting are not the same phenomena in terms of religious values and practices. Percentages of extreme-right voting are much higher among the less integrated into Catholicism than among regular churchgoers. The odds-ratios of an extreme-right voting, compared to a right voting, are always stronger in irregular churchgoers or non-religious (never practise) categories. How to interpret the changing values of odds-ratios in 2002 as shown in Table 4.12? Indeed, up to 2002, there are increasing differences between categories of no religion and regular churchgoers: everything happened as if the more National Front was rooted in the French

Table 4.12 1st round

Extreme-right religious voting odds-ratios in France (1988–2002),

1988 (P) 1995 (P) 1997 (L) 2002 (P) 2002 (L) Ext-r/right (Irregular/ Regular Catho.) Ext-r/right (No rel. and nonpractice/Regular Catho.) Ext-r/right (No rel. and nonpractice/Irregular Catho.)

1.24

1.93

2.14

2.24

1.73

2.71

4.58

6.31

3.33

2.94

2.17

2.36

2.94

1.48

1.70

88

The 2002 Elections in Time Perspective

electorate, the less likely «religious voters» were supporting it as compared to the no religion people. The 2002 elections show that the contrast between extreme-right voting is still important according to integration into Catholicism but less dramatically than before. Jean-Marie Le Pen got higher scores in many segments of the electorate than before, including regular and irregular churchgoers. In 2002 it is thus not so true that religiosity “protects” from extreme-right voting. Many more investigations are obviously necessary to document such a change.

A multivariate analysis of the 2002 presidential election This chapter concludes with a multivariate analysis using different socio-demographic variables to control for the effects of class and religion. To simplify the analysis, we have used binary logistic regression for left voting (against right plus extreme right) and for extreme-right voting (against right and left voting) and we also have used simplified coding of the variables. Social class is only measured by the number of links to the working class. Apart from social class and religion, the explanatory variables are occupational status (independent/salariat in public sector/salariat in private sector), age (less than 40 years old or more), education (having or not the baccalauréat which concludes higher secondary education in France), gender, patrimony (having 0 or 1 elements of patrimony/2 or 3 elements/more than 3), income (having a total household income of less than 1500 euros per month including social benefits/having a total household income between 1500 and 2300 euros per month/having a total household income of more than 2300 euros per month). The reference situation is a man, employed in private sector, 40 years old or more, having the baccalauréat or more, having a patrimony of 2 elements, earning between 1500 and 2300 euros. In terms of social class and religion, the reference situation is someone having only one link to the working class (himself or father) and a non-religious Catholic person (no religion or non practise). As can be seen in Table 4.13 employment status and religion, with education, dominate the explanation when compared to social class. Compared to the reference situation, left voting is more likely associated with higher education, less likely associated to self-employment and to church attendance. Controlling for other variables does not cancel out these main cleavages among the French voters.

Bruno Cautrès 89 Table 4.13 1st round

Binary logistic regression of left voting, 2002 presidential election,

B

Signif.

Exp (B)

Status Self-employed Public sector employee Private sector employee

−0.698 Reference 0.492

0.000

0.497

0.000

1.636

Social class 0 link to working class 1 link with working class 2 links with working class

−0.167 Reference 0.060

0.095

0.846

0.677

1.062

Patrimoine 0 or 1 éléments 2 élements 3 or more elements

0.09 Reference −0.279

0.388

1.094

0.014

0.756

Income Less than 1500 euros/month 1500 to 2300 euros/month More than 2300 euros

−0.027 Reference −0.053

0.820

1.027

0.631

0.949

Gender Male Female

Reference 0.139

0.121

1.149

Age Less than 40 years old More than 40 years old

−0.112 Reference

0.258

0.894

Education Less than baccalauréat Baccalauréat and over

−0.512 Reference

0.000

0.599

Religion Regular church attendance Irregular church attendance No religion or non-practice Other religions Constant

−1.235 −0.823 Reference −0.110 0.227

0.000 0.000

0.291 0.439

0.566 0.153

0.896 1.255

If we were presenting a binary logistic regression of right-wing voting, the reverse comments could be made: more likely to be associated with self-employment, church attendance and lower degrees of education. A slightly significant effect of gender is there, due to a stronger Chirac vote among females. The logistic regression analysis of extreme-right voting shows a very different picture as shown by Table 4.14: only education and gender have a significant effect, employment in public sector being at the limits of significance.

90

The 2002 Elections in Time Perspective

Table 4.14 Binary logistic regression of extreme-right voting (as opposed to both left and right voting), 2002 presidential election, 1st round B

Signif.

Exp (B)

Status Self-employed Public sector employee Private sector employee

0.286 Reference −2.95

0.114

1.331

0.034

0.745

Social class 0 link to working class 1 link with working class 2 links with working class

−0.068 Reference 0.055

0.630

0.935

0.770

1.056

Patrimoine 0 or 1 elements 2 elements 3 or more elements

0.019 Reference 0.154

0.895

1.020

0.331

1.167

Income Less than 1500 euros/month 1500 to 2300 euros/month More than 2300 euros

0.016 Reference −0.177

0.919

1.016

0.253

0.838

Gender Male Female

Reference −0.403

0.001

0.668

Age Less than 40 years old More than 40 years old

0.222 Reference

0.116

1.249

Education Less than baccalauréat Baccalauréat and over

0.767 Reference

0.000

2.152

Religion Regular church attendance Irregular church attendance No religion or non-practice Other religions Constant

−0.375 0.174 Reference −2.14 −0.218

0.104 0.261

0.687 1.190

0.480 0.000

0.807 0.109

Conclusions The model of “les variables lourdes”, specially social class and religion, still continues to have a strong impact on voting behaviour in France. Even in the context of time changes, analyzed in this chapter, and in the very special context of the 2002 presidential election and its consequences, class and religion remain as bases for political cleavages in

Bruno Cautrès 91

France. If the old dichotomies, the one between left and right, between Catholics and non-religious people, between patrons and working-class employees have considerably changed and if the alignments of voters on the conflicts of interest and values based on these old cleavages have also changed, it remains to say that in general the French voter is still orientated by fundamental attachments. Part of the French political space does not correspond to that model, as can be seen with the extreme-right voting analysis. Jean-Marie Le Pen has already succeeded in showing how these contradictions among the French electorate can not only introduce fuzzyness in it but more fundamentally can partly create the conditions of the political “big bang” he is wishing for. The results on 5 May and the National Front results during the legislative elections some weeks later, have shown that the contradictions are not yet mature enough for that, if ever. Notes 1. The 2002 CEVIPOF–CIDSP–CECOP study is a unique one: it is a three wave panel study, on more than 10,000 individuals as a whole. Details can be found at www.cidsp.com. 2. Recall that our post-electoral studies are based on representative samples of the registered electorate. The other figures are the following: Protestants 2 per cent, Muslims 1.5 per cent, Jews 0.5 per cent, Buddhists 0.2 per cent, Other religions 1.2 per cent, No religion 26 per cent. 3. For 1967. 4. We have decided to combine no religion with non-practice, in order to facilitate the comparison of our results for France to other countries where this distinction has less meaning. If the two categories are separated the oddsratios are far larger. For instance the odds-ratios of a left voting (rather than a right voting) among the non-religion as opposed to the regular Catholics are then: 17.57 (1967), 19.75 (1978), 8.1 (1988), 13.24 (1995), 10.30 for the 2002 presidential election. No other variable can discriminate the French electorate in such a way, with odds-ratios showing 10 more times propensity to vote for the left rather than for the right in 2002.

Bibliography Bréchon (Pierre), Laurent (Annie) and Perrineau (Pascal). Les cultures politiques des Français. Paris, Presses de Sciences Po, 1999. Capdevielle (Jacques), Dupoirier (Elisabeth), Grunberg (Gérard), Schweisguth (Etienne) and Ysmal (Colette). France de gauche, vote à droite? Paris, Presses de la FNSP, 1981. Cautres (Bruno) and Heath (Anthony). Déclin de vote de classe?: une analyse comparative franco-britannique. Revue Internatioanle de Politique Comparée, 1996. Grunberg (Gérad) and Schweisguth (Etienne). In: Perrineau (Pascal), Ysmal (Colette) eds Le vote de tous les refus, Paris, Presses de Science Po, 2003.

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Mayer (Nonna). Classe, position sociale et vote. In: Gaxie (Daniel), ed. Explication du vote. Paris, Presses de la FNSP, 1985. Mayer (Nonna). Pas de chrysanthèmes pour les variables sociologiques. In: Dupoirier (Elisabeth) and Grunberg (Gérad). Mars 1986: la drôle de défaite de la gauche. Paris, PUF, 1986. Mayer (Nonna). Ces français qui votent Front national. Paris (second edition), Fayard, 2003. Mayer (Nonna) and Boy (Daniel), ed. L’électeur français en question. Paris, Presses de la FNSP, 1990. Mayer (Nonna) and Perrineau (Pascal). Les comportements politiques. Paris, Armand Colin, 1992. Michelat (Guy) and Simon (Michel). Classe, religion et comportement politiques. Paris, Presses de la FNSP, 1977.

5 Strategic Voting in the 2002 French Presidential Election André Blais

One of the arguments in favor of the two round system is that people can express their preference among all the candidates in the first round and then decide, in the second round, which of the top two contenders they find acceptable. According to that perspective, voters are allowed to vote “sincerely” on the first ballot and do not have to worry about the candidates’ chances of winning. Furthermore, because there are only two candidates on the second ballot, there is no reason or purpose in thinking strategically on the second ballot either. In both instances, voters do not have to get into complex strategic considerations. They simply express their preference among all the candidates on the first ballot and among the top two contenders on the second. This conception is implicit in Duverger’s (1951) analysis of the working of two round elections. According to Duverger, two round elections lead to multipartism as much as proportional representation (PR). Though Duverger is not explicit on why this is so, the reasons he invokes amount to the argument that there is no strategic voting in such a system, that the vote merely expresses citizens’ preferences. Strategic voting plays a crucial role in Duverger’s analysis of the working of single-member plurality (SMP) systems. Duverger’s famous rule that SMP leads to bipartism is very much predicated on the presence of a “psychological” factor according to which voters do not want to waste their vote on a weaker candidate that has no chance of winning and thus “strategically” rally to either of the top two contenders. According to Duverger (1951: 270), such a pattern does not occur on the first ballot of a two round system because voters have the opportunity to rally to either of the top two contenders on the second ballot. Elgie argues along the same line: in majority runoff systems “voters can vote sincerely and choose their preferred candidate at the first ballot, 93

94

Voting in the 2002 French Presidential Election

even if they have to choose their second (or third or fourth) preference at the second ballot” (Elgie, 1996: 63). Cox proposes both an extension and an amendment to Duverger’s analysis. He argues that only the top three contenders will garner support in a two round election. 1 The reasoning is that one can affect the outcome by “deciding” who, between the second and third candidates, will make it to the second ballot. There is thus no point in supporting a fourth – or lower place candidate who “is out of the running for a runoff spot” (Cox, 1997: 128). All those who prefer these “weak” candidates will desert them for one of the top three contenders. In Cox’s view, then, there should be as much strategic voting on the first ballot of a two round election as in a SMP contest, though its nature is slightly different (the weak candidates that are deserted are fourth – or lower place candidates, not third or lower). Cox indicates that there could be another form of strategic voting in a two round election, whereby some voters desert the top contender. Suppose that I prefer candidate A, who is leading in the polls, and that there is a close contest for the second place between candidates B and C. Also suppose that it is clear that candidate B would defeat candidate A on the second ballot but that candidate A would win over candidate C. I might then strategically vote for candidate C, in order to help him/her finish second (over candidate B), thus increasing the probability that candidate A will win on the second ballot. As Cox notes, this is a risky strategy. If many candidate-A supporters do the same, candidate A could finish third, and not make it to the second round. This kind of strategic desertion of the top contender should therefore be a rare phenomenon. At the conclusion of his analysis of strategic voting in dual-ballot systems, Cox (1997: 137) acknowledges that “as a practical matter voters under runoff rules do not vote strategically very often (or, as often as they do under plurality).” The reason is that the information that is required for casting a strategic vote is more complex under a two round system than in SMP. In both cases, voters need to know whether their preferred candidate is “in or out of the running” but in two round elections they will “probably want to know something about the likely outcome of the various possible runoff pairings.” Note that this additional information is required only if the voter envisages deserting the first-place candidate to support the contender who is least likely to defeat him/her on the second ballot. Cox’s model assumes that voters care only about who wins the election. He recognizes that some “voters might care about margins, because

André Blais 95

these could affect elite bargaining between the first and second rounds” (1997: 132). He indicates that a hard-left voter may want to strengthen the hard-left candidate’s bargaining position. Such concerns would obviously reduce the incentive to desert fourth- and lower-place candidates. In short, Cox asserts that there is strategic voting in a two round system, but he also indicates that there is probably less of it than in an SMP election. Previous empirical research on strategic voting in France is quite limited.2 There have been some analyses of the presence of a “vote utile” on the first ballot of legislative elections. Capdevielle, Dupoirier and Ysmal (1988: 29) note that on the first ballot of the 1978 legislative elections many of those who felt close to the Union pour la Démocratie Française (UDF) voted for the Rassemblement pour la République (RPR) (the other main right-wing party) in those constituencies where the RPR was the dominant party. They infer that those voters strategically supported the right-wing party that appeared more likely to win in their constituency. In another study, Ysmal (1986: 192–193) observes that the losses incurred by the right in the 1981 legislative elections were particularly severe in those constituencies where the dominant party on the left was the Communist Party and speculates that some right-wing voters may have decided, after realizing that the left would definitively win the election, to strategically support socialist candidates in order to block the communists. These analyses are based on rather thin evidence. The discrepancy between party identification and vote choice could stem from many factors other than strategic considerations, most especially preferences among the local candidates, and there is no direct evidence about voters’ perceptions of the local race. There is thus no systematic analysis of strategic voting in French legislative elections, no direct evidence as to whether some voters decide to vote on the first ballot for a candidate who is not their most preferred because of their perception of the race. And, as far as I can tell, there is no study of strategic voting in French presidential elections. Lewis-Beck and Chlarson, however, provide indirect evidence that suggests that there might be little (or no) strategic voting in French presidential elections. Lewis-Beck and Chlarson examine the relative impact of party identification and left–right identification on vote choice. They show empirical support for the hypothesis that party identification dominates ideological orientation on the first ballot “since the voter is selecting the party or candidate closest to his/her true

96

Voting in the 2002 French Presidential Election

preferences” (2002: 498). This is in line with the view that the first round vote is fundamentally sincere.

The study I use the 2002 French Electoral Panel. The study was jointly conducted by CEVIPOF (Centre d’étude de la vie politique française), CIDSP (Centre d’informatisation des données socio-politiques de Sciences Po Grenoble) and CECOP (Centre d’études et de connaissances sur l’opinion publique), with the financial support of the Department of the Interior and the Fondation nationale des sciences politiques. This is a three-wave survey, the first wave consisting of 4107 at-home interviews conducted between 8 April and 20 April, in the three weeks preceding the first round of the presidential election; the second wave of 4017 telephone interviews, among which 1822 were already interviewed in the first wave, between 15 May and 31 May, after the second round of the presidential election; and before the first round of the legislative elections; and the third wave of 2013 telephone respondents, among which 1417 panelists, between 20 June and 28 June, after the second round of the legislative elections. The survey used a quota sample and the fieldwork was performed by SOFRES. I use the first wave of the study. A total of 4107 individuals were interviewed in the last two weeks of the first round of the presidential election campaign. I consider only those who indicated a vote intention, 3123 respondents.3 The data have been weighted so as to reflect the socio-demographic profile of the French electorate as well as the actual outcome of the election.4 Four questions were specifically designed to tap strategic voting. These questions were: 1. Deep down, who, among all the candidates, would you most like to have as president? 2. Who would be your second choice? 3. Do you think that the chances that XX (first preference) will get elected president are: almost certain, very good, rather good, rather poor, very poor, or almost nil? 4. And do you think that the chances that YY (second preference) will get elected president are: almost certain, very good, fairly good, fairly poor, very poor, or almost nil?

André Blais 97

Question 1 was designed to tap respondents’ sincere preference among the candidates. Question 2 was obviously meant to measure their second preference. Questions 3 and 4 yield information about how French voters perceived the various candidates’ chances of getting elected. I elaborate below the criteria I use to determine whether a vote is strategic or not. Before doing so, it is useful to look at the distribution of voters’ preferences and expectations about the outcome of the election. Table 5.1 presents the distribution of responses to question 1. Chirac has a plurality of preferences, with 27 percent, followed by Jospin, at 25 percent. All the other candidates are below 10 percent; only three, Le Pen, Bayrou, Chevènement and Bayrou surpassed the 5 percent mark. In terms of preferences, this was clearly a contest between Chirac and Jospin, each having more than three times more first preferences than any other candidate. Table 5.2 shows how voters perceived the race. The Table indicates the percentage of voters who thought that a given candidate’s chances of being elected president were “good” (almost certain, very good, or fairly good). 5 There was wide agreement that Chirac and Jospin had good chances and that all the other candidates’ chances were quite weak. Table 5.1

Distribution of voters’ preferences

Candidate Arlette Laguiller Daniel Glückstein Olivier Besancenot Robert Hue Lionel Jospin Christiane Taubira Jean-Pierre Chevènement Noël Mamère Corinne Lepage Jean Saint-Josse François Bayrou Christine Boutin Jacques Chirac Alain Madelin Jean-Marie Le Pen Bruno Mégret None Total (n)

% of preference 3.4% 0.4% 2.2% 2.5% 24.8% 1.1% 5.6% 3.2% 0.9% 1.4% 5.4% 0.5% 27.1% 3.8% 7.4% 1.7% 8.8% 2897

98

Voting in the 2002 French Presidential Election Table 5.2

Perceived chances of winning

Candidate

% of good chances

Arlette Laguiller Daniel Glückstein Olivier Besancenot Robert Hue Lionel Jospin Christiane Taubira Jean-Pierre Chevènement Noël Mamère Corinne Lepage Jean Saint-Josse François Bayrou Christine Boutin Jacques Chirac Alain Madelin Jean-Marie Le Pen Bruno Mégret

10.4% 9.7% 10.2% 9.4% 89.6% 5.2% 17.2% 7.2% 4.6% 4.8% 8.6% 5.8% 90.5% 5.3% 19.3% 11.3%

Total (n)

5440

Assessing strategic voting I follow the definition of strategic voting proposed by Blais et al. and Nevitte (2001): a strategic vote is a vote for a candidate that is not the preferred one, motivated by the intention to affect the outcome of the election. That decision entails that two conditions must be fulfilled for a vote to be construed as strategic. First, the voter must vote for someone who is not the most preferred candidate.6 Second, he/she must do so because of his/her perceptions of the likely outcome of the election. The first condition is that there be a hiatus between preference and vote choice. Table 5.3 shows the relationship between responses to question 1, about which candidate people would most like to have as president, and vote intentions. A total of 1068 respondents, 37 percent of all voters, intended to vote for a candidate who was not their first preference. 7 It would be misleading, however, to conclude that 37 percent of French voters cast a strategic vote. It is also necessary to show that the decision was related to perceptions of the race. Two types of strategic voting can be distinguished. The first is desertion of weak candidates. This is the decision to vote “utile” on the first ballot

Table 5.3

Relationship between vote and preference

Vote/Preference

None

Arlette Laguiller Daniel Glückstein Olivier Besancenot Robert Hue Lionel Jospin Christiane Taubira Jean-Pierre Chevènement Noël Mamère Corinne Lepage Jean Saint-Josse François Bayrou Christine Boutin Jacques Chirac Alain Madelin Jean-Marie Le Pen Bruno Mégret

14.2% 1.6% 6.3% 2.4% 5.1% 4.3%

61.9% 1.0% 3.1% 1.0% 3.1% 1.0%

3.9% 7.1% 5.1% 5.9% 7.1% 2.4% 5.9% 4.7% 22.0% 2.0%

1.0% 5.2%

16.5% 1.0%

45.5%

100.0% 254

100.0% 97

100.0% 11

Total (%) Total (n)

Laguiller

Glückstein

45.5% 9.1%

Besancenot

Hue

3.1%

2.8%

83.1%

1.4% 84.7%

3.1% 1.5%

4.6% 1.5%

1.4% 1.4%

1.0% 1.0%

1.5%

3.1%

1.5% 8.3% 100.0% 65

100.0% 72

Jospin

Taubira

5.2% 0.1% 4.3% 4.0% 59.5% 2.8%

3.0%

2.5% 5.6% 0.1% 3.3% 1.8% 0.3% 0.7% 0.6% 8.6% 0.6% 100.0% 718

3.0% 3.0% 3.0% 69.7%

Chevènement 4.9% 1.2% 3.1% 1.2% 2.5% 0.6%

3.0% 3.0%

66.7% 1.2% 2.5% 4.3% 1.2%

3.0% 3.0% 6.1%

1.2% 0.6% 7.4% 1.2%

100.0% 33

100.0% 162

Mamère 3.2% 4.3% 1.1% 2.1% 2.1% 1.1% 79.8% 1.1%

5.3% 100.0% 94

99

100

Table 5.3

(Continued)

Vote/Preference Arlette Laguiller Daniel Glückstein Olivier Besancenot Robert Hue Lionel Jospin Christiane Taubira Jean-Pierre Chevènement Noël Mamère Corinne Lepage Jean Saint-Josse François Bayrou Christine Boutin Jacques Chirac Alain Madelin Jean-Marie Le Pen Bruno Mégret Total (%) Total (n)

Lepage

Saint-Josse

4.0%

Bayrou

Boutin

Chirac

Madelin

Le Pen

Mégret

Total (n)

2.0% 2.0%

6.0% 0.5% 4.4% 3.5% 16.0% 2.1%

1.9%

2.0%

0.9%

1.4%

1.3%

0.5%

1.8%

0.5%

1.9%

0.5% 0.3%

0.9%

0.9%

1.3% 1.9% 1.3% 0.6% 78.7% 1.3% 1.3% 3.2% 3.9% 1.3%

2.0% 0.9% 1.8% 3.6% 4.7% 1.3% 66.7% 2.7% 11.1% 1.9%

1.8% 0.9% 0.9% 10.1% 0.9%

2.6% 8.0%

72.0% 4.0% 8.0% 4.0%

82.1% 2.6% 5.1% 7.7%

100.0% 25

100.0% 39

100.0% 155

6.7% 93.3%

100.0% 15

100.0% 783

2.0%

2.8% 62.4% 16.5%

0.9% 0.5% 94.4% 0.5%

15.7% 74.5%

5.5% 5.4% 1.9% 4.2% 6.8% 1.2% 19.4% 3.9% 16.9% 2.3%

100.0% 109

100.0% 214

100.0% 51

100.0% 2897

0.5% 0.5% 2.0% 2.0%

André Blais 101

because the preferred candidate has no chance of winning. As Table 5.2 shows, the weak candidates in this election, those who were widely perceived to have little chance of winning, were quite numerous. In fact, all candidates except Chirac and Jospin were in that situation. The question, therefore, is whether some individuals decided to vote for one of the top two contenders (Chirac or Jospin) on the first round even though they preferred one of the weak candidates. I consider a voter to cast a strategic vote in favor of a “strong” candidate, which corresponds to the desertion of weak candidates, if and only if each of the three following conditions were met. First, the person must have indicated that he/she intended to vote for one of the two “viable” candidates, Chirac or Jospin. Second, he/she must have said that he/ she would most like to have as president someone who was not a top contender (that is, neither Chirac nor Jospin). Third, he/she must have responded that the chances of his/her preferred candidate were poor. The combination of the first two conditions ensures that the person deserted a weak candidate (his/her preference) in favor of a strong one (his/her intended vote). The third condition entails that he/she did perceive his/her preferred candidate to be weak. All in all, 2 percent of those who preferred a weak candidate strategically deserted that candidate and supported Chirac or Jospin; they corresponded to 1 percent of all voters. Clearly, as predicted by Duverger and Elgie, there was hardly any strategic desertion of the weak candidates on the first round of the presidential election. The second type of strategic voting is desertion of the strong candidates. What could motivate such a decision? The basic “fact” that must be taken into account in order to make sense of such a decision was the dominant perception that Jospin and Chirac would be the two candidates on the second ballot. Each and every poll published during the campaign put these two candidates ahead of everyone else, and these polls were in fact focusing more on the probable outcome of that duel on the second ballot than on the distribution of the vote on the first ballot. As a consequence, as we have seen, Chirac and Jospin were perceived to be the only two viable candidates. Assume, therefore, that the outcome of the first ballot was taken for granted by about everyone, that about everyone believed that Chirac and Jospin would advance to the second ballot. Voters may have come to the conclusion that they could afford to indicate who, among the weak candidates, they wished the top two contenders to pay attention to. Take a voter who preferred Jospin but who thought that Laguiller was worth more attention. That voter may have reasoned that the more

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votes Laguiller would get on the first ballot the more attention Jospin would have to pay to Laguiller and the concerns she expresses in order to win on the second ballot. Such a voter construed his/her vote on the first ballot as a signaling device about who he/she wished the top two contenders to pay attention to, with the expectation that he/she would have the opportunity to support his/her first choice (Jospin) on the second ballot. 8 I consider a voter to cast a strategic vote in favor of a “weak” candidate, which corresponds to the desertion of strong candidates, if and only if each of the five following conditions were met. First the person must have indicated that he/she intended to vote for one of the weak candidates (anyone but Chirac or Jospin). Second, he/she must have answered that he/she would most like to have Chirac or Jospin as president. Third, he/ she must have said that he/she thought that his/her preferred candidate (Chirac or Jospin) had a good chance of winning. Fourth, he/she must have responded that he/she intended to vote for his/her preferred candidate on the second ballot. Fifth, he/she must have indicated that the weak candidate he/she intended to support on the first ballot was proposing the best solution to one of the three most important problems. The combination of the first two conditions ensures that the person deserted a strong candidate (his/her preference) in favor of a weak one (his/her intended vote). The third condition confirms that he/she did perceive his/her preferred candidate to be strong. The fourth condition specifies that he/she intended to support that preferred candidate on the second ballot. The fifth conclusion indicates that the voter had a message to convey, that is, that the candidate he/she was supporting in the first ballot had interesting ideas (even though he/she was not his/her first choice). According to our estimates, as many as 18 percent of those who preferred Jospin and 15 percent of those who preferred Chirac strategically supported a weaker candidate on the first ballot. This corresponded to 8.5 percent of the whole electorate. These estimations suggest that about 9.5 percent of French voters, about one voter out of ten, cast a strategic vote on the first ballot of the 2002 French presidential election. This is significant amount of strategic voting. In SMP elections, where strategic voting is usually presumed to be most important and where the phenomenon has been most extensively studied, typically about 5 percent of the voters are found to vote strategically (Blais, 2002). Furthermore, the kind of strategic voting that we observe in the French presidential election is exactly the opposite of what usually takes place in plurality elections. Strategic voters, instead of deserting the candidates who had little or no chance

André Blais 103

of winning, were deserting the top two contenders and supporting weak candidates who would not make it to the second round. Duverger seems to have been right in believing that supporters of weak candidates do not rally to the stronger ones on the first ballot but he did not foresee the reverse possibility, that those who prefer the strongest candidates would choose to support one of the weak candidates in the first round. Cox did allude to such a scenario but his prediction that there is less strategic voting in two round systems than in SMP elections is not borne out.

The implications of strategic voting There was a substantial amount of strategic voting in the French presidential election and it took an unusual form, supporters of Chirac and Jospin deserting them to signal which weak candidate should be paid attention to. How much impact did this strategic behavior have on the outcome of the election? Column 1 of Table 5.4 shows the proportion of deserters each candidate lost through strategic voting. For instance, 3.1 percent of those who said they preferred Laguiller met each of the three conditions that I had established before concluding that a person had strategically deserted a weak candidate in favor of a strong one. According to my estimations, none of the weak candidates lost significant support through such strategic desertion. The situation was quite different for the top two contenders, Chirac and Jospin. As many as 18.1 percent of those who indicated they preferred Chirac for president and 22.3 percent of those who preferred Jospin met each of the five conditions for considering a voter to strategically desert a strong candidate for a weak one. Clearly desertion of the strong was much more frequent than desertion of the weak, and as a consequence, those who suffered from strategic voting were the top two contenders. The second column shows the proportion of the vote for each candidate that can be interpreted as strategically oriented. For instance, 22.1 percent of those who intended to vote for Mégret met each of the conditions for a strategic desertion of the strong candidates. That is, 22.1 percent of those who intended to vote Mégret said that the person they wanted for president was Chirac or Jospin, that Mégret’s chances of getting elected president were poor, that they intended to vote for the person they wanted for president (Chirac or Jospin) on the second round,

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Table 5.4

The implications of strategic voting

Candidate

Arlette Laguiller Daniel Glückstein Olivier Besancenot Robert Hue Lionel Jospin Christiane Taubira Jean-P. Chevènement Noël Mamère Corinne Lepage Jean Saint-Josse François Bayrou Christine Boutin Jacques Chirac Alain Madelin Jean-Marie Le Pen Bruno Mégret Total (%) Total (n)

Net gain Deserters Strategic Vote without Actual vote (in or loss (in vote (in strategy (in percent) percent) (in percent) percent) percent) 3.1 0.0 2.6 0.0 22.3 3.3 2.1 0.8 4.2 1.6 2.1 0.0 18.1 3.6 0.8 3.7

9.2 7.1 9.5 14.0 2.6 4.9 11.9 17.1 16.4 3.2 6.0 11.4 3.7 6.1 21.0 22.1

5.6 0.5 4.0 3.0 20.0 2.0 4.9 4.5 1.7 4.2 6.6 1.1 22.8 3.8 13.5 1.9

6.0 0.5 4.3 3.5 15.9 2.1 5.5 5.4 1.9 4.3 6.9 1.2 19.4 3.9 16.9 2.4

0.4 0.0 0.3 0.5 −4.1 0.1 0.6 0.9 0.2 0.1 0.3 0.1 −3.4 0.1 3.4 0.5

9.5

9.5

100.00

100.00

0.0 2897

and that Mégret offered the best solutions to one of the three most impotant problems. Typically one-tenth of the vote for weak candidates met the conditions I had established for the strategic desertion of strong candidates and came from strategic desertion of those who preferred Chirac or Jospin. Table 5.4 also indicates the net gains or losses from strategic voting for each candidate. Column 3 shows the vote that each candidate would have obtained if there had been no strategic voting at all, 9 column 4 shows the actual vote obtained, and column 5 the net gain or loss. The big losers were obviously Jospin and Chirac and the main winner Le Pen. Strategic voting made a huge difference in the outcome of the first ballot. As is well known, Le Pen finished in front of Jospin. Our data indicate that in the absence of strategic voting Jospin would have had a 6.5 point lead over Le Pen. Strategic voting allowed a candidate who was the first preference of only 7 percent of the voters (Table 5.1) to advance to the second ballot. Systematic strategic desertion of the two strongest candidates allowed Le Pen to squeeze in as the second contender and gave way to a surreal

André Blais 105

and emotionally-laden second ballot that a great majority of French voters would have very much liked to avoid. There was an impressive amount of strategic voting on the first ballot of the French presidential election, more than is usually the case in SMP elections, and this strategic voting hurt, rather than benefited, the strongest candidates. In the absence of strategic voting Jospin would have had a very comfortable lead over Le Pen. Strategic voting allowed a very unpopular candidate to make it to the second round.

Discussion and conclusion This raises the question as to whether this was a typical election. There are good reasons to believe that it was not. It was particularly atypical in that about every French voter took for granted that the second round would oppose Chirac and Jospin. Under such circumstances voters may be tempted to believe that they will have the opportunity to express their preference between the top two contenders on the second ballot and to think that the first ballot could be used to convey another message, a signal about who among the weak candidates deserves attention. Certainly such a temptation is stronger when all these weak candidates, as is the case in France, get quite a bit of visibility, because the media must provide all candidates with the same amount of coverage. It was only because each and every poll, throughout the months preceding the election, put Chirac and Jospin ahead of everyone else and because voters believed that these polls were basically right that so many people came to the conclusion that they could afford to “send a message” on the first ballot. It is fair to assume that there will be less strategic voting in future French elections because voters will have learned that the polls can be wrong and that strategic desertion of a strong candidate is a risky choice. What happened in 2002 is unlikely to be repeated with the same magnitude. This being said, it may well be that the very logic of the two round system induces people to think strategically. In the same manner that the seat belt may inadvertently induce people to drive less carefully because they feel more protected, knowing that they will have a final say, in the second round, in which one of the top two contenders will be elected, may make voters prone to utilize the first ballot for other purposes, such as expressing support for a weaker candidate. This strategic desertion of the strongest candidates, coupled with the legislation that forces the media to pay equal attention to every candidate, accounts for the strong fractionalization of the vote that characterizes

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French presidential elections. The fact that many voters are willing to strategically support a weak candidate on the first ballot indicates that voters do not care solely about who will win the election. They also wish to send messages about candidates who, even though they have no chance of winning, should in their view be paid attention to. This is why formal models, like that of Cox, who assume that voters are concerned only about the final outcome of the election and who conclude that in a two round system “four is a crowd” (1997: 128), are off the mark. Interestingly, it seems that it is because they see their first ballot vote as “expressive” (Brennan and Lomasky, 1993) that so many voters desert, on the first ballot, the candidate that they would most like to have as their president. It was also in part because of the presence of so many candidates that there was so much strategic voting. When there are only three candidates, as is often the case in SMP elections, the question of whether to vote sincerely or strategically arises only for supporters of the third party. The more candidates there are, the greater the opportunity to cast a strategic vote.10 The dominant form of strategic voting that we observe in the 2002 French presidential election – desertion of the strong candidates in favor of the weak ones – was very much related to the particular context of that election. That form of strategic voting was induced by the widespread perception that the issue of the first ballot was a foregone conclusion, that the second ballot would oppose Chirac and Jospin. Those who preferred Chirac or Jospin would not have dared to support a weaker candidate if they have had serious doubts that their first choice would not advance to the second round. Likewise, it was perhaps because there was so little uncertainty about the outcome of the first round that so few people strategically deserted the weak candidates. The scenario that should induce the greatest amount of such strategic voting is a very close contest between three candidates in which none of the top three contenders is certain to advance to the second round and all of the other candidates are certain not to make it to that second round. In such a context, supporters of the weak candidates who have a preference among the top three contenders should be enticed to cast a strategic vote for their second choice. This reminds us that strategic voters need clear and reliable information about the strength or weakness of the various parties or candidates in order to decide how to vote. As Cox (1997: 79) notes with respect to SMP, “if voters are exposed to lots of free information (e.g. frequently

André Blais 107

published polls) which reveals some candidates to be clearly trailing the others, and this information seeps out to a large proportion of the instrumental electorate, then one expects that trailing candidates will be left with not much more than their noninstrumental support.” It was precisely because poll information was so clear about who were the viable candidates that there was so much strategic voting in the French presidential election. The problem, of course, was that poll information was not very reliable this time. It remains to be seen whether this will make French voters more suspicious about the polls. If so, voters may become more uncertain in their appreciation of who are the “viable” and the “non viable” candidates, and this could reduce the overall level of strategic voting. The findings presented here raise broader questions about the merits and limits of the two round systems. Jones (1995), in particular, has warned against the fractionalization of the vote that the two round system may produce because it encourages more candidates to run. The findings presented here suggest that in some contexts it also induces voters to strategically support one of the weak candidates on the first ballot. One of the main arguments in favor of the two round system is that it makes it very hard for extremist parties or candidates to win (Blais and Massicotte, 2002). That feature has been quite visible in legislative elections, in which the Front National has been able to win only one seat in the last four elections despite obtaining more than 10 percent of the vote on the first ballot. In 2002, the two round system inadvertently helped Le Pen to get more publicity but the final outcome confirmed that it is impossible for an extremist candidate to win. Another issue concerns the choice between the alternative vote, in which voters rank order the candidates, and the two round system. The alternative vote would have saved France the embarrassment of having Le Pen on the second ballot. If I am right in inferring that strategic desertion of the strongest candidates was induced by the conviction that the outcome of the first round (that Chirac and Jospin would advance to the second round) was a foregone conclusion, then it makes sense to assume that there would have been less strategic voting for the weak candidates under the alternative vote because it is extremely difficult to anticipate the outcome of successive eliminations. On the other hand, the two round system allows French voters to focus on the top two contenders and to systematically assess their merits and limits on the final ballot. This would be impossible under the alternative vote.

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Whatever the case, the 2002 French presidential election reminds us that electoral rules matter and that the vote does not merely express preferences. Voters factor in their perception of the race and that perception affects their vote decision.

Notes The author would like to thank Marc-André Bodet for his research assistance, Michael S. Lewis-Beck, Annie Laurent, Pierre Martin, Indridi Indridason and Gary Cox for their comments on the first draft of this chapter, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for its financial support. 1. Cox’s analysis pertains to runoff elections in which only the top two contenders are allowed to run on the second ballot, as is the case in French presidential elections. Things are more complicated when more than two candidates may be allowed, as is the case in French legislative elections. 2. Boy and Dupoirier (1993) do ask whether “the voter is a strategist” but their analysis deals with the stability or instability of voting behavior and not with strategic voting as strictly defined here. 3. I checked whether the patterns were similar if the analysis were restricted to those respondents who were interviewed in the last week of the campaign. I found very little difference. 4. The weighted number of respondents who indicated a vote intention is 2897. 5. Note that each respondent was asked about the chances of his/her first and second choices. I have information only with respect to two candidates for each respondent. Table 5.2 aggregates responses across all respondents. 6. Some voters may have voted for their preferred party in part because of their perceptions of the likely outcome of the election and could have voted differently if they had thought that their preferred party had no chance of winning. A sincere vote does not entail that the person who casts that vote is impervious to strategic considerations, it rather entails that those considerations are not decisive, that they do not lead the voter to vote differently from his/her preference. 7. It is also interesting to note that those who indicated no preference were more likely to vote for Le Pen and Laguiller. 8. This is entirely consistent with the view that there are two types of candidates, those who compete to win and those who do not have such hope and whose principal aim is “to maximize their first-round vote in order to influence events between the two rounds and afterwards” (Elgie, 1996: 63). 9. This estimate is obtained by assuming that all those who cast a strategic vote would have voted for their preferred candidate. 10. It is important to keep in mind that according to my definition the person must vote for a candidate other than the most preferred one in order for a vote to be construed as strategic. It is quite possible for a person to think strategically but to cast a “sincere” vote for his/her preferred candidate who just happens to be quite viable. I consider a vote to be cast strategically only when strategic considerations are decisive.

André Blais 109

Bibliography Blais, A. “Why is There So Little Strategic Voting in Canadian Plurality Rule Elections?”, Political Studies 50 (2002) 445–454. Blais, A. and Massicotte, L. “Electoral Systems”, in L. LeDuc, Richard G. Niemi and P. Norris (eds), Comparing Democracies 2. New Challenges in the Study of Elections and Voting (London: Sage, 2002). Blais, A. Nadeau, R. Gidengil, E. and Nevitte, N. “Measuring Strategic Voting in Multiparty Plurality Elections”, Electoral Studies 20 (2001) 343–352. Boy, D. and Dupoirier, E. “Is the Voter a Strategist?”, in D. Boy and Nonna Mayer (eds), The French Voter Decides (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1993). Brennan, G. and Lomasky, L. Democracy and Decision: The Pure Theory of Electoral Preference (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993). Capdevielle, J. Dupoirier, E. and Ysmal, C. «Tableau des électorats en Mars 1978», in J. Capdevielle, E. Dupoirier, G. Granberg, E. Scheisguth, and C. Ysmal (ed.), France de Gauche Vote à Droite? (Paris: Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1988). Cox, G.W. Making Votes Count: Strategic Coordination in the World’s Electoral Systems (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Duverger, M. Les Partis Politiques (Paris: Seuil, 1951). Elgie, R. “The Institutional Logics of Presidential Elections”, in R. Elgie (ed.), Electing the French President: The 1995 Presidential Election (London: Macmillan, 1996). Jones, M. Electoral Laws and the Survival of Presidential Democracies (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995). Lewis-Beck, M.S. and Chlarson, K. “Party, Ideology, Institutions and the 1995 French Presidential Election”, British Journal of Political Science 32 (2002) 489–512. Ysmal, C. «D’une Droite en Sursis à une Droite Défaite, 1974–1981», in A. Lancelot (ed.), 1981 : Les Élections de l’Alternance (Paris: Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1986).

6 Institutions and Voters: Structuring Electoral Choice Robert Elgie

In recent years the study of institutions has very much come into vogue (March and Olsen, 1984). In this regard, the study of voting behaviour is no exception. In their path-breaking article, Powell and Whitten (1993) argued that greater attention needed to be paid “to the electoral context in which citizens choose and the policymaking context within which they evaluate the performance of incumbents” (Ibid.: 392). While previous studies had hinted at the need to be sensitive to the institutional context as a determinant of the vote (see Lewis-Beck, 1980: 318), Powell and Whitten’s study showed very clearly how institutions intervene in the relationship between economic performance and voting behaviour. What is more, this work has been replicated and the findings confirmed. Whitten and Palmer (1999) refined and extended the cross-national study to include 142 elections. At the national level, the finding has also been confirmed. In the French case, Lewis-Beck and Chlarson (2002) have demonstrated that the relative impact of ideological orientation and party identification varies across the two ballots of the presidential election, while Lewis-Beck (1997a,b) and Lewis-Beck and Nadeau (2000) have shown that cohabitation affects the magnitude and target of the economic vote in the French system. This chapter examines the impact of institutions on voting behaviour at the 2002 presidential election. It discusses the existing literature in the context of the 2002 election and provides a critique of the established wisdom based on the events surrounding the contest. The aim of the chapter is to reinforce the argument that institutions intervene in determining the vote. However, it also aims to show that models of voting behaviour need to include a more detailed understanding of the institutional context within which citizens go to the polls. There are four sections. The first outlines the institutional rules that govern French 110

Robert Elgie 111

presidential elections. The second presents the received wisdom about the impact of institutions on French voting behaviour and relates this literature to the 2002 election. The third provides a brief critique of the established literature. The fourth section concludes.

The rules that govern French presidential elections The specific rules that apply to French presidential elections have been discussed elsewhere (Elgie, 1996). For the purposes of this chapter, three aspects of the rules can be highlighted. The first aspect concerns the timing of the presidential election. The key point here is that the timing of the election can be and has been subject to change. Article 7-6 of the 1958 Constitution states: “In the case of the Presidency being vacant or when impeachment has been definitively declared by the Constitutional Council, the election of the new President will take place . . . at least 20 and at most 35 days after the vacancy occurred or the definitive character of the impeachment was declared” (all translations from the French are by the author). In other words, in contrast to the US system, if a president dies, resigns or is impeached, then a new election is held within a very short space of time. While to date no president has been impeached, in 1974 Pompidou’s death led to an election after just five years of the then seven-year presidential term. Equally, in 1969 de Gaulle resigned following the defeat of his reform proposals in a referendum. What this all means is that presidential elections can occur very suddenly. Indeed, one scenario that has not yet occurred but that may well happen in the future is the situation where a popular president resigns before the end of his or her five-year mandate and immediately declares himself or herself a candidate for re-election in order to maximise the chances of being returned to office. In the run-up to the 2002 election, this eventuality was never really envisaged. According to SOFRES, people had more confidence in President Chirac relative to Prime Minister Jospin only as late as November 2001 (www.php.sofres.com, accessed on 6 September 2002). So, a premature presidential resignation was never a realistic possibility. That said, the timing of the 2002 presidential election was changed during the course of the president’s term. In November 2000 Prime Minister Jospin decided that the order of the 2002 presidential and legislative elections needed to be changed (Schrameck, 2001: 119). This could be achieved simply by passing a so-called “organic” law through Parliament. The existing calendar meant that the presidential election would take place a month or so after the legislative election. However,

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Jospin wanted to reverse the order. The polls indicated that the Socialist Party by itself would struggle to win the legislative election. However, at the time the polls also showed that Jospin would most likely win the presidential election. Therefore, by reversing the order of the elections, Jospin hoped to use the momentum created by what he thought would be his own victory so as to maximise the chances of the socialists gaining a coat-tails majority in the National Assembly. At the time, Chirac shared this appreciation of the political environment. Thus, he opposed the reform. However, he and his supporters were unable to stop the legislation and the law was passed. In the end, the right benefited from the reform and gained a massive majority in the National Assembly following the May 2002 legislative elections. In this context, it seems reasonable to suggest that the outcome of the electoral process would have been somewhat different under the original electoral calendar. Indeed, Jérôme et al. (2003) provide strong evidence to confirm this hypothesis. Their model predicts that the level of the Socialist Party’s defeat would have been much greater had the timing of the elections not been reversed. Thus, Jospin’s strategy was successful (Ibid.), but it still did not result in his eventual victory. The second aspect concerns the number of candidates who are allowed to stand for election. In order to stand for election, would-be candidates need to be sponsored by a certain number of people. In the 1965, 1969 and 1974 elections, such candidates needed to obtain only 100 signatures (parrainages) from a geographical cross-section of elected representatives. In 1976, the rules were changed. Now, would-be candidates must be sponsored by at least 500 elected representatives spread across 30 different departments with no more than 50 sponsors coming from a single department. Given that there are around 40,000 elected representatives in France and that no person can sponsor more than one candidate, the maximum number of candidates who could stand is approximately 80. In fact, this figure is unlikely ever to be reached and in 2002 the Constitutional Council received a grand total of 17,815 signatures, which was itself the highest number ever recorded. Even so, the number of candidates has increased over the years, albeit not in a linear fashion. There were six candidates in 1965, seven in 1968 and 12 in 1974. Following the 1976 reform, which was designed to decrease the number of candidates, there were ten candidates in 1981, nine in both 1988 and 1995, and 16 in 2002. At the most recent election, it was certainly the case that a number of candidates tried but were unable to secure the requisite amount of parrainages. Unsuccessful aspirants in this regard included the right-wing anti-European former Gaullist figure,

Robert Elgie 113

Charles Pasqua, and two maverick ecology candidates, Brice Lalonde and Antoine Waechter. All the same, the fact that there was a record number of candidates at the first ballot of the 2002 presidential election undoubtedly shaped the course of the election. It should be remembered that in the end Jospin failed to proceed to the second ballot by fewer than 200,000 votes, or less than 0.7 per cent of the votes cast. Bearing in mind that Christiane Taubira, the Left-Radical candidate, won more than 500,000 votes, that Jean-Pierre Chevènement, a former socialist Minister, won more than 1,500,000 votes and that the three extreme-left candidates together won nearly 3,000,000 votes, once again it seems reasonable to suggest that institutional rules shaped the outcome of the election. In this case, by allowing so many candidates to stand they almost certainly helped to defeat Jospin and ensure Chirac’s massive victory at the second ballot. The third aspect is closely related to the second and concerns the twoballot system itself. The president is elected by way of a majority run-off system. If, at the first ballot, a candidate wins more than 50 per cent of the valid votes cast (regardless of the turnout), then he or she is elected. In the event that no candidate crosses this threshold, and none have done so in the history of the Fifth Republic to date, a second ballot is held two weeks later. Here, only the top two candidates at the first ballot are allowed to contest the election. This time, the candidate who wins the most valid votes cast is elected. Each voter has one vote and the election is direct, meaning there is no US-style Electoral College. The specific effects of the two-ballot system will be considered in the next section. Suffice it to say at this point that the system does little to discourage candidates from small, or even marginal political groups from standing. This is because such groups have an incentive to contest the election even in the knowledge that they have no realistic chance of winning. On the basis of the relatively safe assumption that no candidate will win more than 50 per cent of the first-ballot vote, parties know that the two second-ballot candidates will have to build coalitions in order to be elected. Thus, small groups make the calculation that they can have a greater influence on the coalition-building process by taking part and doing badly than by not taking part at all. This was at least part of the motivation for the Bayrou candidacy in 2002. His score (6.84 per cent) was historically low for a Christian Democrat, centrist candidate (Elgie, 1994). All the same, it was sufficiently large to ensure that he could avoid being swallowed up by the general move to unite the various parties on the centre-right. From a normative perspective, the fact that the two-ballot system means that marginal, even extreme groups have

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an incentive to contest the election is not necessarily a bad thing. From a positive perspective, though, it once again demonstrates that by encouraging a large number of candidates, institutional rules undoubtedly have an effect on the outcome of the election.

The impact of institutional rules on French voting behaviour As outlined above, the rules that govern French presidential election all suggest that the institutional context intervenes to affect the direction of the vote and, more specifically, that they shaped the course of the 2002 election. However, as they stand, the above comments amount to little more than conjecture. In his work, Michael Lewis-Beck has tried to test this proposition more rigorously. In conjunction with others, he has put forward two very clear arguments: the first concerns the twoballot system itself; the second relates to the wider institutional context in which the election takes place, notably the impact of cohabitation. This section sketches each of these arguments in turn and reflects on whether the 2002 contest confirms the findings. In a recent article, Lewis-Beck and Chlarson (2002) have argued that the structure of the two-ballot system affects the relative importance of ideology and party identification in determining the vote. In particular, they argue that “on the first ballot party effects . . . surpass ideology effects. However, on the second ballot, ideology clearly has a stronger effect than party” (Ibid.: 511). This argument is the equivalent of the long-standing cliché about French presidential elections that at the firstballot voters choose, whereas at the second ballot they eliminate. In other words, at the first-ballot voters vote sincerely. This is because it is highly likely that a candidate from the party with which they identify is standing. Therefore, they give their support to the candidate of their preferred party at this point. However, the situation is slightly different at the second ballot. Here, voters may find that their first-choice party candidate has been eliminated. Therefore, they have to decide whether or not to vote at all. If they do vote, they tend to give their support to the candidate who is nearest to their basic ideological attachment. In practice, left-wing voters vote for a left-wing candidate and right-wing voters vote for a right-wing candidate. Thus, party prevails at the first ballot, whereas by default ideology wins out at the second ballot. This theory was tested by Lewis-Beck and Chlarson (Ibid.) in the context of the 1995 presidential election and was found to be robust. What about the 2002 election? There seems little reason to doubt the basic foundation of the argument. In this regard, the candidacy of Jean-Pierre

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Chevènement is instructive. Over and above the opinion poll vicissitudes of any election campaign, what was noticeable about Chevènement’s performance in 2002 was that from about February onwards as soon as the campaign proper was under way his poll rating began to slide. In particular, what seems to have happened is that right-wing voters who were initially attracted to his Republican, neither-left-nor-right, antiEuropean stance gradually gravitated back towards Chirac. In other words, gaullist party identifiers ended up supporting their “natural” candidate, thus confirming that party identification prevails at the first ballot. That said, events also suggested that the situation was not quite so clear cut this time around and in two respects: the first-round performance of Jospin and Le Pen respectively. In the first place, it seems reasonable to believe that a proportion of Socialist Party identifiers did not vote for Jospin. The potential evidence for this point lies in the support that was gained by other left candidates, particularly those on the extreme left. There is no doubt that France has a revolutionary tradition and that the extreme left has done consistently better in France than in many other European countries. All the same, it seems scarcely credible that 10.45 per cent of the voting population identifies with the three extreme left-wing parties that contested the 2002 election. Instead, it is more reasonable to suggest that a proportion of disaffected Socialist Party identifiers voted for one or other of the extreme-left candidates, believing that Jospin would go through to the second ballot and that they could safely return to the party fold at that point. In other words, these people reversed the traditional logic of the two-ballot system. They ranked ideology higher than party at the first ballot in the expectation that they would be able to vote for their preferred party at the second ballot. Indeed, some might argue that Jospin initially seemed to condone this way of thinking. On 21 February 2002, the day after he had officially declared his candidacy, Jospin went on France 2 and announced: “I am a socialist by belief, but the programme I am putting forward is not a socialist programme. It is a modern programme, one that will bring people together” (Cited in Libération, 22 February 2002). This was a fairly ill-disguised and heavy-handed attempt to win the support of centrist and uncommitted voters right from the outset and it was almost certainly made on the assumption that his participation at the second ballot was a foregone conclusion. However, it went against the established logic of the two-ballot system and with the benefit of hindsight it was a mistake. In fact, it was not until the very last days of the campaign, for example, at his election rally in Bordeaux on 11 April less than two weeks before the first round, that Jospin and the Socialist

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Party’s leaders started to appeal to their own party supporters explicitly. By this time, though, it was too late. The second way in which the traditional logic of the two-ballot structure might be called into question in 2002 was with the first-ballot success of Jean-Marie Le Pen. Obviously, the big surprise at the first ballot of 2002 presidential election was that Le Pen scored 16.86 per cent of the vote and beat Jospin into second place. In this context, it seems reasonable to suggest that all the FN party identifiers voted sincerely for their preferred candidate at the first ballot. Moreover, it seems equally reasonable to suggest that a proportion of non-committed voters also plumped for Le Pen at this point. At the same time, though, it also seems entirely plausible that a not inconsiderable percentage of people who identified with other parties abandoned their “natural” candidate and voted for the leader of FN. In short, support from a combination of FN party identifiers, non-party identifiers and other party identifiers was sufficient to enable Le Pen to go through to the second ballot. Evidence that Le Pen was able to attract the support of people other than FN party identifiers can be found in the party’s performance at the first round of the National Assembly elections just a few weeks after the presidential election. Here, the FN scored only 11.34 per cent of the vote. In the absence of data, evidence that Le Pen won the support of non-FN party identifiers, as opposed to non-party identifiers, is more difficult to show. All the same, it is at least a plausible hypothesis. The bottom line is that the first ballot of 2002 presidential election provides evidence that confirms the Lewis-Beck and Chlarson thesis about the importance of party identification at the first ballot of presidential elections. All the same, in relation to Le Pen’s performance and particularly Jospin’s score, the validity of the thesis can be called into question. In this regard, never mind others, the first ballot of the 2002 election may well have been unusual. What about the second ballot? Recall that the Lewis-Beck and Chlarson thesis asserts that at the second ballot ideology will be more important than party identification. If we extrapolate from this thesis, it would seem to predict that in a contest between Chirac and Le Pen the socialists should support Chirac. Indeed, the fact that on a scale going from the extreme left to the extreme right, Le Pen was at the extreme-right end of the political spectrum and that Chirac was nearest to him, it would also seem to predict that everybody should support Chirac apart from Le Pen’s own supporters themselves. As it happens, the events surrounding the 2002 election seem to confirm these predictions entirely. There is no doubt that the Socialist Party (PS) was in shock on the night of the

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first-ballot result. What was noticeable, though, was that on television that evening, with the notable exception of Jospin himself, all of the main figures within the PS declared, or at least implied, that they would vote for Chirac at the second ballot. Indeed, Jospin grudgingly made a similar declaration during the course of the following week. The socialists believed that Chirac was the person who could best defend the Republic and the democratic process in a contest with Le Pen. Therefore, even if they disagreed with his economic policies, his law and order policies and so forth, Chirac was still closest to their most basic ideological preferences. In short, the socialists appeared to behave in a manner entirely consistent with the Lewis-Beck and Chlarson thesis. As for the other political parties, for the most part their behaviour also confirms the Lewis-Beck and Chlarson thesis. In fact, the only groups that refused to support Chirac were the extreme-left wing candidates. Their opposition to the system itself led them to draw the conclusion that neither Chirac nor Le Pen was closer to their own ideological preferences. Therefore, they did not call upon their supporters to vote for Chirac. All told, the extreme-left aside, Chirac’s triumphal score on 5 May, 82.21 per cent, was testimony to the fact that ideological identification structured the vote at the second ballot. This is consistent with the established logic of French presidential elections. In addition to the impact of the two-ballot system, the institutional impact on voting behaviour has also been demonstrated in another way. Lewis-Beck (1997a,b) and Lewis-Beck and Nadeau (2000) have found that in France cohabitation affects the intensity of the economic vote. In particular, they have found that during cohabitation economic voting becomes more sophisticated. During these periods, voters believe that the prime minister, rather than the president, is responsible for policymaking. This means that if their view of the economic situation is positive, they will disproportionately support the presidential candidate from the prime minister’s party or coalition, which may of course be the prime minister in person. Alternatively, if their view of the economic situation is negative, they will disproportionately blame the prime minister and/ or the presidential candidate from the prime minister’s party or coalition. In sum, Lewis-Beck concludes: “during this cohabitation period, French voters appear willing to heap economic praise or blame on the Prime Minister, but not on the President” (Lewis-Beck, 1997a: 321). The indirect evidence for the 2002 election seems to provide strong support for this hypothesis. In particular, by early 2002 there seemed to be the sense that people were dissatisfied with Jospin’s performance as Prime Minister. For example, in February 2002 SOFRES reported that

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a slight majority of people were disappointed with Jospin’s overall performance as Prime Minister since his appointment in 1997 (www.sofres. com/etudes/pol/060202_chron_r.htm, accessed on 9 September 2002). More significantly perhaps, even though a New Year opinion poll indicated that 45 per cent of the French people thought that their personal situation would be better in the year 2002 compared with 36 per cent who believed it would be less good, 30 per cent of people thought that the general economic situation would get worse and only 15 per cent thought that it would improve (www.sofres.com/etudes/pol/030102_pronostics_ r.htm, accessed on 9 September 2002). Moreover, 56 per cent of people thought that the level of unemployment would increase, whereas only 14 per cent thought that it would fall. Thus, while the findings are not clear cut, what we can say is that Jospin was failing to derive any significant economic advantage from his position as Prime Minister. What is more, as the campaign continued, the prime minister’s difficulties almost certainly increased. In fact, there was a striking similarity about at least one aspect of the 1995 and 2002 first-round campaigns. In the run-up to the 1995 election the incumbent prime minister and presidential candidate, Édouard Balladur, was considered to be in a strong position. However, in February 1995, Balladur’s advantage disappeared (Charlot, 1995, Ch. 8) and people disproportionately blamed him for what they perceived to be the poor economic prospects of the country. At this time, the main beneficiary on the right was Chirac. People believed that the situation would improve if he were elected. Thus, Balladur was judged on his performance, which was deemed to be negative, whereas Chirac was judged on his promises, which were thought to be positive (Lewis-Beck, 1997b: 257). A similar situation occurred in 2002. This time, Jospin’s performance was increasingly thought to be disappointing. As a result, he was blamed by the electorate. By contrast, even though he was the incumbent President, Chirac managed to portray himself as the challenger. Moreover, right from the start of the campaign proper, he outlined a set of promises that gave people something to look forward to. Once again, therefore, Chirac was the main beneficiary of the turnaround in public opinion. Overall, we must bear in mind that the result of the first round of the 2002 presidential election, even if it was so dramatic, was extremely close. Therefore, even if people blamed Jospin, they did not have a uniformly or universally negative opinion of him. Indeed, right up to the first ballot, opinion polls suggested that a second-ballot contest between Chirac and Jospin would result in a photo finish with little to separate the two candidates. Even so, the superficial evidence suggests that the established

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thesis about the institutional effect of cohabitation on economic voting was confirmed by the events surrounding the 2002 election.

For a more nuanced understanding of the institutional environment The above discussion has suggested that institutions matter. More particularly, it has suggested that institutions intervene in the determination of the vote. As a self-proclaimed institutionalist, this observation is reassuring. After all, an appreciation of institutions came relatively late to the study of voting behaviour. Indeed, it is noticeable that in many of the established overviews of institutionalism the study of electoral behaviour does not get a mention at all (for example, Hall and Taylor, 1996; Peters, 1999). In fact, in contrast to these overviews, what is clear is that institutionalism can and has been applied to the study of voting behaviour with a considerable degree of success. All the same, in my capacity as a self-proclaimed institutionalist, it is necessary to sound a word of warning about how institutions have been incorporated into the study of voting behaviour. Thus, the aim of this section is not to question the importance of institutions in this domain, but to argue for a more nuanced understanding of the institutional environment in the context of such studies. Two main points will be made. The first point suggests that studies of the institutional determinants of voting behaviour need to account for a wider range of institutional factors than is currently the case. The second point suggests that, however many institutional variables are considered, the understanding of institutional effects needs to be operationalised very carefully. In relation to the first point, it is clear that, to date, neither the French literature nor the cross-national literature has been able to incorporate the full range of available institutional variables in their respective analyses of voting behaviour. In France, the impact of the institutional context on voting behaviour has been studied in relation to the two-ballot system and cohabitation (as noted in this chapter). Plenty of other institutional factors might be taken into account. By the same token, in their crossnational work Powell and Whitten (1993: 393) fail to take account of some of the institutional specificities that the French work has made explicit. Powell and Whitten argue that the greater the role played by the political opposition, the less likely it will be that voters punish the incumbent government for the poor performance of the economy. They state: “We expect the presence of opportunities to diffuse responsibility will help insulate incumbents from all the factors that cause them to lose votes.

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We further expect that both positive and negative effects of economic performance will be diminished in countries where responsibility is widely diffused” (Ibid.: 399). In making this argument, Powell and Whitten emphasise legislative rules, the political control of different institutions and the lack of cohesion of governments. More specifically, they propose that a number of institutional features will affect the clarity of responsibility and, hence, anti-incumbent voting in any given system (Ibid.: 399–402). These are: the lack of voting cohesion of the major governing party or parties; the extent to which there is a participatory and inclusive committee system in the legislature where the chairs of strong and specialised committees are distributed proportionally to all political parties; the presence of an opposition majority in the “second” parliamentary chamber; the existence of a minority government; and the presence of a coalition government. In their slightly revised version of this argument, Whitten and Palmer (1999) outline a somewhat different but basically similar list of institutional variables. The key point here is that the French studies have not really taken on board the wider list of institutional variables proposed by Powell and Whitten. Equally, the cross-national studies cannot easily incorporate the specific features of the Fifth Republic’s political system that the French studies have identified. Thus, there are two bodies of literature, each of which proposes that institutions are important in the determination of the vote, but neither of which considers the full range of institutions that have been identified as potentially salient in the political process. At one level, this issue is simply a function of the long-standing trade-off between country-specific versus comparative studies. The variables in the former can afford to be more specific than those in the latter. At the same time, it seems reasonable to suggest that the French studies are less complete for failing to take on board the wider set of variables suggested by the cross-national studies and that the cross-national studies are less rich for not considering the variables examined in the French work. The second point is not relevant to the discussion here. However, the first point is. What, if anything, does the French work miss that might be captured by a consideration of the wider range of institutional variables that were identified in the cross-national analyses? Let us examine this question in relation to the 2002 presidential election. In this regard, three of the specific institutional factors mentioned by Powell and Whitten did not affect the diffusion of responsibility at the 2002 presidential election. Firstly, the Jospin government had a small, but clear majority in the National Assembly. Secondly, the voting cohesion of the major governing party was strong. The Socialist Party was unified

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throughout the whole legislature. Indeed, the voting cohesion of the governing parties generally was also quite strong. There were times when the Greens and the Communist Party were opposed to government policy, or when their parliamentary party groups were opposed to the voting instructions of the party leadership. In the main, though, there was fairly strong party cohesion across the four parties that ended the legislature in government together. Thirdly, the French system is not characterised by a participatory and inclusive system of legislative committees. In effect, the government controlled the National Assembly. At the same time, though, the two remaining institutional factors were potentially salient. Firstly, the government was faced with an opposition majority in the Senate. In France, the upper house is very much inferior to the lower house. In terms of ordinary legislation, when there is a disagreement between the two houses, the National Assembly has the final say. Even so, in the period 1997–2002 the Senate was undoubtedly a thorn in Jospin’s side. For example, in the 1999–2000 parliamentary session the government requested a conference committee (commission mixte paritaire) on no less than 23 occasions, only seven of which resulted in an agreed text between representatives of the two houses. More than that, the Senate was Jacques Chirac’s main institutional ally, particularly after the election of the president’s preferred candidate, Christian Poncelet, as the leader of the Senate in 1998. True, the Senate’s obstructionism was more problematic for the prime minister in the area of constitutional reform and social issues, rather than economic performance. All the same, a truly sophisticated voter would be aware that the prime minister was somewhat constrained by the upper house and that the president maintained an influence there. Thus, there is no reason why such a voter should have heaped blame or praise during this period solely on the prime minister. Secondly, the Jospin government was a coalition. It was a five-party coalition up to the point when Jean-Pierre Chevènement’s Citizens’ Movement (now Republican Pole) left office in 2000. Thereafter, it remained a four-party coalition, comprising the socialists, communists, Greens and Left-Radicals, for the rest of the parliamentary term. While the Left-Radicals were never much more than a sleeping partner, certainly the communists and the Greens were active and vociferous participants. It seems reasonable to suggest that the coalition nature of the Jospin government had an effect on voting behaviour. For example, the fact that the socialist, communist and Green party candidates all did badly at the first ballot of the 2002 election might suggest that blame was heaped upon all three main candidates of the so-called

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“plural left” government, thus confirming the Lewis-Beck thesis. Alternatively, the fact that the Jospin government was a coalition might suggest that in these circumstances less blame should be attributed to the prime minister than what the established Lewis-Beck (1997a,b) model of economic voting under cohabitation might perhaps imply. If the sophisticated voter was really disgruntled, then he or she would have realised that the prime minister was not solely responsible for the government’s unpopular policies and may have tempered his or her negative assessment of the prime minister accordingly. In short, an analysis of the institutional determinants of voting behaviour needs to account for the impact of the full range of institutional factors in a system. In relation to the second point, the existing literature suggests that, over and above the issue of the number of institutional variables that need to be considered, the operationalisation of institutional effects needs to be considered more carefully. Various issues, relating to both the cross-national and country-specific studies, are important in this regard. For example, in their cross-national work Whitten and Palmer (1999) constructed an additive index of four political variables that would be expected to mute the relationship between the economy and the fortunes of the incumbent government (Ibid.: 56). These variables had values ranging from one to four, whereby four represented the greatest degree of diffusion of responsibility in each case. When they calculated the values for the 1967, 1973, 1981 and 1986 French National Assembly elections, they found that France had a value of either one (1967, 1973 and 1986) or two (1981). In other words, France was shown to be a good and consistent example of a country where there were very clear lines of responsibility and where the blame or reward for the government’s economic performance should have been most clear cut. In one sense, this methodology is perfectly sound. The values are not meant to reflect a precise measurement of the institutionalisation of the French system of government. Instead, they are merely indicators that help to identify a basic institutional context. All the same, the devil is in the detail. Recall that Whitten and Palmer’s argument concerns the relative impact of the diffusion of government responsibility on economic voting. However, what exactly is meant by the term “diffusion of government responsibility”? This is a very broad and rather nebulous concept. As a result, it is doubtful that the true degree of diffusion can be captured simply by an additive index of four political variables focusing on the role of parliament, party cohesion and so forth. Instead, we need to incorporate factors such as the degree of globalisation and Europeanisation in a system, the organisation of centre–periphery relations, the level of corporatist-style

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interest group activity, and the dispersion of decision-making responsibilities to independent administrative authorities and regulatory agencies. However, if these variables are included, then the classification of France as a country where there are clear lines of governmental responsibility is seriously open to question. Indeed, it is highly likely that if we were to reconceptualise the notion of the diffusion of government responsibility in this way, then we would find that most countries would fall into Whitten and Palmer’s category of “mixed clarity” elections (1999: 57). Undoubtedly, this would be less satisfying and it would certainly make the argument more difficult to operationalise, but it would also base the analysis on a more sophisticated and, arguably, more appropriate understanding of institutional arrangements. A similar point applies to the country-specific literature. For example, the argument about the effect of cohabitation on economic voting stands or falls on the assumption that the public perceive the prime minister to be in charge of decision-making. In his work on the 1995 election, Lewis-Beck (1997b: 318–319) constructs a rather convoluted measurement of whether or not this is the case and finds that it is. However, during the first period of cohabitation when the question was asked much more directly, the answer was not so clear cut. Here, even though the public generally felt that the prime minister was now more powerful than the president, they did not believe that the president was powerless. Duverger (1987: 44–45) shows that in a December 1986 SOFRES poll, 53 per cent of people thought that prime minister Chirac was the head of the executive compared with 35 per cent for President Mitterrand. Equally, at the same time 56 per cent of people in a Brûlé Ville Associés (BVA) poll thought that Chirac in effect led the government compared with an equivalent figure of 23 per cent for Mitterrand. In the light of this evidence, it would seem wrong to assume that during cohabitation the prime minister takes all the blame or reward for policy performance, including economic policy performance. Instead, a proportion of the public would still seem to believe that ultimately responsibility still lies with the president. As with the previous point about the existing cross-national studies, this criticism does not mean that the argument about the effect of cohabitation on economic voting in France is fundamentally flawed. On the contrary, the findings may well be robust. It simply means that a true test of the argument may need to incorporate a more sophisticated understanding of public perceptions about the institutional responsibility for decision-making. Another example in this regard relates back to the argument about the relative importance of party and ideology at the first and second ballots

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of the presidential election. In their work, Lewis-Beck and Chlarson (2002) take great care to discuss some of the methodological problems associated with operationalising the concepts of party identification and ideological attachment in the French case (Ibid.: 492–497). All the same, when they test various hypotheses about the relative importance of the two concepts they equate ideological identification with left–right identification (Ibid.: 498). This is certainly the standard way of viewing ideological identification in the French case and it may still be the best way of doing so. However, Grunberg and Schweisguth (1997) have argued that since 1995 there has been a tripartite ideological space. In particular, they argue that there is now a clear ideological distinction between the left, the moderate right and the extreme right. If this is the case, then it is clearly relevant to any study of the 2002 presidential election. The fact that Le Pen did so well at the first ballot and, perhaps even more importantly, that he maintained but did not significantly increase the level of his support at the second ballot would seem to provide at least circumstantial evidence that there is now a tripartite ideological space in the French political system. If this is the case, then it needs to be factored into any model that examines the institutional effect of the relative importance of party and ideology at the two ballots of the presidential election. Again, this does not mean that the Lewis-Beck and Chlarson thesis is flawed. As before, it simply means that in order for the thesis to be tested in the context of the 2002 election this element needs to be given consideration.

Conclusion There is no doubt that institutions affect the determination of economic voting. This has been shown very clearly and successfully at both a cross-national and a country-specific level. All the same, “first-generation” studies of this sort now need to be improved by “second-generation” studies that incorporate both a larger number of institutional variables into the analysis as well as a more sophisticated understanding of how those variables should be operationalised. If this challenge is taken up, the resulting studies will no doubt continue to show that institutions matter. This is now an almost law-like observation across all aspects of political life. Indeed, the resulting studies may also continue to show that institutions matter in the ways that have already been identified at both the cross-national and country-specific level. All the same, only by increasing the number of institutional variables and by operationalising these variables in a more sophisticated manner, will we be sure that

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such findings are genuinely robust. Moreover, if we do so, we may even come across some counter-intuitive results. This is the challenge and, indeed, the pleasure of engaging in the science of politics. Bibliography Charlot, J. (1995), Pourquoi Jacques Chirac?, Paris, Éditions de Fallois. Duverger, M. (1987), La cohabitation des Français, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France. Elgie, R. (1994), ‘Christian Democracy in France: the politics of electoral constraint’, in David Hanley (ed.), Christian Democracy in Europe. A Comparative Perspective, London, Pinter, pp. 155–167. Elgie, R. (1996), ‘The institutional logics of presidential elections’, in Robert Elgie (ed.), Electing the French President. The 1995 Presidential Election, London, Macmillan, pp. 51–72. Grunberg, G. and É. Schweisguth (1997), ‘Vers une tripartition de l’espace politique’, in Daniel Boy and Nonna Mayer (eds), L’électeur a ses raisons, Paris, Presses de la FNSP, pp. 179–218. Hall, P.A. and R.C.R. Taylor (1996), Political Science and the three new institutionalisms, Political Studies, 44(5): 936–957. Jérôme, B.V. Jérôme-Speziari and Michael S. Lewis-Beck (2003), ‘Reordering the French election calendar: Forecasting the consequences for 2002’, in European Journal of Political Research, 42: 425–440. Lewis-Beck, M.S. (1980), ‘Economic conditions and executive popularity: The French experience’, in American Journal of Political Science, 24 (2): 306–323. Lewis-Beck, M.S. (1997a), ‘Le vote du “porte-monnaie” en question’, in Daniel Boy and Nonna Mayer (eds), L’électeur a ses raisons, Paris, Presses de la FNSP, pp. 239–262. Lewis-Beck, M.S. (1997b), ‘Who’s the chef? Economic voting under a dual executive’, in European Journal of Political Research, 31: 315–325. Lewis-Beck, M.S. and K. Chlarson (2002), ‘Party, ideology, institutions and the 1995 French presidential election’, in British Journal of Political Science, 32: 489–512. Lewis-Beck, M.S. and R. Nadeau (2000), ‘French electoral institutions and the economic vote’, in Electoral Studies, 19: 171–182. March, J.G. and J.P. Olsen (1984), ‘The New Institutionalism: Organizational Factors in Political Life’, in American Political Science Review, 78 (3): 734–749. Peters, B.G. (1999), Institutional Theory in Political Science: The ‘New Institutionalism’, London, Pinter. Powell G. Bingham and Guy D. Whitten (1993), ‘A cross-national analysis of economic voting: Taking account of the political context’, in American Journal of Political Science, 37 (2): 391–414. Schrameck, O. (2001), Matignon Rive Gauche, 1997–2001, Paris, Seuil. Whitten, Guy D. and Harvey D. Palmer (1999), ‘Cross-national analyses of economic voting’, in Electoral Studies, 18: 49–67.

7 Could there have Possibly been Economic Voting? Guy D. Whitten

Overview At first glance it would appear that the 2002 elections were not about the economy. Issues relating to security and immigration loomed large in the campaign prior to the first round of the presidential elections. In the aftermath of Le Pen’s surprise finish, French politics were clearly not in a normal state. So the question with which I begin this chapter is how much of an impact did these circumstances that grabbed headlines worldwide have on the subsequent National Assembly elections. Media widely described the left as reeling from the presidential elections and attributed their poor performance in the subsequent parliamentary elections to those events. Were these popular accounts accurate? Was the loss of votes for the incumbent coalition of left-wing parties attributable to what happened in the presidential campaign? One way to answer these questions is to look at the predictive accuracy of a model of ‘politics as usual’ for the 2002 National Assembly elections. If the unusual presidential campaign had an impact on the National Assembly elections, such a model should not be very accurate. It is, however, possible that despite the media hype and record levels of voter abstention, the 2002 National Assembly elections were not particularly unusual among the set of Fifth Republic elections. Among students of elections one well-established empirical finding is that, most of the time, the economy has an impact on election outcomes (good overviews of this extensive literature can be found in Lewis-Beck and Paldam, 2000; Dorussen and Palmer, 2002). There are a variety of theories about how, when and why macroeconomic fluctuations affect party fortunes in electoral contests. In this chapter, I review the evidence of how the 2002 French elections fit into the broader picture of 126

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economic voting in Fifth Republic France. In order to evaluate this question, I will begin with a discussion of the economic voting literature as it relates to France, before turning to two economic voting models and a discussion of how well the results of the 2002 election can be explained by these models.

Economic voting in France The most common theoretically proposed formulation of economic voting is that the electoral fortunes of incumbent politicians are influenced by how the macro economy in their nation has been performing in the period prior to the election. Aggregate-level models of economic voting tend to evaluate the influence of one or more measures of overall economic activity (e.g. real growth in GDP or per capita disposable income), unemployment and/or inflation. The basic proposition of these models is that the better the economy is performing (increased levels of real economic activity, lower levels of unemployment and lower levels of inflation), the better will be the performance of incumbent politicians at the polls. The underlying dynamic proposed to drive this aggregatelevel relationship is that, at the individual level, voters evaluate how the economy has been faring and then weigh this, along with other factors, in their decision of which party to support. Empirical evaluations of these basic retrospective economic voting propositions have produced results that are mostly supportive. Generally speaking, there is evidence at both the aggregate and individual levels that economic voting exists across a wide range of democratic settings. Recent work has focused on the calibration and qualification of the economic voting relationship. Scholars have looked in detail at the political and economic circumstances under which economic voting is stronger and weaker (prominent examples include Lewis-Beck, 1988; Paldam, 1991; Powell and Whitten, 1993; Anderson, 1995). The general finding of these studies is that evidence of economic voting is strongest where political control is easiest to discern. This has been described as an intervening theory of ‘clarity of responsibility’ (Powell and Whitten, 1993): when responsibility for governing is most (least) clear among national politicians, the economic voting relationship(s) will be the strongest (weakest). France is a particularly interesting case for students of economic voting because of its varying levels of clarity of responsibility across the period of the Fifth Republic. On the one hand, there have been periods

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like that from the summer of 1984 to the winter of 1986 where a single party controlled a majority of the seats in the National Assembly, all cabinet portfolios and the two top executive offices. On the other hand, there have been periods like the first period of cohabitation from the spring of 1986 to the summer of 1988 during which a two-party rightwing coalition controlled a majority of the seats in the National Assembly and the president was a Socialist. The theory of clarity of responsibility would predict that economic voting would be stronger during the former period because voters would have an easier time attributing responsibility for economic outcomes to a single political party relative to the latter occasion on which voters would have to sort out responsibility among three different political parties each with control of at least one key national political office. Despite this substantial variation in clarity of responsibility across time in France, we have only 10 National Assembly elections for the evaluation of economic voting.1 With so few observations, a statistical model that attempts to simultaneously evaluate the impact of the economy while controlling for the clarity of responsibility would run into the problem of multicollinearity (e.g. Gujarati, 1995: 319–351). This is one compelling reason for turning to cross-national models of economic voting. By pooling data across nations and over time, we can evaluate the impact of institutional factors and economic outcomes more efficiently because we maximize the variation in all relevant factors. This is particularly the case for institutional arrangements that do not vary much across time in single nations. Additionally we can evaluate how unusual particular elections are across the set of elections in industrial democratic nations. Once I have introduced an economic voting model that was tested across democratic nations over three decades and discussed how France fits into it, I shall look at the predictions that two versions of this model make for the first round of the 2002 National Assembly elections and then evaluate the accuracy of these predictions relative to other firstround elections results during the Fifth Republic. Because such models do not contain measures of campaign events and other idiosyncratic details specific to each election, they are essentially models of politics as usual. If 2002 was truly a departure from politics as usual in France, this model should perform poorly relative to its performance in predicting other first-round National Assembly elections. On the other hand, if the model is relatively accurate, we will have evidence that the impact of the wild events of the 2002 presidential elections on the subsequent National Assembly elections was minimal.

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Economic voting models and the 2002 National Assembly election results The economic voting models with which I will try to answer the questions at hand were developed by Harvey Palmer and me for a 1999 article in the British Journal of Political Science (Palmer and Whitten, 1999). They build directly on earlier works that evaluated the impact of economic circumstance on elections cross-nationally (Paldam, 1991; Powell and Whitten, 1993; Whitten and Palmer, 1999). In our models, clarity of responsibility is measured by four variables. Firstly, I explain the theoretical justification for each of these variables and the coding thereof for the 2002 French case. Secondly, I discuss two separate operationalisations of the economic circumstances at the time of the elections that we analysed. Finally, I explore the relative accuracy of the two resulting models for National Assembly elections during the Fifth Republic period. There are a variety of institutional arrangements and political circumstances that contribute to the degree of clarity of responsibility in a nation at the time of an election. The construction of suitable measures of these factors across nations and time requires careful construction of decision rules (an excellent detailed accounting of such procedures is provided in Lijphart, 1999). I begin with the measures of institutional arrangements and then move to the political circumstances. Institutional arrangements influence the degree to which it is more or less easy to change the parameters of the relationship between government and the citizens of a nation. When there exists a large number of institutionally-empowered veto players, policy change is more difficult (Tsebelis, 1995). When these veto players exist and are from political parties other than the government party(ies), clarity of responsibility is lessened. For our models, we coded two such possible circumstances. The first was whether or not the opposition controlled a politically significant upper house of the legislature. We agree with Arend Lijphart (Lijphart, 1999) and others that, because of its limited power to block legislation, the French Senate is not an institutional veto player. The second institutional factor that we considered was whether the opposition parties are granted control of politically significant committees within the lower house of the legislature (Strøm, 1990 wrote extensively about the influence of this factor). This is not the case in the National Assembly. Together, these institutional arrangements of the Fifth Republic make responsibility for government policymaking relatively clear. Turning to political circumstances and clarity of responsibility, we see that France in 2002 was somewhere in the middle of the range of

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values. In previous studies, minority governments have been found to receive greater support, all other factors being equal, than majority governments unless they stay in power for a lengthy period of time (Powell and Whitten, 1993). Together the three party coalition of the left controlled a majority of the seats in the National Assembly in 2002. The fact that they were three parties, however, obscured the responsibility for government policymaking. Turning to the economic part of our model, I collected data on three macroeconomic measures that have commonly been used by students of economic voting: inflation, real growth and unemployment. In our 1999 article Harvey Palmer and I proposed an alternative way of measuring inflation and economic growth. We proposed that one should disaggregate measures of these indicators into expected and unexpected components. The unexpected components of growth and inflation have real income effects and can be used as measures of government competence. Thus we have two separate models of cross-national economic voting, one with the usual measures of growth and inflation and one with the unexpected measures. 2 Table 7.1 presents the predictions of the model with the basic macroeconomic measures for first-round National Assembly elections during the Fifth Republic period.3 By these economic measures, the economy in 2002 relative to previous Fifth Republic election times was relatively good in terms of inflation, but in the middle of the pack in terms of unemployment and economic growth. In terms of the relative accuracy of our model predictions, the prediction for the 2002

Table 7.1 Macroeconomic conditions and governing party fortunes in National Assembly elections (Basic Macroeconomic Model) Election Growth Inflation Unemployment Predicted Actual Prediction error vote vote change change 1967.1 1968.2 1973.1 1978.1 1981.2 1986.1 1988.2 1993.1 1997.2 2002.2

3.5 −2.0 6.0 2.3 0.2 2.2 4.4 −1.8 2.4 1.4

2.9 4.2 6.6 9.3 12.7 3.5 2.6 2.5 0.9 1.4

1.7 2.4 2.5 4.8 7.2 10.1 10.0 11.1 12.5 8.7

−3.9 −3.6 −5.1 * −4.4 −5.5 −5.7 −4.4 −6.1 −4.1

+2.5 +7.9 −13.2 * −4.7 −5.3 −4.9 −17.6 −9.6 −5.7

−6.4 −11.5 +8.1 * +0.3 −0.2 −0.8 +13.1 +3.5 +1.6

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case was fairly good. Given the economic and political circumstances measured, our model predicted that the percentage of voters casting ballots for the governing coalition would decline by 4.1 percent from their vote in the first-round election in 1997. In reality the decline was 5.7 percent. Thus this model was overly optimistic about the governing parties’ vote share by 1.6 percent of the total votes cast. Although this prediction is not as accurate as the predictions for the three elections during the 1980s when our model’s error for each election was less than one percent of the popular votes cast for governing parties, it is substantially better than predictions for all other Fifth Republic elections. Table 7.2 presents the predictions of our second model with unexpected measures of economic growth and inflation. By this measure of real economic growth, only two governments have outperformed the 2002 government in the run-up to an election (1973 and 1997 were better while 1998 was equal). In terms of unexpected inflation, only one government (1986) outperformed the 2002 government. These factors, combined with the middling performance on unemployment led to this model’s optimistic prediction of a decline in popular vote percentage of only 1.2. This prediction was overly optimistic by 4.5 percent of the votes cast. A glance down the right hand column of Table 7.2 shows, however, that in terms of relative predictive accuracy, this model followed the same pattern as the first. Predictions for the 1980s elections were more accurate than that for 2002, but predictions for all other elections were less accurate.

Table 7.2 Macroeconomic conditions and governing party fortunes in National Assembly elections (Unexpected Macroeconomic Model) Election

1967.1 1968.2 1973.1 1978.1 1981.2 1986.1 1988.2 1993.1 1997.2 2002.2

Unexpected Unexpected growth inflation (Growth) (Inflation) −0.7 (3.5) −6.4 (−2.0) +0.9 (6.0) −0.5 (2.3) 0.0 (0.2) −0.5 (2.2) +0.3 (4.4) −2.7 (−1.8) +0.9 (2.4) +0.3 (1.4)

+0.5 (2.9) +0.4 (4.2) −0.1 (6.6) +0.3 (9.3) +0.3 (12.7) −1.1 (3.5) +0.1 (2.6) +0.5 (2.5) −0.6 (0.9) −0.7 (1.4)

Unemployment Predicted Actual Prediction error vote vote change change 1.7 2.4 2.5 4.8 7.2 10.1 10.0 11.1 12.5 8.7

−2.9 −5.9 −4.0 * −5.6 −3.2 −4.4 −5.1 −3.1 −1.2

+2.5 +7.9 −13.2 * −4.7 −5.3 −4.9 −17.6 −9.6 −5.7

−5.4 −13.8 +9.2 * −0.9 +2.1 +0.5 +12.5 +6.5 +4.5

Govt Vote:Predicted Change−Actual Change

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15

0

–15 1967.1

year.quarter

2002.2

䊊 – Basic Macroeconomic Model 䉭 – Unexpected Macroeconomic Model

Figure 7.1

The accuracy of Economic voting models over time.

Figure 7.1 summarizes the predictive accuracy of the two models across time. Predictions above the horizontal line in the middle of this figure represent overly optimistic model predictions of government vote change, while those below the line represent overly pessimistic predictions. Across these elections the model with the basic macroeconomic measures outperforms the model with the unexpected economic measures in six of the nine cases. This figure reinforces the fact that, in terms of these models, 2002 was not a particularly unusual case among Fifth Republic parliamentary elections.

Conclusions From the analyses presented in this chapter, it would appear that despite the wildness of the 2002 presidential elections, widespread voter abstention and media accounts of dramatic left-wing decline, the first round of the 2002 National Assembly elections were more a case of business as usual than a dramatic departure from previous patterns. It is important, however, to note the limitations of these findings and point to some future areas on which research efforts should be focused.

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The results of the analyses presented above lead me to conclude that the first round of the parliamentary elections in 2002 was business as usual. This is on the basis of the size of the error term for single observations analyzed in a multivariate regression model. Such error terms contain the net effect of all of the relevant variables (e.g. campaign effects) omitted from the model in addition to a random shock. Thus we have to qualify any conclusions about what caused the over-predictions of votes for the governing parties in 2002. Another important qualification to keep in mind while viewing these results comes from the fact that the underlying dynamics that have created the aggregate-level phenomena discussed in this chapter took place at the level of individuals. Individuals evaluated the economic and political circumstances in which they found themselves during the summer of 2002 in France and made decisions on the basis of their evaluations about whether to vote and, if they did vote, how to vote. An academic survey was carried out at the time of the election, so it should be possible to eventually model the impact of the economy on political behavior at the individual level.

Appendix: details of the two cross-national models of economic voting Both of the models upon which the predictions for the 2002 elections were based were estimated on 135 cases from between 1970 to 1994 from Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States. The following are ordinary least squares (OLS) Estimates of the parameters of interest: Model 1: Governing Party Votet = 2.29 + 0.853a * Governing Party Votet−1 − 0.077a * (Clear Government * Governing Party Votet−1) + 0.089 * Growtht + 0.255b * Inflationt − 0.178c * Unemploymentt + 1.138b * Number of Government Partiest + 1.06 * Minority Governmentt − 0.052 * (Minority Government * Government Duration) Model 2: Governing Party Votet = 6.41a + 0.819a * Governing Party Votet−1 − 0.071a * (Clear Government * Governing Party Votet−1) + 0.618b * Unexpected Growtht − 1.102 * Unexpected Inflationt − 0.249b * Unemploymentt + 1.158b * Number of Government Partiest + 1.62 * Minority Governmentt − 0.062 * (Minority Government * Government Duration) R2 for Model 1 = 0.82 R2 for Model 1 = 0.83

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Superscripted ‘a’ represents a two-tailed p-value less than 0.01 for that parameter estimate. Superscripted ‘b’ represents a two-tailed p-value less than 0.05 for that parameter estimate. Superscripted ‘c’ represents a two-tailed p-value less than 0.10 for that parameter estimate. The variables Unexpected Growth and Unexpected Inflation were measured by first estimating the following autoregressive models for each indicator: Yt = γ1 + γ2Yt−1 + γ3(Yt−1 − Yt−5) + δ1Q2t + δ1Q3t + δ1Q4t + εt Where the Ys are the macroeconomic measure at selected time intervals (the quarter immediately preceding, and the one year change for the preceding quarter in order to account for business cycle trends), the Qs are dummy variables for quarters (controls for seasonal fluctuations), the γs and δs are parameters to be estimated, and εt is the stochastic error term. Notes 1. The first round of elections to the National Assembly offer, in my opinion, the best opportunity to evaluate theories of economic voting with actual election results in France. This is the case because voters in these elections have the opportunity to most directly evaluate the political parties that have occupied the various positions of power in the national government of the nation. 2. The exact specifications, parameter estimates and other details for these models are presented in the appendix at the end of this chapter. 3. We were unable to include the 1978 elections because of changes in the party system that made it impossible to calculate a lagged value for our dependent variable.

References Anderson, C. Blaming the Government: Citizens and the Economy in Five European Democracies (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1995). Dorussen, H. and Palmer, H. ‘The Context of Economic Voting: An Introduction’, in H. Dorussen and M. Taylor (eds), Economic Voting (New York: Routledge, 2002). Gujarati, D. Basic Econometrics (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995). Lewis-Beck, M. Economics and Elections: The Major Western Democracies (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1988). Lewis-Beck, M. and Paldam, M. ‘Economic Voting: Introduction’, Electoral Studies, 19 (2000) 113–122. Lijphart, A. Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999). Paldam, M. ‘How Robust is the Vote Function?: A Study Seventeen Countries over Four Decades’ in H. Norpoth, M. Lewis-Beck and J.-D Lafay (eds), Economics

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and Politics: The Calculus of Support (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991). Palmer, H. and Whitten, G. ‘The Electoral Impact of Unexpected Inflation and Economic Growth’, British Journal of Political Science, 29 (1999) 623–639. Powell, G.B. and Whitten, G. ‘A Cross-National Analysis of Economic Voting: Taking Account of the Political Context’, American Journal of Political Science, 37 (1993) 391–414. Strøm, K. Minority Government and Majority Rule (Cambridge University Press, 1990). Tsebelis, G. ‘Decision Making in Political Systems: Veto Players in Presidentialism, Parliamentarism, Multicameralism, and Multipartyism’, British Journal of Political Science, 25 (1995) 289–325. Whitten, G. and Palmer, H. ‘Cross-National Analyses of Economic Voting’, Electoral Studies, 18 (1999) 49–67.

8 Dual Governance and Economic Voting: France and the United States Michael S. Lewis-Beck and Richard Nadeau

Economic voting has become a major paradigm for understanding electoral processes, especially in advanced industrial democracies. Voters in these nations routinely punish governments for economic downturn, or reward them for economic boom. Two such democracies have received special attention – France and the United States. As Lewis-Beck and Stegmaier (2000: 205) observe, in their exhaustive review of the economic voting literature, these two countries are “the most commonly studied.” For both nations, there are numerous investigations of individual opinion surveys or aggregate time series demonstrating that economic variables matter for presidential and legislative election outcomes. But, missing from most of these investigations are institutional features and their influence on the economic vote. For example, the “economy coefficient,” from whatever measure, usually offers itself as a direct general effect, unconditioned by different political rules. Our special concern here is how the institution of what we broadly label dual governance (i.e. cohabitation in France, divided government in the US), conditions the economic vote. The chapter organizes itself into five substantive sections. First, relevant literature receives a brief summary. Second, hypotheses are developed about the comparative effects of dual governance on the economic vote. Third, these hypotheses are given preliminary testing on popularity data, with special attention to the one- versus two-executives difference between the United States and France. Fourth, hypotheses are directly tested against presidential and legislative voting data of both countries. Fifth, the theoretical implications of these effects of dual governance across the two systems are discussed. As shall be seen, despite the ostensible 136

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similarities of dual governance in the two political systems, the impact on the economic vote appears quite different.

Past evidence on dual governance and economic voting: France and the United States For France, there are three relevant studies, for the United States, two. We review these studies, beginning with France. The focus is on how cohabitation – a president of one party coalition and a prime minister of another – impacts the economic vote. Under the Fifth Republic, founded in 1958, there have been three cohabitations, to 2002. Lafay (1991: 130–133), examines the first cohabitation, 1986–1988, with Socialist President Mitterrand and Gaullist Prime Minister Chirac. According to his time series analysis, the popularity of the prime minister remains strongly economically determined with effects unchanged by divided leadership. Lewis-Beck (1997) studies the second cohabitation, 1993–1995, with Socialist President Mitterrand and Gaullist Prime Minister Balladur. His survey results suggest that with cohabitation the popularity of the prime minister is influenced by economic evaluations, while the popularity of the president is not. Finally, Lewis-Beck and Nadeau (2000), investigate the effects of the first two cohabitations on retrospective economic voting in legislative elections. According to their pooled analysis of eight Eurobarometer surveys, from 1984 to 1994, “under cohabitation the economic effect is cut in half” (Nadeau and Lewis-Beck, 2001: 176). These French studies indicate that cohabitation can be a factor in the economic vote. But there are difficulties. Lafay (1991: 132) focuses on a single cohabitation, and his time series actually contains only about a year under cohabitation, which might easily account for the null results. Lewis-Beck (1997: 318) bases his study on a small pilot sample (N = 400) from the Paris Basin only, rather than all France, and looks just at one cohabitation. Nadeau and Lewis-Beck (2001) fail to include the third cohabitation (1997–2002), gloss over the important dynamic between support for the president and support for the prime minister, and provide no information on macrolevel electoral outcomes. For the United States, there are two studies that deal directly with divided government (president of one party and House of another) and economic voting in national contests. Norpoth (2001) examines the national elections of 1992 and 1996; both occurred under divided government (Republican President–Democratic House in 1992; Democratic President–Republican House in 1996). Analyzing exit poll data, he

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finds no effects: “Divided government, in sum, does not thwart economic voting in American national elections, neither in 1992 nor in 1996” (Norpoth, 2001: 426). The divided government hypothesis is explored by Nadeau and Lewis-Beck (2001), as part of a larger study on national economic voting in presidential elections. Via a pooled analysis of American National Election Studies (1956–1996), they variously test the hypothesis that retrospective presidential economic voting weakens under divided, as opposed to unified, government. Again, no effects are uncovered: “In sum, we find no support for the divided government hypothesis” (Nadeau and Lewis-Beck, 2001: 171). These authors admit that this null finding is “counterintuitive” (Nadeau and Lewis-Beck, 2001: 171). We, too, are perplexed. There are many possible reasons why these US studies come up dry. One, of course, is that the null finding is correct. Another is a possible fallacy of inference, from the part to the whole. Perhaps the effects of divided government on economic voting are “emergent,” making themselves visible only at the aggregate level. This notion is not as far-fetched as it may seem. Despite the macro-reality of divided government and its policy consequences, individual level survey studies mostly show purposive split-ticket voting to be non-existent (Alvarez and Schousen, 1993; Petrocik and Doherty, 1996; Sigelman et al., 1997). In other words, divided government may signal its effects on the economic vote only at the aggregate level of analysis. Kramer (1983), in a landmark study, makes such an argument, claiming that the effects of economic voting are more accurately found with national aggregate – as opposed to individual survey – data. We eventually follow his lead below, analyzing national aggregate election returns, for both the United States and France.

Dual governance and economic voting: hypotheses According to Lewis-Beck and Paldam (2000), in their introduction to a new collection of political economy papers, the basic rationale for economic voting comes from the Responsibility Hypothesis: “voters hold the government responsible for economic events.” The difficulty in casting an economic vote arises when it is not clear who governs. In Western democracies generally, government may be shared by several parties, in a ruling coalition. Under that condition, there is “diffusion of government responsibility,” with voters sometimes not knowing who is in charge, or perhaps deciding it is another of the incumbent parties (Lewis-Beck, 1988: 108–109). Such “coalition complexity” may reduce

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the strength of economic voting (Lewis-Beck, 1988: 109; Powell and Whitten, 1993; Nadeau et al., 2002). Within one nation, responsibility may spread itself over multiple parties in government. Further, within one nation, responsibility may be similarly spread when there are multiple centers of government headed by different parties. Our focus here concerns the simple case of the latter, that is dual governance, with two governing bodies headed by opposing parties. The central proposition is that dual governance changes the impact of economics on the vote. For both the United States and France, the dominant hypothesis is that the economy will have a diminished effect on the presidential vote, when unified governance is lacking. However, it is important to recognize that the economic vote may be strengthened, as well as weakened. For certain elected offices, dual governance may render responsibility for the economy more visible, not less. Under dual governance, economic policymaking authority shifts away from the president, toward the legislature. Given this circumstance, the impact of economics on support for the legislative majority and its leadership may actually increase. An implication is that government responsibility may not become less clear; rather, it may merely shift its object of attribution. Economics, in that case, does not cease to move voters, it just takes another path. Below, we offer preliminary testing of these hypotheses on popularity data, taking particular care to unfold the more complicated leadership arrangements in the French case. Then, we move to direct testing of the comparative aggregate voting models themselves.

Economics and leadership: the french duo, the American Solo Whereas the United States constitution provides for one national executive, the constitution of Fifth Republic France provides for two executives, a president and a prime minister. [See Safran (1995: 9–14) for a useful review in English of these constitutional provisions.] Engineered by General de Gaulle, this constitution was intended to give the president extensive power. The president is commander in chief of the Army, appoints the prime minister, leads the cabinet, may evoke emergency powers, certifies acts of the National Assembly and may call for its dissolution. While the rules, at least in principle, heavily favor the president, the prime minister is not without power. As head of the government, he or she “determines and conducts the policy of the nation” (Article 20). The prime minister almost invariably has had a

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distinguished political career prior to appointment and, as chief of parliament directs the details of the nation’s domestic policies. Thus, even under unified government, the prime minister is an important leader of the country, though a distant second to the President. With the advent of cohabitation, the relative power of the two executives changes. The prime minister is clearly in charge of national policy. The president, while in theory still the head of state, becomes a more symbolic actor, carrying out official ceremonies and attempting to exercise certain foreign policy prerogatives. The essential reason for the power reversal comes from the fact that the president no longer controls the National Assembly majority. He must appoint a prime minister acceptable to the opposition, which of course has its own legislative agenda. Further, dissolution, a limited option in any case, offers little hope unless it is likely to return a friendly majority. The president, as Mitterrand first learned in 1986, is forced to cohabit with a political opponent, who then sets up his or her own government. In these circumstances, the President is not without power, but it has dwindled to that emanating from his constitutional status, his foreign policy role, and his residual political influence. We observe, then, that assigned governmental responsibility, especially for the domestic political economy, varies according to institutional context. Without cohabitation, the president has prime responsibility for the economy, the prime minister secondary responsibility. With cohabitation, the situation switches, the president becoming secondary. Assuming the validity of these scenarios, then a political economy model of the presidential vote that takes cohabitation into account should perform noticeably better than one that does not. Preliminary evidence from Lewis-Beck (1997: 317–322) implies this does happen. He suggests these two contrasting models of the French presidential vote (second round): Vote = a + b (Economic growth) Vote = a + b (Economic growth) − c (Economic growth × Cohabitation)

(8.1) (8.2)

The first model makes the argument, admittedly stylized, that the vote is entirely economically determined. The second model argues, via the multiplicative term, that cohabitation is also important and that it blunts the economic effect. When estimated, Eq. (8.2) turned in a markedly superior performance to Eq. (8.1) (Lewis-Beck, 1997: 322). It yielded a much higher adjusted R2, a lower Standard Error of Estimate, and

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a greatly improved point prediction of the 1995 result (a Chirac victory under cohabitation). However, the model, attractive as far as it goes, poses serious limitations for our analysis. First, it is based on a perilously low N = 6 (the direct presidential elections of the Fifth Republic to that time). Second, with presidential vote itself as the dependent variable, there is no way to test directly our hypothesis that support for the nation’s alternative leader, the prime minister, finds a stronger link to the economy during cohabitation. Fortunately, a solution is readily at hand. For both the president and the prime minister, comparable popularity data are available. A national sample of the adults are regularly asked, about the president and the prime minister, respectively, “Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with X?” The correlation between such responses, measured near the election, and actual presidential and legislative election results has been about 0.80 (Lewis-Beck and Rice, 1992: 123–124). Therefore, popularity, recorded prior to the major national elections, serves as a useful proxy for presidential and prime ministerial electoral support, as well as allowing comparability of results across the two offices. Our expectation is that the popularity functions for these two executives will show the hypothesized switches in the economy coefficients. In particular, there will be stronger economic effects on presidential support under unified government, but stronger economic effects on prime ministerial support under cohabitation. We specify the following general model, and provide details on the measurement of each variable below: Popularity = a + b (Economy) + c (Economy × Cohabitation)

(8.3)

where Popularity = percentage of public satisfied with the leader just before the national election, poll data 1967–1999; Economy = the annual economic growth of GDP per capita; Cohabitation is a dummy variable, scored 1 in 1988 (Presidential and Legislative elections), 1994 (European elections), 1995 (Presidential Elections), 1999 (European elections), and 0 otherwise, indicating unified government.1 Data sources are discussed in Appendix A and Appendix B. The equation makes a straightforward political economy argument. Government support is determined by economic performance, that performance conditioned on whether or not there is cohabitation. When estimated for the president, the expectation is that c < 0, showing an economic effect depressed by cohabitation. When estimated for the prime minister, the expectation is that c > 0, showing an economic

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effect enhanced by cohabitation. The equation is estimated with ordinary least squares (OLS) for the president and the prime minister, in turn, in Table 8.1 (see Columns 1 and 2). The results favor the hypotheses. Presidential support is significantly affected by economic growth, but that impact is strongly shaped by cohabitation (see column 1, Table 8.1). In general, a one percentage point growth increase yields an expected 4.5 percentage point increase in support. However, the negative interaction coefficient indicates that the effect is more than halved under cohabitation (4.5 − 2.9 = 1.6). Prime minister support is also significantly affected by economic growth, and again that impact is strongly shaped by cohabitation (see Column 2, Table 8.1). In general, a one percentage point growth increase yields an expected 2.7 percentage point increase in support. However, as the positive interaction coefficient indicates, that effect was almost doubled under cohabitation (2.7 + 2.4 = 5.1). These rival cohabitation effects are conveniently summarized in Table 8.2. We observe that the French executive, president or prime minister, is always held accountable to the economy, regardless of the institutional arrangement. Even under cohabitation, the president,

Table 8.1 The dual governance effect on the economics and popularity link, for France and the United States France 1967–1999 Presidential popularity (1) Economy Economy × Divided or Cohabitation Intercept N R2 (adj.)

4.5 (1.3)** −2.9 (1.9)* 37.6 (3.4)** 18 0.39

Prime ministerial popularity (2) 2.7 (0.85)** 2.4 (1.3)* 32.9 (2.3)** 18 0.50

USA 1964–2000 Presidential popularity (3) 3.3 (1.9)* −0.68 (2.2) 42.3 (6.4)** 10 0.16

Entries are OLS coefficients with standard errors in parentheses. ** p < 0.01, * p < 0.05 (one-tailed). Presidential popularity is measured in the third quarter of presidential election years in the United States. Presidential and prime ministerial popularity are measured in the first quarter of election years for France. The Economy is the annual percent change of GDP per capita in the first quarter of election years for France and the third quarter of presidential election years for the United States. Divided in the United States refers to elections held when the party of the sitting president does not control the House. Cohabitation in France refers to elections held when the party of the sitting president does not belong to the governmental coalition. Sources: See the appendices.

Michael S. Lewis-Beck and Richard Nadeau 143 Table 8.2 Summary effects of economics on French executive popularity, cohabitation versus no cohabitation

Economic account of president Economic account of prime minister

Cohabitation

No cohabitation

1.6a 5.1 c

4.5b 2.7d

1.6 = [4.5 − 2.9( + 1)], from the presidential equation in Column 1, Table 8.1. 4.5 = [4.5 − 2.9(0)], from the presidential equation in Column 1, Table 8.1. c 5.1 = [2.7 + 2.4( + 1)], from the prime ministerial equation in Column 2, Table 8.1. d 2.7 = [2.7 + 2.4(0)], from the prime ministerial equation in Column 2, Table 8.1. a

b

though his power is greatly curtailed, cannot fully escape blame for a bad economy. That burden of responsibility almost triples, however, under unified government (4.5/1.6 ≈ three times). Heavy as that burden is, it is somewhat exceeded by that of the prime minister during cohabitation (at 5.1). Thus, cohabitation alters the weight, and the object, of the economic sanction. When the president directs the government, he is held more responsible for the economy, and rewarded or punished accordingly. But when the prime minister directs the government, it is that leader who is largely held economically responsible. Thus, French voters appear sophisticated in their political economic calculations, making the appropriate strategic choices, as the conditions of governance change. Dual governance, then, clearly influences the economics–presidential popularity linkage in France. We have hypothesized that it also influences this linkage in the United States. But does it? In Table 8.1 (Column 3), the model of Eq. (8.3) is estimated for US popularity data, over a comparable time period of elections. The statistically significant economics coefficient suggests that, in general, a one percentage point boost in economic growth raises presidential popularity by over three percentage points. This is an unsurprising finding. US popularity functions have been much studied and the summary conclusion by Norpoth (1985: 180) still stands: “the economy matters for presidential popularity.” What is surprising, however, is the statistically insignificant coefficient for the interaction term, indicating that divided government has no impact on this economics–popularity link. The implication is that the American public holds the president accountable for the economy, regardless of whether he shares power for its direction with a rival Congress. Comparatively, we thus have contradictory findings. Under the French two-executive system, dual governance seems to influence

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the economic vote; but, under the American single-executive system, dual governance seems not to influence the economic vote. The contradiction merits further exploration, in an examination of actual ballot results, as is done below.

Dual governance and the economic vote: France compared to the United States To this point, the dependent variables under analysis have come from opinion surveys. This parallels the limited past work on cohabitation and the economic vote that, with the exception of a part of one study (Lewis-Beck, 1997), examines dependent variables from survey data. Useful as electoral responses in the polls are, they are finally no substitute for the real thing – the actual vote result itself. The same criticism could be leveled at the US studies reviewed earlier. The Norpoth (2001), and Nadeau and Lewis-Beck (2001), investigations may be well-done, but they focus on the individual level survey response of declared vote. We think it is important ultimately to look at real votes, measured at the national level, for at least three reasons. First, if national patterns consistently show little impact, then the individual level patterns, French or American, may be of little practical import for the electoral system. Second, if national patterns consistently show a strong impact, then it would reinforce the positive French survey findings and undercut the null US survey findings reported thus far. Third, if national patterns show a different effect from one country to the next, much is learned theoretically about the particular rules of dual governance that encourage or discourage economic voting in democracies. Our expectation is that dual governance will, on balance, weaken the economic vote in both countries. Again, the essential rationale comes from the Responsibility Hypothesis. In a national election, under dual governance, voters will see economic authority as split between two bodies, the executive and the legislature. Therefore, they will reward (or punish) the incumbent less. The model reads as follows, and employs the measures noted below: Incumbent vote = a + b (Economy) − c (Economy × Dual Governance)

(8.4)

where Incumbent vote = vote share of the incumbent party (defined as the Democrat or Republican share of the Democrat + Republican total in the United States, and as the Left or Right share of the Left + Right party

Michael S. Lewis-Beck and Richard Nadeau 145

total in France); Economy = Annual growth of GDP per capita in the quarter before the election; Dual Governance is a dummy variable, for France scored 1 in the 1988 (Presidential and Legislative elections), 1994 (European elections), 1995 (Presidential Elections), 1999 (European elections), and 0 otherwise, for the United States scored 1 for all years except 1964, 1966, 1968, 1978, 1980, and 1994 when it is scored 0 indicating the party of the President and the House are the same. The data sources are described in Appendix A and Appendix B. We strove to achieve equivalency, in terms of election type, time span, and sample size, in order to control for various sources of noise that might render our comparative results spurious. Thus, for the United States we look at presidential and House midterm elections, 1964–2000, N = 19. For France, we look at presidential, legislative and European parliament elections (recall note 1), 1967–1999, N = 18. Eq. (8.3) was estimated (OLS) against these data, and the results reported in Table 8.3. In general, these findings support previous work showing a strong macro-link between the economy and the incumbent vote in these countries. For instance, for France and the United States, simple correlations between GDP growth and incumbent vote of 0.69 and 0.63, respectively,

Table 8.3 The dual governance effect on economic voting in French and American national elections France 1967–1999 Economy Economy × Divided Economy × Cohabitation Intercept N R2 (adj.)

2.0 (0.61)** −1.6 (0.90)* 46.8 (1.6)** 18 0.35

USA 1964–2000 1.4 (0.50)** 0.30 (0.57) 46.9 (1.2)** 19 0.51

Entries are OLS coefficients with standard errors in parentheses. ** p < 0.01, * p < 0.05 (one-tailed). The dependent variable for the USA is the two-party vote share (Democrat and Republican) of the candidate of the incumbent administration for presidential elections or of the party of the sitting president for House elections. The dependent variable for France is the two-party vote share (Left versus Right) of the incumbent candidate for presidential elections or of the governmental coalition for legislative and European elections. The Economy is the annual percent change in GDP per capita as observed in the third quarter of election years in the USA and in the first quarter of election years for France. Divided in the United States refers to elections held when the party of the sitting president does not control the House. Cohabitation in France refers to elections held when the party of the sitting president does not belong to the governmental coalition. Sources: See the appendices.

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have been reported (Lewis-Beck, 1988: 11). Moreover, the main slope coefficients of the GDP variables themselves are not far from other multivariate, macro-estimates of GNP impact on incumbent vote. [For France, see Lewis-Beck and Rice (1992: 129); for the United States, see Campbell (2000: 24), the November model.] In France, a one percentage point increase in GDP growth yields the general expectation of a two percentage point increase in incumbent vote share. In the United States, the comparable effect is a bit less, at a 1.4 percentage point increase. Are these main economic effects modified by dual governance, as we hypothesized? “Yes,” for the French case, which shows a significant reduction, of 1.6, in the economic effect (see the interaction term coefficient, Column 1, Table 8.3). Indeed, that negative effect is rather large, leaving the residual economic impact at less than one-half of a percentage point (2.0 − 1.6 = 0.4). “No,” for the US case, which shows no significant reduction. (The interaction term coefficient falls far short of conventional levels of statistical significance, and is actually slightly positive. See Column 2, Table 8.3.) How robust are these findings? Numerous tests were run on both the US and French models, to see how robust they were. We examine coefficient stability, time series issues, normality, and the role of outliers, in turn. Are the coefficients stable in a subset analysis by election type? In Table 8.4, the French equation is rerun on national elections only, the European elections excluded (see Column 1). One observes that cohabitation continues to have a significant negative effect, of about the same magnitude, on the economic vote. Also, the US equation is run separately, for presidential elections and House elections (see Columns 2 and 3). The effect of divided government on the economic vote continues to be insignificant. Finally, all the US and French election data of Table 8.3 are pooled, and analyzed in one equation (see Column 4). This pooled model has a respectable statistical fit and a more encouraging sample size. It again demonstrates the strong dual governance influence on the economic vote in France, but not in the United States. These tests suggest the results are quite stable, even in the face of the small sample size and parsimonious specification. Are the Table 8.3 results untrustworthy because the data are time series? The Durbin–Watson values for the US and French models, respectively, are 1.88 and 1.70, indicating that first order autocorrelation is not a problem. Further, the residuals of each model show no troublesome time trend to be modeled. (Looking at the average of the first five and the last five residuals, respectively, the values are quite close: for France, 0.8 and 1.3, for the United States, 1.3 and 0.8. Note

Table 8.4

The dual governance effect on economic voting in French and American elections

Intercept Economy Economy × Cohabitation Economy × Divided N R2 (adj.)

France Legislative and presidentials 1967–1999 (1)

USA Presidentials 1964–2000 (2)

USA Mid-terms 1964–2000 (3)

France–USA (Pooled) 1964–2000 (4)

46.2 (1.5)** 2.3 (0.57)** −2.2 (0.83)**

48.0 (2.9)** 1.7 (0.89)*

45.4 (1.0)** 1.4 (0.44)**

−0.00 (1.0) 10 0.28

−0.67 (0.78) 10 0.61

46.9 (0.96)** 1.7 (0.38)** −1.4 (0.78)* 0.04 (0.49) 37 0.44

13 0.56

Entries are OLS coefficients with standard errors in parentheses. ** p < 0.01, * p < 0.05 (one-tailed). Variable definitions: See Table 8.3. Sources: See the appendices.

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also that they move in the opposite direction from one country to the next.) Additional analysis of residuals also suggests that the error term is normally distributed. (For France, eight of the residuals have a positive sign, ten negative. For the United States, nine of the residuals have a positive sign, ten negative.) Because the data sets are small, with fewer than 20 cases for each country, it is essential to assess the influence of outliers on the estimated effects. Perhaps just a few unusual cases are behind these provocative results. To explore this possibility, we looked at the studentized residuals and Cook’s D, both measures to detect highly influential cases. A cutoff point for the studentized residual is 2.0 since, under the theoretical ideal of no outlier influence whatsoever, the values would tend to be small, with only five percent expected to exceed that cutoff. This is essentially what we find. For France, the largest studentized residual is just 1.8, for the United States there is only one studentized residual over the cutoff, barely missing it at 2.3. Cook’s D, which measures discrepancy and leverage, gives similarly encouraging results. Cook and Weisberg (1982: 345) suggest that Di exceeding 50 percent of the F distribution (df = p, n − p) are large. This critical value is typically close to one, as is the case here, so amounting to a cutoff of 1.0 for Di. The highest D values found, 0.41 for the United States and 0.27 for France, fall far below this cutoff of 1.0. In sum, these findings do not appear to be the product of an outlier problem. Another sort of diagnostic comes from examination of elections known, or believed to be, highly unusual. For the United States, the presidential election of 2000, where Bush won despite a minority of the popular vote, is an outstanding example. For France, the 2002 presidential election, with the surprise first-round performance of Le Pen, and the subsequent Right victory in the legislative contest, serve as outstanding examples there. One might imagine that these unusual elections would be poorly predicted by the model of Table 8.3. However, such is not the case. The US equation (Column 2, Table 8.3) already includes the 2000 election in its estimation. The studentized residual for that election is only −1.03, quite close to the average absolute value of the studentized residual for the series, at 0.86. Thus, compared to all the other US election predictions, the 2000 prediction is good, with only the normal amount of error. For the French equation, we added the 2002 presidential and legislative results (first round), bringing the N to 20.2 The adjusted R2 actually improved, to 0.37. Further, the studentized residuals were small, at 0.29 for the presidential, and − 0.35 for the legislative, elections. These are the second and third smallest studentized residuals in the

Michael S. Lewis-Beck and Richard Nadeau 149

entire series. Clearly, the 2002 elections were not anomalous, compared to the other races. Instead, they are readily predictable from the model of Table 8.3. The results of Table 8.3, on dual governance and economic voting, appear robust to challenges from various regression diagnostics. We have some confidence that the fundamental finding – dual governance matters for economic voting in France but does not matter for economic voting in the United States – is sound. It is to the explanation of this paradoxical reality that we now turn.

Conclusions: resolving the Franco–American economic voting paradox We conclude that, in the French case, dual governance does influence the economic vote. This conclusion is in line with the survey data reviewed, and analyzed, in the foregoing parts of the chapter. French economic voters, faced with dual governance, change their calculus. They punish incumbents less for bad economic policy. In the United States case, by way of contrast, dual governance does not influence the economic vote. If the economy takes a downturn, Americans punish the presidential incumbent just as much, regardless who controls Congress. Again, that conclusion is fully in line with the individual level survey research reviewed herein. American economic voters, faced with dual governance, do not change their calculus at all. Thus, a paradox is posed. Faced with ostensibly the same condition, dual governance, French economic voters respond, but American economic voters do not. What explains this puzzle? Are cultural stereotypes to be invoked? Are the French more clever and sophisticated, the Americans slower and naive? We think not. Both electorates are using their intelligence to equal degree, more or less correctly attributing economic responsibility in their political system, and responding thoughtfully to that attribution. In France, under cohabitation, primary responsibility for managing the national economy really does shift to the prime minister. The French voter takes that shift into account in deciding whether to vote for or against the incumbent. If the election contest is presidential, the probability of an economic vote is rather low, since the presidential incumbent is not the economic manager. If the election contest is parliamentary, the probability of an economic vote is higher, since the legislative incumbent leader is the economic manager. However, that legislative economic vote will not be as strong as it might be, because the voter

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realizes that the prime minister still lacks the economic power a president would have (under unified government). This pattern of attributions, then, accounts for the overall reduction in economic voting during cohabitation. In the United States, under divided government, primary responsibility for directing the national economy remains with the president, not the Congress. As Norpoth (2001: 415) observed: “Regardless, under both Republican and Democratic Presidents, and with Congress in the hands of the opposite party each time, voters assign responsibility for the economy to the president, not Congress.” Since the president is in charge, then he, or his party, should be rewarded or punished at election time. If the economy has gone bad, the vote should go against the president’s party, in either a White House or a congressional race, and irrespective of whether that party holds the legislative majority. The assumption, that the national incumbent in congressional races is always the party of the president, has been central to the US economic voting literature since Kramer (1971), and seems to continue to hold. But is the sole attribution of economic responsibility to the US President and his party a “correct” attribution? “No,” in the obvious sense that other political actors, such as the House and the Federal Reserve Board, do influence the economy. But “yes,” in the sense that, there is only one CEO of the US economy – the president. His personal leadership role does not change, with a change in the partisan make-up of the Congress. For example, if the House acquires a Democratic majority in opposition to President Bush, the House Speaker will not suddenly be seen as the country’s new economic leader. Politicians will still turn, either in support or opposition, to the White House and its national agenda for the economy. Voters know this, perceiving the White House to be where the buck stops (or starts). Here we come to the crucial difference in the two institutional forms of dual governance. In the French case, a real change in economic leadership comes about, whereas in the US case it does not. In France, the president loses his economic authority to another, rival leader. This simply does not happen in the United States. The US President remains the head of the economic state, for there is no one to replace him. Under divided government, his job as economic manager may be harder, but voters perceive that still it is his job and his alone. In some ways dual government in the United States and France is the same. The power of the president is diminished, and the power of the legislature increased. Majority party control of government is divided

Michael S. Lewis-Beck and Richard Nadeau 151

between two-party coalitions. However, the differences outweigh the similarities. In France, the diminution of presidential power is greater, the increase in legislative power more. Majority party control of government is only nominally divided, since it effectively rests in the National Assembly. Indeed, in France the second branch of government, the legislature, becomes the dominant source of national power. The individual who leads the National Assembly, the prime minister, offers a very heavy counterpoise to the president. In the United States, this is simply not the case, for divided government brings forward no rival national leader of comparable stature and power. Thus, for dual governance to affect economic voting, it must involve a serious shift in the center of national executive power, from one party leader to another. Such shifts are unlikely in presidential systems such as in the United States. However, in presidential–parliamentary hybrid systems, such as France, they are not unlikely.

Appendix A: the French data Year

Cohabitation

Vote

Presidential popularity

PM popularity

GDP

1967 1968 1969 1973 1974 1978 1981 1981 1984 1986 1988 1988 1989 1993 1994 1995 1997 1999

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1

54.8 59.6 58.2 53.4 50.8 51.6 48.2 43.2 42.7 49.0 46.0 44.1 52.0 40.4 54.6 52.6 41.6 52.3

63.4 55.8 53.0 60.5 55.7 55.5 36.3 36.3 33.7 38.0 56.7 31.7 47.3 25.3 48.7 49.3 31.3 28.3

44.0 48.0 42.0 44.0 42.7 44.5 25.7 25.7 27.0 35.0 48.0 48.0 41.3 31.0 49.3 48.7 26.0 50.0

2.70 4.18 3.48 4.17 3.56 2.09 −1.09 −1.09 1.27 2.27 3.76 3.76 4.12 −1.61 0.44 1.86 0.82 2.12

Vote – Two-party vote share. ‘Two-party’ means that vote shares are restricted to total for the Left versus total for the Right. Vote shares come from the first ballot, except for presidential elections (second ballot). Source: Inter-Parliamentary Union. Presidential popularity – Popularity of president in the first quarter of the election year. Source: IFOP.

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PM popularity – Popularity of PM in the first quarter of the election year. Source: IFOP. GDP – Annual percent change in GDP per capita as observed in the first quarter of the election year. Source: OECD.

Appendix B: the US data Year

Vote

Divided

Presidential popularity

GDP

1964 1966 1968 1970 1972 1974 1976 1978 1980 1982 1984 1986 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000

61.3 51.3 49.6 45.6 61.8 41.5 48.9 54.4 44.7 44.0 59.2 44.9 53.9 45.8 46.6 46.5 54.7 49.5 50.3

0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1

74 50 39 59 56 26 45 42 34 42 55 62 53 71 36 42 57 63 59

4.08 4.91 4.09 −0.77 4.62 −1.60 3.66 4.03 −2.93 −3.89 5.71 1.62 2.79 −0.17 1.70 2.69 2.60 2.55 4.30

Vote – Two-party vote share. ‘Two-party’ means that vote shares are restricted to Democrats versus Republicans. Source: Office of the Clerk (US House of Representatives). Presidential popularity – Job approval rating of the president in the third quarter of the election year. Source: Gallup. GDP – Annual percent change in GDP per capita as observed in the third quarter of the election year. Source: OECD. Notes 1. At first blush, the reader may find it odd that the elections to the European parliament are counted as national elections. However, Lewis-Beck and Nadeau (2000: 177) have demonstrated that the determinants of French legislative elections and European elections are virtually identical, both responding to the same national cues. Franklin and Van der Eijk (1996) have

Michael S. Lewis-Beck and Richard Nadeau 153 reached the equivalent conclusion for European elections in other countries of Western Europe. 2. The OLS equation, estimated on the French series 1967–2002, reads as follows: V = 46.8** + 2.0** Economy − 1.6* (Economy × Divided) (1.4) (0.56) (0.85) N = 20 R2 = 0.37

References Alvarez, M. and Matthew M. Schousen. 1993. “Policy Moderation or Conflicting Expectations? Testing the Intentional Model of Split-Ticket Voting,” American Politics Quarterly 21: 410–438. Campbell, J.E. 2000. “The Science of Forecasting Presidential Election,” in J.E. Campbell and James C. Garand (eds), Before the Vote: Forecasting American National Elections, Thousand Oaks: Sage, pp. 169–187. Cook, R.D. and S. Weisberg. 1982. Residuals and Influence in Regression, New York: Chapman & Hall. Franklin, M.N. and C. Van der Eijk (eds). 1996. Choosing Europe? The European Electoral and National Politics in the Face of Union, Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press. Kramer, G.H. 1983. “The Ecological Fallacy Revisited: Aggregate – Versus Individuallevel Findings on Economics Elections and Sociotropic Voting,” American Political Science Review 77: 92–111. Lafay, J.-D. 1991. “Political Diarchy and Popularity Functions: Lessons from the 1986 French Experience,” in H. Norpoth, Michael S. Lewis-Beck and J.-D. Lafay (eds), Economics and Politics: The Calculus of Support, Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, pp. 123–140. Lewis-Beck, M.S. 1988. Economics and Elections: The Major Western Democracies, Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press. Lewis-Beck, M.S. 1997. “Who’s the Chef? Economic Voting Under a Dual Executive,” European Journal of Political Research 31(3): 315–325. Lewis-Beck, M.S. and R. Nadeau. 2000. “French Electoral Institutions and the Economic Vote,” Electoral Studies 19(2): 171–182. Lewis-Beck, M.S. and M. Paldam. 2000. “Economic Voting: An introduction,” Electoral Studies 19(2): 113–121. Lewis-Beck, M.S. and M. Stegmaier. 2000. “Economics Determinants of Electoral Outcomes,” Annual Review of Political Science 3: 183–219. Lewis-Beck, M.S. and T. Rice. 1992. Forecasting Elections, Washington: CQ Press. Nadeau, R. and Lewis-Beck, M.S. 2001. “National Economic Voting in US Presidential Elections,” Journal of Politics 63(1): 159–181. Nadeau, R., R.G. Niemi and A. Yoshinaka. 2002. “A Cross-National Analysis of Economic Voting: Taking Account of the Political Context across Time and Nations,” Electoral Studies 21: 403–423. Norpoth, H. 1985. “Politics, Economics, and the Cycle of Presidential Popularity,” in Economic Conditions and Electoral Outcomes: The United States and Western Europe. Heinz Eulau and Michael S. Lewis-Beck (eds), New York: Agathon, pp. 167–186.

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Norpoth, H. 2001. “Divided Government and Economic Voting,” Journal of Politics 63(2): 414–435. Petrocik, J.R. and J. Doherty. 1996. “The Road to Divided Government: Paved Without Intention,” in Peter F. Galderisi (ed.), Divided Government, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Powell, G.B. Jr. and Guy D. Whitten. 1993. “A Cross-National Analysis of Economic Voting: Taking Account of the Political Context,” American Journal of Political Science 37(2): 391–414. Safran, W. 1995. The French Polity, 5th edn, New York: Longman. Sigelman, L., Paul Wahlbeck and Emmett Buell, Jr. 1997. “Vote Choice and the Preference for Divided Government: Lessons of 1992,” American Journal of Political Science 41: 879–894.

9 Stuck between a Rock and a Hard Place: Electoral Dilemmas and Turnout in the 2002 French Legislative Elections Thomas Gschwend and Dirk Leuffen

Introduction How does cohabitation affect turnout? Cohabitation has been differently evoked to explain the outcomes of the 2002 French elections: Whereas some authors blamed the long cohabitation between President Chirac and Prime Minister Jospin for Jean-Marie Le Pen’s success at the presidential elections (Parodi, 2002), others held the issue of cohabitation responsible for the outcome of the legislative elections.1 However, the impact of the issue of cohabitation on election turnout has not been quantitatively assessed. In this chapter we analyse the impact of the issue of cohabitation on turnout in the French legislative elections 2002. We here treat cohabitation as the French version of divided government 2 in order to establish a comparative perspective, arguing that research on French politics can profit from theories and findings of general debates in the literature. At the same time the case of France can stimulate and improve comparative research on divided government, if at least by pointing out seemingly counter intuitive phenomena for other political systems. Elections are the central link between constituents and representatives. Through elections, citizens are able to participate in policy-making – for the most part – indirectly by choosing policymakers. It is the way to hold politicians accountable. Moreover, competitive elections also establish a reverse link since elected representatives have to pay attention to their constituents in order to get re-elected. Understanding why people 155

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participate in elections is thus one of the core questions in order to understand the nature of representation, the degree of responsiveness of a given polity and the functioning of the democratic political process at large. By all means, there is already a vast body of literature trying to explain participation at the polls. By investigating the impact of cohabitation on turnout, however, we add a new explanation of abstention. In a catalogue compiled by Bréchon (1998: 34–40) the author explains abstention in France with socioeconomic variables, anti-political sentiments of the non-voters and a loose compilation of factors comprising various forms of situational and rationalist forms of non-participation. Bréchon’s catalogue thus clearly contains most dimensions common in the political behaviour literature such as socioeconomic status (SES) and alienation from parties and the political system. However, another dimension that is usually called “abstention from indifference” (also see Davis et al., 1970: 437; Enelow and Hinich, 1984: 90) is not included in Bréchon’s catalogue. Abstention from indifference is assumed to occur when eligible voters are cross-pressured; they feel torn between policy and common non-policy issues such as candidate characteristics (Enelow and Hinich, 1984: 80ff). As an addition to this common understanding of indifference we argue here that in the 2002 French legislative elections a large part of voters were confronted with dilemmas resulting from cross-pressures of policy or partisan and polity, or as we term them here, regime preferences. We investigate whether in 2002 the question of a future cohabitation was an issue that cross-pressured individual voters bringing about electoral indifference and, ultimately, making them more likely to abstain. The chapter is structured in the following manner: We start off by briefly reviewing the literature on turnout and abstention. We then develop a theory of abstention from indifference caused by partisanregime cross-pressures. Based on this theory we generate two hypotheses that are tested in a comprehensive turnout model. Besides variables measuring partisan and regime preferences we also control for traditional explanations of turnout such as SES and alienation in this model. Our analysis is based on data derived from a survey that we conducted between the presidential and the legislative elections (Schmitt and Gschwend, 2003). Estimation results and statistical simulations provide evidence that regime preferences play a decisive role in the decision to participate in an election. When someone’s regime preferences conflict with his or her partisan preferences, the probability of abstention was assumed to rise – in the first round of the 2002 parliamentary election

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this held especially for supporters of the left. Finally, we conclude by evaluating the impact of cohabitation on turnout in the 2002 French legislatives and beyond.

Abstention in France The abstention rate of 35.58 per cent in the first round of the 2002 legislative elections just beat the Fifth Republic’s legislatives abstention record of the year of 1988 that amounted to 34.26 per cent. The growing abstention rates since the 1970s have given rise to lamentos over the crisis of representation (Lijphart, 1997) and the “dépolitisation des citoyens”. 3 Abstention has become one of the most studied fields of electoral behaviour. In the case of France since Lancelot’s early monograph on abstention (Lancelot, 1968), various articles have been published on the subject (Rosenthal and Sen, 1973; Chiche and Dupoirier, 1998; Subileau and Toinet, 1989; Appleton, 2000). A fine summary on the state of the art is given by Bréchon (1998: 17–42). In the literature on abstention in France the authors usually distinguish between non-registration (non-inscription) and abstention. The estimations on the non-registration rates vary between about 4 per cent and 11 per cent of the electorate (Appleton, 2000: 210), Bréchon assumes about 10 per cent non-registration (Bréchon, 1998: 19). In this chapter we focus on actual abstention. However, we also treat voting “blanc et nul” (blank and invalid) as abstention, since the indifference structure to be analysed here is assumed to lead to either of the two behaviours.4 How is abstention explained for the case of France? Bréchon differentiates between three types of abstention dominant in France: Firstly, Bréchon explains abstention with social indicators such as low SES, secondly by anti-political sentiments that imply critical assessments of the political system as well as the political elites and, thirdly, reasons that comprise, for example, rational decisions of voters who weigh costs and benefits of their electoral participation and only vote when they expect their vote to be decisive. Other examples of non-voters are supporters who follow their favoured party’s call to abstain, voters who cannot repeat their first-ballot electoral choice in the second ballot and feel hostile towards the remaining candidates (Converse and Pierce, 1986: 344) or supporters who abstain in second-order elections to give an indirect wake-up call to their party that currently holds the power (FauvelleAymar et al., 2000).5 However, an abstention from indifference resulting from psychological cross-pressured preference orders is not included in Bréchon’s catalogue of abstention.6

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Cross-pressures and turnout No matter whether you prefer the “Columbia”, “Michigan” or “Rochester” school, traditional models of voting behaviour agree that voters are likely to vote for the party they like most. Although they have different models of an individual’s decision-making process they assume that voters are able to form partisan preferences that help them to decide whether they go to the polls and for which party they are going to vote. Thus, a partisan preference is a major yardstick that helps them to come to grips with their vote-choice decision. What happens, though, if voters’ partisan preferences cannot be of any help to them because voters feel cross-pressured, that is, they feel torn between two or more parties? Lazarsfeld et al., can be considered the pioneers of the effect of crosspressures on partisan preference and voting behaviour in general (Lazarsfeld et al., 1948: 53, 60, 61). For Lazarsfeld et al. cross-pressures are “conflicts and inconsistencies among the factors which influence vote decision. [ . . . ] cross pressures upon the voter drive him in opposite directions” (Lazarsfeld et al., 1948: 53). The sources of these crosspressures stem from the combination of conflicting sociological factors. Campbell et al. use the term cross-pressure to refer to an attitude conflict bearing on the individual (Campbell et al., 1960: 80). For them the degree of attitude consistency determines not only the time when an individual finally reaches a firm vote intention, but they also suspect that crosspressures arising from inconsistent attitude objects are likely to reduce the probability of turnout (Campbell et al., 1960: 83). In rational choice approaches, which centre on individual utility-maximising strategies as a decision criterion, a theory of abstention from indifference has been elaborated in more depth (Davis et al., 1970; Riker and Ordeshook, 1973; Enelow and Hinich, 1984; Thurner and Eymann, 2000). In spatial models of voting behaviour abstention from indifference occurs when two parties or candidates have the same Euclidian distance from the voter’s ideal point and (s)he therefore may abstain from voting “because it simply does not make much difference to him who wins” (Enelow and Hinich, 1984: 90). 7 What if voters employ various utility functions? Or similarly: what if voters not only form partisan preferences but also form preferences about the consequences of an election on the type or structure of government? Do voters form regime preferences, that is, do they prefer unified over divided government or vice versa, and cast their vote accordingly to let their vote choice reflect their regime preferences? 8 If voters form regime

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preferences, then these preferences should influence their decisionmaking process as well.9 The election campaigns made the cohabitation issue highly salient.10 Many commentators blamed the cohabitation issue for the election outcome. The structure of the two sets of two elections also potentially enabled what might be called regime concerned voting behaviour. Voting behaviour is regime concerned, when individuals integrate the expected regime implications of their vote choice into their decision calculus. 11 How can regime preferences play out in the super election year of 2002 such that partisan and regime preferences stay in conflict with one another? Right before the first round of the parliamentary election in June of 2002 voters clearly knew that Chirac was re-elected President and which regime implications their legislative vote choices had 12: Following a bipolar understanding of French politics a vote choice for the moderate right increased the probability of a return to unified government, while a vote choice for the left increased the probability of another cohabitation. However, this particular structure of elections – after the reduction of presidential term to five years and the modification of the electoral calendar can augment dilemmas for voters. Voters may have contrasting partisan and regime preferences that they might integrate into their decision-making process. In 2002 when an eligible voter at the same time supported a party of the left and a unified government he or she faced such a cross-pressure situation. A similar dilemma, of course, applied for a supporter of the right who actually favoured divided government. 13 How do voters solve such cross-pressure dilemmas? Voters could either cast their vote in accordance with their partisan preferences or cast a vote that reflects their regime preferences. Alternatively they may decide to abstain altogether. When partisan and regime preferences neutralise one another, the voter might resolve the resulting cross-pressure situation by abstaining from the election. The following two hypotheses sum up these considerations:

1. Supporters of the left preferring unified government (i.e. partisan and regime preferences are conflicting) are more likely to abstain than supporters of the left who prefer divided government. 2. Supporters of the right preferring divided government (i.e. partisan and regime preferences are conflicting) are more likely to abstain than supporters of the right who prefer unified government.

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Operationalisation The data we analyse here comes from a survey conducted between the second round of the presidential elections and the first round of the elections for the Assemblée nationale.14 The respondents thus knew that Jacques Chirac was re-elected as President. Our dependent variable, turnout at the first round of the legislatives, is dichotomously scored one if the respondent intends to vote for a particular party candidate and zero otherwise including casting an invalid or blank ballot. To investigate the impact of regime preferences on turnout 15 we first had to identify a voter’s attitude towards cohabitation. For this we used the following item: «S’agissant d’une éventuelle future cohabitation, de quelle opinion vous sentez-vous le plus proche?»16 Then, respondents were presented the following alternatives: (a) «une cohabitation serait une bonne chose pour la France», or (b) «une cohabitation serait une mauvaise chose pour la France». 17 How do respondents generate an answer to such a question? From research on the survey response, we know that voters simply make one up if they have no ready-made answer they could provide (Zaller, 1992; Zaller and Feldman, 1992). To make-up an answer, it is likely that respondents in an interview situation encode this question purely in a partisan way since they are likely to have at least some kind of partisan orientation to draw on. Encoded in this manner and given the outcome of the presidentielles, leftists should therefore favour cohabitation while voters on the right should consequently oppose cohabitation. A purely partisan interpretation of the issue, however, can be neglected for the group that we are primarily interested in, which are the eligible voters who express contrasting regime and partisan preferences. Our hypotheses predict that if voters’ partisan and regime preferences are conflicting, then they are more likely to abstain than voters where partisan and regime preferences are in line. Thus besides voters’ attitudes towards cohabitation we need to measure their partisan preferences as well. We derive every respondent’s partisan preference order from standard 10-point party likes/dislikes scales to find out his or her most preferred party. Supporters of the political right are coded 1 if they most prefer a party of the political right, such as Union pour la démocracie française (UDF), Rassemblement pour la république (RPR) or Démocratie liberale

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(DL). 18 Analogously, supporters of the political left are coded 1 if they most prefer a party of the left, such as Parti socialiste (PS), the Greens, Parti communiste français (PCF) or Mouvement des citoyens (MDC).19 The excluded category, thus, consists of respondents who most prefer parties of the extreme left and right. 20 All together we have likes/dislikes scales for nine parties including all parties above as well as Front national (FN) (extreme right) and Lutte ouvrière (LO) (extreme left). We will not engage in the debate on whether left–right ideological attachment or party identification should be used as political anchor in France (Converse and Pierce, 1993; Fleury and Lewis-Beck, 1993a,b; Fauvelle-Aymar et al., 2000: 398). Instead, in addition to party preferences we also control for ideological self-placement in order to determine broadly where a voter is anchored into the political realm. Ideology is measured as respondent’s self-placement on 11-point left/right scale recoded to a 0 to 1 scale where higher values reflect a self-placement further on the right. In order to test our main hypotheses we construct two dummy variables indicating whether or not partisan and regime preferences are conflicting. Thus supporters of the left score 1 on the “regime-left” dummy if they oppose cohabitation and supporters of the right score 1 on the “regime-right” dummy if they favour cohabitation. Thus we expect both dummies to be significantly negative since voters faced with this crosspressure situation should be less likely to turnout. In our sample we find that about 15 per cent of the supporters of the right favour cohabitation, that is, they report regime preferences that stay in contrast with their partisan preferences. For supporters of the left the respective number is even higher. Here almost every third supporter of the left reports a regime preference that cross-pressures his or her partisan preference. Moreover, every fourth respondent that plans to abstain faces such a cross-pressure situation. These people are on average slightly higher educated and place themselves ideologically more to the left than the average respondent in our sample. Our main hypotheses are geared towards explaining turnout at the individual level that should operate above and beyond well-known and often replicated findings about hypothetical causal mechanisms that predict turnout. It is important to control for these alternative causal mechanisms in order to establish that there is a specific cross-pressure effect on turnout and separate it from the effects of the remaining variables to assess the particular strength of this cross-pressure effect on turnout (Gschwend, 2003). Following Brèchon’s (1998) typology of abstention in France, we control for alternative hypotheses by including the following variables in our model. First, to control for the socioeconomic

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status of the respondent we include the respondent’s age (ranging from 18 to 84 in our sample) in our model as well as 0 to 1 scales for education and income. 21 We refer to the Appendix for the exact coding. Second, in order to account for the anti-political dimension that is thought to partly explain turnout behaviour we include measures for partisan alienation, political interest and political efficacy. Partisan alienation refers to the feeling of minimal connection to one’s most preferred party.22 We measure the intensity of that feeling by the difference of a respondent’s placement of his or her most preferred party from the theoretical maximum value (i.e., 10) on the party likes/dislikes scale and recode it to a 0 to 1 scale. Political interest is known to have an impact on an individual’s decision to participate in the election (Lazarsfeld et al., 1948: 47; Campbell et al., 1960: 102; Lancelot, 1968: 162–167; Verba and Nie, 1972). We measure it subjectively by a respondent’s selfplacement on a 4-point scale ranging from 0 (“not at all interested”) to 1 (“very interested”). Finally, starting with Campbell et al. (1954: 187) the political behaviour literature suggests that political efficacy is also a strong predictor of turnout. We construct an additive political efficacy index, reflecting a respondent’s subjective perception of political competence to influence the political system, based on four efficacy-items to control for that. We refer to the Appendix for the exact wording.23 Third, in order to account for the election-specific dimension, we measure the impact of abstention from indifference. As we have argued, indifference can arise not only because respondents feel cross-pressured given their policy preferences, something the current literature suggests; in addition we propose that abstention from indifference might occur because a voter’s partisan and regime preferences are conflicting. We assume that respondents’ policy preferences as well as the importance they attribute to various policies colour their partisan lenses with which they perceive the political realm. At the same time respondents’ partisan preferences reflect to some degree their policy preferences. Parties, in such a respect, can thus to some degree be perceived as policy bundles. Therefore indifferent partisans most prefer a party of the left and of the right at the same time. Hence, we construct a dummy for the group with indifferent partisan preferences. Respondents are coded 1 if they have tied both, a party of the left and the right, on the first rank and 0 otherwise.24

Cohabitation turns me out? In order to test our two hypotheses and assess their substantive impact on the decision to turnout, controlling for rival or complementing

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hypotheses, we estimate a logit model. The coefficient estimates are presented in Table 9.1 whereby the last two independent variables are the key variables to test our hypotheses. Overall, the fit of our turnout model is excellent. Based on this model we correctly predict more than nine out of ten respondents. A naive guess that everyone would turn out given the skewed distribution of the dependent variable would allow one to predict turnout with 91.6 per cent accuracy. Our model yields after all an 8.5 per cent reduction in error over this baseline naive guess.25 The message of the results is unambiguous. The universe of possible explanations of turnout is clearly multidimensional. The anti-political dimension seems to be the main dimension that is able to explain turnout in France. It might be surprising to some observers of French politics but the SES dimension does not contribute above and beyond the anti-political as well as conjunctural dimensions to an explanation of turnout. We find that quite comforting because it shows that a political act like turnout seems to be best explained by Table 9.1 elections

A logit model predicting turnout at the first round of the legislative

Independent variables Constant

Coef.

Std. err.

p

0.871

0.923

0.345

SES dimension Age Education Income

0.020 0.089 −1.238

0.011 0.638 0.929

0.072 0.889 0.183

Anti-political dimension Alienation Political Interest Political Efficacy

−3.143 2.135 3.080

0.815 0.760 0.866

0.000 0.005 0.000

Conjunctural dimension Indifference Ideology Right Left Regime-Right Regime-Left

−0.675 −0.506 −0.341 0.157 1.325 −0.946

0.602 0.725 0.575 0.589 1.071 0.440

0.262 0.485 0.554 0.789 0.216 0.031

N McFadden’s Pseudo R2 Percent reduction in error Percent correctly predicted Note:

705 0.235 8.5 92.3

p-values are for two-tailed tests based on robust (White–Huber) standard errors.

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political and attitudinal variables instead of coarse social characteristics. There might be possible conditional effects of SES factors on turnout that we have not specified here but there are no significant main effects of any conceivable SES variable on turnout, although age comes close. All three indicators of the anti-political dimension – alienation, political interests as well as political efficacy – on the other hand, as expected, exert a significant effect on turnout, confirming prior work on this topic. The main interest of this analysis is, however, in assessing the impact of the conjunctural dimension on turnout. Does this dimension contribute to the explanation of turnout? It seems that voters that are indifferent between a party of the left and a party of the right are not significantly more likely to abstain than to turn out. Thus abstention seems to be no typical way out of this dilemma for respondents with indifferent partisan preferences. 26 If we focus merely on whether respondents are anchored on the left or the right of the political spectrum whereby their polity preferences are in line with their partisan preferences (measured by the “Right” and “Left” dummy), as expected, our results do not provide evidence that such respondents are systematically more likely to turn out or to abstain. However, if respondents feel cross-pressured because they prefer on the one hand a party of the left but on the other hand prefer unified over divided government, as the “Regime-Left” dummy indicates, such respondents are systematically less likely to go to the polls. For such respondents abstention seems to be a way out of this cross-pressure situation – a finding that confirms our first hypothesis. We cannot confirm our second hypothesis, though, since respondents who prefer a party on the right and prefer divided government are not systematically different in their propensity to participate than supporters of the right who favour unified government. Thus, attitudes towards cohabitation seem to exert significant cross-pressures only for supporters of the left. Why is that? We think there are at least two explanations responsible for producing this asymmetry. First, we have the campaign strategy of the left demonising cohabitation early on and thereby making this issue stick with their electorate. Of course, the left run into problems with such a strategy after loosing the presidentielles. Thus the discourse against cohabitation to persuade the public that France needs to restore a coherent executive is likely to produce more cross-pressures on the left than the right. This can only be part of an explanation since the cross-pressure effects on the right are not simply weaker but essentially inexistent. Thus, there has to be a second explanation. Imagine a supporter of the right

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preferring cohabitation because this supporter supposedly favours checking power and balancing policy over a coherent executive. But who should be elected to check power? The left is not really a strong and unified counterpart going into the parliamentary elections and without a charismatic leader it is hard to foresee what kind of balance such a supporter would get. Given the strong showing of Le Pen, a unified government might not be the preferred option but is still a better option than having a strong extreme right in parliament. Thus, rather than abstaining, such supporters do actually turnout overcoming their cross-pressures and, conceivably, also trying to minimise the impact of the extremists, too. Nevertheless, based on our data, abstention by indifference seems to be relevant not merely when respondents feel cross-pressured given their policy preferences, something the literature suggests, but rather when respondents’ clear partisan and regime preferences are not in line with one another. Our results show that abstention by indifference need not be simply a partisan or policy cross-pressure effect. In order to become politically relevant, abstention by indifference has to be associated with a feeling of being torn between policy (or partisan) and polity (or regime) preferences that create cross-pressures. Thus, in addition to partisan indifference, we argue that particular cross-pressure situations might drive voters to abstain. In the case of the 2002 elections they abstain not because they are indifferent between parties but rather because their partisan and regime preferences are conflicting. How strong are these cross-pressure effects compared to other effects? Since a logit model is non-linear and non-additive, the substantive interpretation of these coefficients is not straightforward. The effects of estimated coefficients depend upon values of the other variables and coefficients. To take full advantage of the information available in these estimation results we run some statistical simulations to compute quantities of substantive interest based on these coefficients.27 One way to assess the substantive impact is through “first differences” (King et al., 2000). The idea behind this is to compare the predicted likelihood of turnout of two hypothetical voters who only differ in a characteristic of interest. The difference of the model predictions between these two hypothetical voters represents the substantive impact of this characteristic. So let us define two hypothetical respondents that most prefer a party of the left. Lets assume that both respondents are no different from the average French respondent in our survey in terms of their characteristics on both, the SES as well as the anti-political dimensions. We purposefully let them differ in their attitudes towards cohabitation,

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though. One of them favours divided government, that is, regime preferences are in line with partisan preferences. The simulations reveal that such a respondent has a probability of about 97 per cent of actually turning out at the first round of the legislatives. The other hypothetical respondent opposes divided government and consequently has to deal with this cross-pressure situation. His or her predicted probability of actually turning out drops to about 92 per cent. Thus, having to deal with such a cross-pressure situation between partisan and regime preferences reduces the predicted probability of going to the polls of an otherwise average supporter of the left by about 5 percentage points. This finding has profound consequences for the designing of election campaigns. From this perspective it becomes clear why the campaign managers of the right framed the legislatives as anti-cohabitation elections after winning the presidency. Besides mobilising their own electorate focussing the issue of cohabitation and highlighting its consequences on vote choice, if not persuading to switch sides, it, at least, induces cross-pressures for supporters of the left that can be convinced that cohabitation is a bad idea for France. This was likely to prove successful for supporters of the left as targeted audience since the left had come out against cohabitation early on (Chiroux, 2001a: 94; Schrameck, 2001: 23). Thus, campaigning on this issue seems to demobilise supporters of the left if their regime and partisan preferences are not in line with one another. This might be all the more consequential, of course, the lower the respondent’s political efficacy or political interest is or the more alienated the respondent feels from the political parties. Given lower than average values on the efficacy or interest scales (or higher than average values on the alienation scale) the cross-pressures from conflicting partisan and regime preferences might be enough to tip the see-saw to the abstention side. We, again, use some statistical simulations that allow us to be more precise about the magnitude of this cross-pressure effect and the conditions that might drive an otherwise average voter into abstention. In order to do that we simulate the predicted probability of two classes of hypothetical voters. These voters have an average value on the ideology scale and the same socioeconomic status throughout. Their values on age, income and education are set to the sample mean.28 Moreover, since the cross-pressure effect is anti-symmetric and only applies to supporters of the left, we simulate only the probability of turning out for supporters of the left. For the first class of voters, we assume that their regime preferences are in line with their partisan preference, that is, they prefer cohabitation while for the second class we assume that they

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1

face partisan-regime cross-pressure effects. Finally, we generate predicted probabilities for both classes of supporters of the left conditional on characteristics of the anti-political dimension. In Figure 9.1 we plot these probabilities if we move all three variables of this dimension – political efficacy, political interest and alienation (more precisely: 1-alienation) – simultaneously from their minimum (at 0) to their maximum (at 1). These simulations make transparent the nature of the cross-pressure effect for average supporters of the left. Across the entire range of efficacy, interest as well as alienation, the probability of turning out for supporters of the left is lower when partisan and regime preferences conflict. Values above the 50 per cent reference line indicate that our model predicts that these supporters of the left will actually turn out while for supporters that fall below that line we predict that they will abstain. While there is not much of a difference for supporters of the left if they score either very high or very low on efficacy, interest and alienation the cross-pressure effect resulting from conflicting regime and partisan preferences becomes in fact consequential for tipping the seesaw to the abstention side. From the above graph we can see that for an average supporter of the left scoring between 0.25 and 0.35 on the

0.5

Cross-pressures

0

Probability of turnout

No cross-pressures

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

Efficacy/Interest/1-Alienation Figure 9.1

Cross-pressure effect for supporters of the left.

0.8

1

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0.15 0.1 0.05 0

Magnitude of the cross-pressure effect

0.2

efficacy and interest scale and scoring 0.65 ( =1 − 0.35) and 0.75 (=1 − 0.25) on the alienation scale matters substantively concerning his or her decision to go to the polls or to abstain. If such voters get persuaded that cohabitation is a bad idea for France they feel cross-pressured enough to be demobilised. The consequence is that they will no longer turnout. How strong does this partisan-regime cross-pressure effect actually get? Since we model the decision to turn out at the polls as a logit model, this effect is non-linear by design. The magnitude of this effect is conditional on all other independent variables in the model. Figure 9.2 provides an overview about the magnitude of these effects. The magnitude of this effect is the difference in predicted probability of turning out between the two classes of supporters of the left, that is, the predicted probability of the no cross-pressure class minus the one of the class facing this cross-pressure situation. Given certain values of the independent variables this effect can be substantially strong. Based on the scenario we defined in our simulations above we find that the difference in predicted probability for two average supporters of the left can rise up to 20 percentage points alone and averages still at even more

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

Efficacy/Interest/1-Alienation Figure 9.2

How strong is the cross-pressure effect on the probability to turnout?

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than 10 percentage points. In general we can see that the cross-pressure effect seems to be much more consequential for supporters of the left that score low on efficacy and interest, and high on alienation. The effect rapidly decreases for values of efficacy and interest above 0.5 (and below 0.5 for alienation). Apparently, supporters of the left that are high in efficacy and have a strong interest in politics but are not strongly alienated from the political parties seem to be better equipped to deal with the indifference between their partisan and regime preferences such that they are able to decide that they turn out – no matter what. Since the cost of casting a ballot for a candidate of the political right might be too high, abstention seems to be a systematic way out, particularly for supporters of the left that face such a cross-pressure situation. Thus regime preferences do have a substantive impact on a voter’s decision to turn out at the polls that can complement well-known rival explanations. To be sure, all the factors describing the anti-political dimension of the universe of explanations have an even greater impact on an individual’s decision-making process to turn out. For an otherwise average respondent (all other variables are set to their sample mean) the predicted probability based on our turnout model decreases by about 11 percentage points if political interest decreases from its maximum to its minimum. The substantive impact of political efficacy and alienation is even stronger. Compared to an otherwise average respondent high in political efficacy, an average voter low in political efficacy is almost 24 percentage points less likely to turn out. The difference between average respondents who are high and low alienated is 31 percentage points. Partisan alienation, thus, exerts the strongest effect in our model. To sum up, regime preferences have predictable implications on a voter’s decision-making process. The impact of regime preferences on a voter’s decision to turn out does have a substantive impact for supporters of the left as hypothesised, if their attitudes toward cohabitation stay in conflict with their partisan preferences. Although this effect is not stronger than the ones from the anti-political dimension, the partisan-regime cross-pressure effect, in fact, does operate in addition to them. Moreover, since these cross-pressures affect turnout asymmetrically, abstention has important consequences on the outcome of the election (Fauvelle-Aymar et al., 2000: 398). Thus, the cross-pressure effect we identify is not only of theoretical interest but also becomes substantively meaningful given its magnitude for a particular segment of partisans of the left whose partisan and regime preferences are conflicting.

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Conclusion The universe of explanations of turnout is clearly multidimensional. Consistent with prior research in the political behaviour literature on turnout, we find that factors like political efficacy, political interest and low alienation strongly predict turnout. Socioeconomic factors, however, do not add much explanatory power above and beyond efficacy, interest and alienation. Based on assumptions that conflicting partisan and regime preferences exert cross-pressures we expected that it is more likely for eligible voters to abstain if their partisan and regime preferences stay in contrast to one another than for those voters whose partisan and regime preferences are consistent, that is, they pull the voter in the same direction. Controlling for various rival explanations we find evidence supporting these hypotheses for supporters of the left. Supporters of the left preferring unified government are more likely to abstain than supporters of the left preferring cohabitation. However, we could not find an equivalent effect for supporters of the right. Thus supporters of the right preferring cohabitation are not more likely to abstain than supporters of the right preferring unified government. Abstention from indifference based on conflicting partisan and regime preferences yields an asymmetric crosspressure effect in favour of the political right since supporters of the left got demobilised. Does this come as a surprise? On the one hand, the political leaders of the left had declared for a long time that cohabitation would damage the Republic’s institutions. It was very difficult for the left to change their discourse after their failure at the presidential election and to actually praise the advantages of a future cohabitation. Certain attempts, in fact, lacked credibility. On the other hand, the left was presumably not perceived strong and unified enough for supporters of the right to let their regime preferences play out strongly if they prefer cohabitation despite their partisan preferences. Thus it is likely that regime preferences of these supporters of the right have not been a credible alternative decision criterion. Consequently there is no substantively important cross-pressure situation if the implications of their regime preferences are not strong enough to stay in conflict with their partisan preferences. In single-member district systems parties’ mobilisation capacity can be decisive for the electoral outcomes (Dolez, 2002). In competitive

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races, since the winner takes it all, mobilisation of just a few per cent of voters can play a decisive role. Our simulations show that the crosspressure effects from holding regime and partisan preferences that are not in line with one another are strongest for voters with below average values on political efficacy and interest as well as above average values on the alienation scale. In order to study these effects for the outcome of the election we suspect that abstention caused by these cross-pressure effects might be much more consequential in certain constituencies than in others. In order to assess the electoral impact of this type of abstention we need to classify in future research constituencies with voters exerting high and low levels of political efficacy, alienation and political interest. Supposedly, in a bourgeois suburb of Paris we should find less impact of this type of abstention on the local election outcome than in socially more heterogeneous constituencies. Additionally, future research on this type of abstention is necessary, particularly in other political systems as well. The 2002 US midterm elections, for instance, seem to be a suitable case. From a normative point of view the type of abstention that we detect in this chapter does not seem particularly problematic to us. Abstention from indifference based on individual psychological conflicts is not necessarily an indicator of a citizens ‘dépolitisation’ or a crisis of the political system.

Appendix Income (rescaled 0 to 1) 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

moins de 2000 francs/moins de 305 € De 2001 à 3000 francs/de 305 à 457 € De 3001 à 5000 francs/de 458 à 762 € De 5001 à 7500 francs/de 763 à 1.143 € De 7501 à 10.000 francs/de 1.144 à 1.524 € De 10.001 à 15.000 francs/de 1.525 à 2.286 € De 15.001 à 20.000 francs/de 2.287 à 3.048 € De 20.001 à 30.000 francs/de 3.049 à 4.573 € De 30.001 à 40.000 francs/de 4.574 à 6.097 € De 40.001 à 50.000 francs/de 6.098 à 7.622 € 50.001 francs et plus/7.623 € et plus

Education (rescaled 0 to 1) 1. 2. 3. 4.

Sans diplôme Certificat d’études primaires Ancien brevet, BEPC Certificat d’aptitude professionnel (CAP)

172 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Stuck between a Rock and a Hard Place Brevet d’enseignement professionnel (BEP) BAC d’enseignement technique BAC d’enseignement général BAC + 2 ou niveau BAC + 2 ans (DUT, BTS, instituteurs, DEUG) Diplôme universitaire de l’enseignement supérieur(2è, 3è cycles) Grandes Ecoles/Ecole d’Ingénieurs

Political efficacy scale: 4 items 1. Dans l’ensemble, êtes-vous très satisfait, assez satisfait, peu satisfait ou pas du tout satisfait du fonctionnement de la démocratie en France ? (4-point scale) 2. Certaines personnes disent “qu’il y a une différence selon celui qui est au pouvoir”. D’autres disent “qu’il n’y a aucune différence quel que soit celui qui est au pouvoir”. Vous même, où vous situeriez vous sur une échelle de 1 à 5 où le chiffre 1 signifie “il y une différence selon celui qui est au pouvoir” et le chiffre 5 signifie “il n’y a aucune différence quel que soit celui qui est au pouvoir”? (5-point scale) 3. Certaines personnes pensent que ce qu’on vote ne change rien. D’autres pensent que ce qu’on vote peut faire changer les choses. Où vous situez-vous sur une échelle de 1 à 5 où le chiffre 1 signifie “ce qu’on vote ne change rien” et le chiffre 5 signifie “ce qu’on vote peut faire changer les choses”? (5-point scale) 4. Êtes-vous tout à fait d’accord, plutôt d’accord, plutôt pas d’accord ou pas du tout d’accord avec la proposition suivante: La démocratie a peut-être des défauts mais elle est meilleure que les autres formes de gouvernement. (4-point scale)

Notes The authors wish to thank Mike Lewis-Beck, Hermann Schmitt, Barbara Schaan, Stefan Seidendorf and the MZES working group on French politics for helpful suggestions and comments. The usual disclaimer applies. 1. For example, Laurent Fabius in an interview with Le Nouvel Observateur of 11 July 2002 speaks of a “défaite des legislatives en juin par rejet de la cohabitation” (see also Cole, 2002, 335). 2. This view is supported for example by Elgie (2001), Shugart (1995) and Alesina and Rosenthal (1995). For a different assessment, see Pierce (1991). In this chapter, moments of executive coherence are respectively considered as unified government. We neither consider coalition governments nor the so-called informal cohabitation between President Giscard d’Estaing and Prime Minister Jacques Chirac as examples of divided government (Sundquist, 1988; Laver and Shepsle, 1991). 3. Chiche et al. give an account of this literature on France (Chiche et al., 1992: 166–174). 4. Voting blank in this respect can be considered an “abstention civique” (Bréchon, 1998: 40). The error or invalidity component of “blanc et nul” does not concern us here since we analyse respondent’s voting intentions. 5. Bréchon finds that systematic abstention, that is, that a citizen always abstains across all sorts of elections, is rather exceptional (Bréchon, 1998: 39). Systematic abstention is usually explained by SES and anti-political reasons.

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6. Nevertheless, there is a hint about the possibility of neutralising cross-pressures in his chapter on the “blanc et nul” vote (Bréchon, 1998: 40). 7. On rational choice and turnout more generally, compare Aldrich (1993). 8. We follow Sartori who has argued that the Fifth Republic oscillates between the two poles of presidential and parliamentary regime characteristics (Sartori, 1994: 123). Whereas during cohabitation the parliamentary logic prevails, during the periods of unified government a presidential reading of the constitution is dominant. We understand regime voting as an umbrella term, comprising a voting behaviour that alternatively favours unified or divided government (Gschwend and Leuffen, 2003). 9. Since the late 1980s, authors like Fiorina (1991), Jacobson (1990), Wattenberg (1991), Sigelman et al. (1997), have been investigating the electoral origins of divided government. However, the systemic turn of voting theory has rarely been transformed to the interpretation of unified government election outcomes. 10. Interestingly, it was the Socialist Party that started to frame the elections as a return to unified government. As early as in January 2000 Lionel Jospin at the Congress of Grenoble expressed his desire that the Frenchmen would restore a coherent executive (Chiroux, 2001a: 94). Another early expression of this idea can be found in Olivier Schrameck’s famous “Matignon – Rive gauche” (Schrameck, 2001: 23). After President Chirac’s re-election his supporting camp, the Union pour la majorité présidentielle (UMP) is reported to have centred its campaign strongly on the cohabitation issue (Bell and Criddle, 2002: 656, 657; Libération, 4 June 2002). 11. We are not the first ones, to be sure, that discuss potential consequences of feeling cross-pressured between two different preference orders that typically facilitate an individual’s decision-making process. Boy and Dupoirier have discussed cross-pressure situations for the case of France and identify voters that are subject to them (1993: 157). For these voters “the forces that affect behaviour would tend to cancel one another out” (Boy and Dupoirier, 1993: 157). Boy and Dupoirier speculate that the effects of such cross-pressures could further abstention. They, however, find the cross-pressure issue difficult to operationalise. 12. The time lag seems too small to expect massive occurrence of negative voting. However, it is evident that Chirac’s enormous success at the presidential elections does not reflect his popularity and that the legislative election result cannot just be explained by his personal pulling power. Thus the coattail mechanisms that link the two sets of elections are not as evident as might seem from a short glance at the results. 13. The support for divided government has only recently declined (Grunberg, 1999; Chiroux, 2001b). A rapid decline of public opinion towards cohabitation can be seen when comparing the Louis Harris polling results on cohabitation published in Libération on 7 March with the ones published on 29 March 2002. This change of opinion, however, might not last for long and even in our data on 2002 some supporters of the right expressed sympathies for a future cohabitation. 14. We used the French Inter-election Survey 2002 – The French CSES II Study (Schmitt and Gschwend, 2003), administered by CSA, Paris. 15. Abstention is usually difficult to measure within survey research since only few people admit their intention not to vote. For example, in our survey

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16. 17. 18.

19. 20.

21. 22. 23. 24.

25. 26.

27. 28.

Stuck between a Rock and a Hard Place only about 8.4 per cent of respondent’s expressed their intention to abstain or to vote “blanc”. To repeat, the actual abstention rate at the first round of elections was 35.58 per cent. Considering a possible future cohabitation, to which of these opinions do you feel closer? (a) Cohabitation is good for France; (b) Cohabitation is bad for France. When the survey was designed the development of the UMP was not evident and we expected that voters would still use familiar party labels as their political referents. Respondents might also most prefer a party of the left and of the right at the same time. We interpret this as a sign of indifference. Even if a respondent most prefers a moderate (left or right) and an extreme party at the same time, he or she is coded as an extremist. Based on respondent’s placement of parties on the 10-point likes/dislikes scale we divide up the electorate into 51 per cent supporters of the left, 31 per cent supporters of the right, 8 per cent extremists, and 10 per cent respondents without clear partisan preferences. On the issue of voting behaviour of young voters in the 2002 elections, compare Muxel (2002). The intensity of partisan preferences has long been considered a strong predictor of electoral participation (Campbell et al., 1960: 97). These four efficacy items have an average inter-item correlation of 0.22 and the additive scale has an alpha reliability of 0.52. Other reasons for abstention are difficult to operationalise since with our data we can neither focus on abstentions longitudinally nor does it permit us to deeply investigate local structures and the nature of the electoral competition at the constituency level. Since we are requesting the vote intention for the first round, the incentives for certain types of strategic abstention are supposedly absent. We predict every sixth abstainer correctly, which is quite good given the skewed distribution of the dependent variable. Based on a vote-choice model presented elsewhere (Gschwend and Leuffen, 2003), we show that unanchored respondents with indifferent partisan preferences are more likely to end-up on the bandwagon and voting for the right. We use CLARIFY (Tomz et al., 2001), a set of Stata ado-files, to carry out these simulations. Thus, we fix ideology at 0.5, age at 44.5 years, education at 0.52 and income at 0.5.

References Aldrich, J.H. (1993) “Rational Choice and Turnout”, American Journal of Political Science 37(1): 246–278. Alesina, A. and Rosenthal, H. (1995) Partisan Politics, Divided Government and the Economy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Appleton, A.M. (2000) “The France That Doesn’t Vote: Nonconsumption in the Electoral Market”, in: Lewis-Beck, Michael S. (ed.) How France Votes, New York and London: Chatham House, pp. 206–226.

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Bell, D.S. and Criddle, B. (2002) “Presidentialism Restored: The French Elections of April–May and June 2002”, Parliamentary Affairs 55(4): 643–663. Boy, D. and Dupoirier, E. (1993) “Is the voter a Strategist?”, in: Boy, Daniel and Mayer, Nonna (eds) The French Voter Decides, Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, pp. 149–166. Bréchon, P. (1998) La France Aux Urnes: Cinquante ans d’histoire électorale, Paris: La documentation française. Campbell, A., Gurin, A. and Miller, W.E. (1954) The Voter Decides, Evanston: Row, Peterson & Co. Campbell, A., Converse, P.E., Miller, W.E. and Stokes, D.E. (1960) The American Voter, New York and London: John Wiley. Chiche, J. and Dupoirier, É. (1998) “L’abstention aux élections législatives de 1997”, in: Perrineau, Pascal and Ysmal, Colette (eds) Le vote surprise. Les élections législatives des 25 mai et 1er juin 1997, Paris: Presses de Sciences Po, pp. 141–159. Chiche, J., Dupoirier, É. and Grunberg, G. (1992) “La participation dans tous ses états (1986–1992)”, in: Habert, Philippe, Perrineau, Pascal and Ysmal, Colette (eds) Le vote éclaté. Les élections régionales et cantonales des 22 et 29 mars 1992, Paris: Département d’études politiques du Figaro et des presses de la fondation nationale des sciences politiques, pp. 165–186. Chiroux, R. (2001a) “Chronique politique: L’inversion du calendrier électoral pour l’année 2002”, La revue administrative 54 (319): 94–98. Chiroux, R. (2001b) “Chronique politique: Les Français commencent-ils à douter de la cohabitation?”, La revue administrative 54 (324): 652–656. Cole, A. (2002) ‘A Strange Affair: The 2002 Presidential and Parliamentary Elections in France’, Government and Opposition 37(3): 317–342. Converse, Philip, E. and Pierce, Roy (1986) Political Representation in France, Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Converse, P. and Pierce, R. (1993) “Comment on Fleury and Leuis-Beck: Anchoring the French votes; ideology versus party” in Journal of Politics 55(4): 1110–1117. Davis, O.A., Hinich, M.J. and Ordeshook, P.C. (1970) ‘An Expository Development of a Mathematical Model of the Electoral Process’, American Political Science Review 64(2): 426–448. Dolez, B. (2002) “Les mystères de la chambre bleue: des voix aux sièges lors des élections législatives de juin 2002”, Revue française de science politique 52(5–6): 577–591. Elgie, R. (2001) “‘Cohabitation’: Divided Government French Style”, in: Elgie, Robert (ed.) Divided Government in Comparative Perspective, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 106–126. Enelow, J.H. and Hinich, M.J. (1984) The Spatial Theory of Voting. An Introduction, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fauvelle-Aymar, C., Lafay, J.-D. and Servais, M. (2000) “The impact of turnout on electoral choices: an econometric analysis of the French case”, Electoral Studies 19: 393–412. Fiorina, M.P. (1991) ‘Coalition Governments, Divided Governments, and Electoral Theory’, Governance 4(3): 236–249. Fleury, C. and Lewis-Beck, M. (1993a) “Anchoring the French voter: ideology versus party” in Journal of Politics 55(4): 1100–1109. Fleury, C. and Lewis-Beck, M. (1993b) “Déjà vu all over again: a comment on the Comment of Converse and Pierce” in Journal of Politics 55(4): 1118–1126.

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Grunberg, G. (1999) “Du cohabitationnisme de l’opinion”, Pouvoirs. Revue française d’études constitutionelles et politiques 91: 83–95. Gschwend, T. (2003) “Statistical Control”, in: Lewis-Beck, Michael, Bryman, Alan and Liao, Tim Futing (eds) The Sage Encyclopedia of Social Science Research Methods, Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 2004. Gschwend, T. and Leuffen, D. (2003) When Voters Choose Regimes: The Issue of Cohabitation in the French Elections of 2002, MZES working paper 63. Jacobson, G.C. (1990) The Electoral Origins of Divided Government: Competition in U.S. House Elections, 1946–1988, Boulder, Col.: Westview Press. King, G., Tomz, M. and Wittenberg, J. (2000) “Making the Most of Statistical Analyses: Improving Interpretation and Presentation”, American Journal of Political Science 44: 347–361. Lancelot, A. (1968) L’abstentionnisme electoral en France, Cahiers de la fondation nationale des sciences politiques 162, Paris: Armand Colin. Laver, M. and Shepsle, K.A. (1991) “Divided Government: America is not exceptional”, Governance 4: 250–269. Lazarsfeld, P.F., Berelson, B. and Gaudet, H. (1948) The People’s Choice. How the Voter makes up his Mind in A Presidential Campaign, New York: Columbia University Press. Lijphart, A. (1997) “Unequal Participation: Democracy’s Unresolved Dilemmas”, American Political Science Review 91: 1–14. Muxel, A. (2002) “La participation politique des jeunes: soubresauts, fractures et ajustements”, Revue française de science politique 52(5–6): 521–544. Parodi, J.-L. (2002) L’enigme de la cohabitation, ou les effets pervers d’une pré-sélection annoncée, Revue française de science politique 52(5–6): 485–504. Pierce, R. (1991) “The Executive Divided against Itself: Cohabitation in France, 1986–1988”, Governance, 4(3), 270–294. Riker, W.H. and Ordeshook, P.C. (1973) An Introduction to Positive Political Theory, Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall. Rosenthal, H. and Sen, S. (1973) “Electoral Participation in the French Fifth Republic”, American Political Science Review 67(1): 29–54. Sartori, G. (1994) Comparative Constitutional Engineering: An Inquiry into Structures, incentives and Outcomes, New York: New York University Press. Schmitt, H. and Gschwend, T. 2003. French Inter-election Survey 2002 – The French CSES II Study. Computerfile and Codebook (in conjunction with MZES Mannheim, ZA Köln and Fritz Thyssen Foundation). Mannheim: MZES 2002 (forthcoming). Schrameck, O. (2001) Matignon Rive Gauche 1997–2001, Paris: Seuil. Shugart, M.S. (1995) “The Electoral Cycle and Institutional Sources of Divided Presidential Government”, American Political Science Review 89(2): 327–343. Sigelman, L., Wahlbeck, P.J. and Buell, E.H., Jr (1997) “Vote Choice and the Preference for Divided Government: Lessons of 1992”, American Journal of Political Science 41(3): 879–894. Subileau, F. and Toinet, M.-F. (1989) “L’abstentionnisme en France et aux EtatsUnis: méthodes et interprétations”, in: Gaxie, Daniel (ed.) Explication du vote. Un bilan des études électorales en France, Paris: Presses de la fondation nationale des sciences politiques, pp. 175–198. Sundquist, J. (1988) “Needed: A Political Theory for the New Era of Coalition Government in the United States”, in: Political Science Quaterly 103: 613–635.

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Thurner, P.W. and Eymann, A. (2000) “Policy-specific alienation and indifference in the calculus of voting: A simultaneous model of party choice and abstention”, Public Choice 102: 51–77. Tomz, M., Wittenberg, J. and King, G. (2001) CLARIFY: Software for Interpreting and Presenting Statistical Results, Version 2.0. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, June 1: http://gking.harvard.edu/ Verba, S. and Nie, N. (1972) Participation in America. Political Democracy and Social Equality, New York: Harper and Row. Wattenberg, M.P. (1991) “The Republican Presidential Advantage in the Age of Party Disunity”, in: Cox, Gary W. and Kernell, Samuel (eds) The Politics of Divided Government, Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, pp. 39–55. Zaller, J. (1992) The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion, New York: Cambridge University Press. Zaller, J. and Feldman, S. (1992) “A Simple Theory of the Survey Response: Answering Questions versus Revealing Preferences”, American Journal of Political Science 36: 579–616.

10 Forecasting the 2002 Elections: Lessons from a Political Economy Model Bruno Jérôme and Veronique Jérôme-Speziari

Introduction The presidential and legislative electoral contests had unusual outcomes. For only the second time since 1969, the Left was eliminated after the first ballot. In addition, voters acting as in the first ballot of a proportional election selected Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the National Front (FN) over Lionel Jospin, the incumbent Prime Minister. Further, President Jacques Chirac was reelected after the second ballot with 82.21 percent of the vote, an extreme result for the Fifth Republic. Finally, the subsequent legislative elections gave him fully 399 Deputies in the National Assembly. Could the 2002 upheaval have been forecast through an analysis of political and economic conditions existing months before? The 2002 elections need to take into account the following parameters in order to be understood: • the electoral calendar inversion; • the fact that Jospin had fallen behind Chirac in the opinion polls; • the uncertainty of the electoral situation of the National Front especially at a regional level; • the hardening of the Extreme Right against the Classic Right; • the evolution of the balance of power between the Right and the Left just before the first ballot; • the economic slowdown beginning in 2001; • the rise in economic pessimism. 178

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Drawing on these factors, we assemble a political economy model of the vote in these contests, estimating it on pooled regional time series data.

The political economic context and the double electoral contest of 2002 Reordering the electoral calendar Aside from the constitutional debates at the end of 1999, we have observed that a true strategic game took place between the president and the prime minister. Taking into account the split in the Far Right, Chirac thought that the Right could win the legislative elections before winning the presidential one. Being aware of this risk, Jospin and the Socialist Party (PS) were biased in favor of a reordering of the electoral calendar, putting presidential elections first. Jérôme and Jérôme-Speziari (2001a) tested the two potential scenarios and found that with the initial calendar, the Left would lose the legislative elections but, given the good economic conditions, it could win the presidential elections. However, if the electoral calendar were reordered, the Left would be able to win both elections (see Jérôme et al., 2003). With the continuing economic upturn at the time, the best strategy for the incumbent majority (composed of the Communist Party, the Greens, the Socialist Party, and the Diverse Left) seemed to be the inversion of the electoral calendar, and so it was adopted on 24 April 2001, when the National Assembly gave its “last reading.” The credibility of Chirac and Jospin compared A simple indicator of the “state of cohabitation,” the difference between the percentage satisfied with the prime minister and the president, shows that the prime minister averaged 4 points ahead in 1997 and 1998. But in 1999 and 2000, the situation reversed and the president found himself 4 points ahead of the prime minister, on average. Indeed, in the first quarter of 2001, the president found himself 9 points ahead of the prime minister. Without doubt, the international crisis of September 11 contributed to the maintenance of such a gap, which did not close until Jospin announced his candidacy in the first quarter of 2002. (At that time, both executives registered satisfaction scores of 43 percent.) In April 2002, Jospin’s popularity fell to 42 percent. Suppose we compare the popularity of Jospin to that of two prime ministers who also have had to “cohabitate,” Chirac in 1987 and Balladur in 1994. Six months before the 2002 election, Jospin was behind Chirac by 9 points, and the Left went on to lose the election. In 1987, Prime

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Minister Chirac was 12.5 points behind Mitterrand, and the Right went on to lose in the 1988 elections. In 1994, Balladur found himself 5.3 points ahead of Mitterrand, and the Right went on to win. Thus, we see that the prime minister’s popularity lead over the president (or the lack thereof), tends to foreshadow the electoral result.

The uncertainty about the Extreme Right The split in the Far Right, now divided into the FN and the Mouvement National Républicain (MNR), and the poor showing at the last municipal elections in 2001, suggested that it would no longer exercise its nuisance power as it had done in the three-way races of 1997. Nevertheless, Le Pen got his best presidential election result ever, with 16.86 percent of the votes, and with another 2.34 percent going to his Far Right rival Megret. However, the Far Right did less well in the legislative elections, the FN obtaining only 11.12 percent with 1.33 percent going to the MNR. Moreover, the high rate of abstention (35.58 percent) prevented the FN from maintaining its candidacy in the 319 districts, where they had been viewed by some as possible arbitrators of the outcome (Roger, 2002). Still, the Far Right continued to distinguish itself by its peculiar geographic pattern of support, forming an arc from the Haute-Normandie coming through the North and the East regions and ending in LanguedocRoussillon (Mayer and Perrineau, 1996; Perrineau, 1997). Further, there was the question of whether the FN could consolidate its hold on the “missionary lands,” as Perrineau (1997) described them. Any forecasting model worth its salt must give careful consideration to how to specify these changing FN forces.

The Far Right hardens against the Classic Right In 1997, the FN maintained its candidates into the second round in 74 districts, generating 74 three-cornered contests that produced a greater loss of seats for the Right than for the Left. (The Left won 41 of these seats, while gathering less than 50 percent of the votes.) This indicates that part of the voters for the Right that have voted for the FN in the first round repeated their choice in the second round. When a candidate of the Rassemblement pour la République (RPR), the Union pour la Démocratie Française (UDF) or the Diverse Right faces up to an FN candidate in a three-cornered contest, then, this tends to favor the Left. Moreover, the weight of the Extreme Right in the overall Right block has not stopped increasing since 1984.

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The evolution of the balance of power between the Right and the Left on the eve of the first round of presidential balloting In order to forecast the second round of the presidential election, we have to estimate accurately the balance of power between the Right and the Left at the first round. Looking at the presidential elections from 1974 to 1995, it seems that if the Right wants to go on to win, it needs to capture sufficient votes in the first round, and then mobilize its voters for the second. However, the Left often does better than the Right at mobilizing between the two rounds, such as in 1988. Thus, it is of great importance to properly estimate the electoral capability of each wing. We eventually compare the electoral weight of the Left (according to estimates from five polling institutes) to results from our political economy model. Economic slowdown According to a prior political economic analysis, the defeat of the Right in 1997 was partly due to a worsening employment situation ( Jérôme et al., 1999). At that time, the unemployment rate was about 12.5 percent of the work force. In March 2001, the unemployment rate was down to 8.7 percent. At that same time, a political economic simulation (Jérôme and Jérôme-Speziari, 2001b) pointed to the Left candidate as the presidential winner (with 51.36 percent of the votes), and found the plural Left winning in the National Assembly with 314 seats. But three months after that, a new simulation saw that the Right candidate would win the presidency (with 51 percent), and the Left would lose the National Assembly (with a gain of only 254 seats). These changed simulation results were due to a changed unemployment situation. By June 2001, unemployment had really ceased to decrease, so no longer benefiting the Left incumbent. In fact, by December 2001, unemployment was actually beginning to creep back up, so hurting the Left incumbent. The rise of economic pessimism Beside the “heavy” objective economic variables like unemployment, one should underline the importance of subjective economic variables such as consumer opinion about the evolution of the general employment picture and their own personal financial situation (data source: [Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques] INSEE). In February 2001, expectations regarding the personal financial situation of consumers were at their peak, before falling two months later, to the June 1999 low. Further, the most optimistic expectation about

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unemployment was seen in March 2001, but in less than a year it hit record lows. These patterns are unusual. Normally, such expectations are more optimistic three–six months before an election, due to government announcements and pre-election campaign promises (see Jérôme, 2000). The fact that, for 2002, consumer confidence was dropping going into the contest led us to foreseen great difficulties for the incumbent majority. Before incorporating these, and other factors, into a political economy model to forecast the 2002 outcome, we wish to provide a baseline of comparison by examining the pre-election survey estimates of who was likely to win.

Pre-election surveys from March 2001 to April 2002 We can evaluate the forecasting power of the polls by measuring the gap between their forecasts (monthly averages) and the actual (Left) vote result (see Table 10.1). With respect to the first round of 2002 presidential balloting, Brûlé Ville Associés (BVA) scored the smallest difference (3.11 percent positive error for the Left in September 2001) but also the largest difference (13.11 percent positive error for the Left in January 2002). Bizarrely, three months before the elections, the BVA forecast was four times worse than its forecast of six months before, showing a Left increase to 56 percent, up from 46 percent. The other polling institutes yield similar paradoxical results. Conseils Sondages Analyses (CSA) gave its best prediction in April 2001 (47 percent for the Left) and its worst at the end of 2001 (53 percent for the Left). IPSOS revealed an error twice as great in December 2001, when compared to June 2001. Only Societé Française d’ Enquêtes par Sondage (SOFRES) and Institut Français d’Opinion Publique (IFOP) gave their best forecast in April 2002 (with positive errors for the Left, respectively, of 4.94 percent and 7.69 percent). Overall, their average errors showed considerable bias toward the Left, with SOFRES placing the Left 7.21 percent higher than it obtained, and IFOP placing the Left 9.41 percent higher. In general, the average forecast of all the polling institutes got no more accurate as the election got closer, the gap fluctuating between 6 percent and 9 percent. Indeed, in March–April 2001, the average error was about 6 percent, the same percentage error as a year later, just before the election in April 2002. With respect to (pre-first-ballot) predictions for the second round, the polling institutes put Jospin first, with an average of 51 percent of the votes in March 2001, and again in March 2002. This Left bias continued in the few polls that tried to estimate outcomes in the ensuing

Table 10.1

The 2002 French presidential election (1st round) Poll predictions of BVA, CSA, IFOP, IPSOS and SOFRES institutes

Left (1st round) (Monthly average) BVA Forecast Actual Prediction error CSA Forecast Actual Prediction error IFOP Forecast Actual Prediction error IPSOS Forecast Actual Prediction error SOFRES Forecast Actual Prediction error Average prediction AFB

% of vote March 01

% of vote April 01

% of vote May 01

% of vote June 01

% of vote July 01

50.75 42.89 7.86

50 42.89 7.11

50 42.89 7.11

52 42.89 9.11

50 42.89 7.11

48 42.89 5.11

47 42.89 4.11

51 42.89 8.11

49 42.89 6.11

49 42.89 6.11

% of vote August 01

49 42.89 6.11

% of vote September 01

% of vote October 01

46 42.89 3.11

50 42.89 7.11

51 42.89 8.11

52 42.89 9.11 52.5 42.89 9.61 51.5 42.89 8.61

48 42.89 5.11 48 42.89 5.11 48.91 6.02

48.5 5.61

50.5 42.89 7.61 50.5 7.61

49 42.89 6.11 49.5 6.61

49.5 6.61

51 42.89 8.11 49.33 6.44

49 42.89 6.11 51.00 8.11

183

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Table 10.1

(Continued)

Left (1st round) (Monthly average) BVA Forecast Actual Prediction error CSA Forecast Actual Prediction error IFOP Forecast Actual Prediction error IPSOS Forecast Actual Prediction error SOFRES Forecast Actual Prediction error Average prediction AFB

% of vote November 01

% of vote December 01

% of vote January 02

% of vote February 02

% of vote March 02

% of vote April 02

Institute average

52.5 42.89 9.61

51.5 42.89 8.61

56 42.89 13.11

53 42.89 10.11

51.6 42.89 8.71

48 42.89 5.11

50.87 42.89 7.98

53 42.89 10.11

53 42.89 10.11

52.5 42.89 9.61

51.13 42.89 8.24

50 42.89 7.11

49 42.89 6.11

50.33 42.89 7.44

51.16 42.89 8.27

54.74 42.89 11.85

53.29 42.89 10.4

50.58 42.89 7.69

52.29 42.89 9.40

51.5 42.89 8.61 51.5 42.89 8.61

53 42.89 10.11

52 42.89 9.11

52.7 42.89 9.81

52.1 42.89 9.21

48.67 42.89 5.78

51.18 42.89 8.29

49.5 42.89 6.61 51.6 8.71

52 42.89 9.11 52.375 9.485

51.25 42.89 8.36 52.582 9.692

52.21 42.89 9.32 52.756 9.866

50.8 42.89 7.91 51.558 8.668

47.83 42.89 4.94 48.816 5.926

50.09 42.89 7.20

Monthly average for polls published from March 01 to April 02 by SOFRES for Lci. Politique-Opinion. Le Nouvel Observateur. CSA for Libération. BFM. IFOP for Le Journal du Dimanche. IPSOS for Le Figaro. Europe1. Le Point. and BVA for Paris-Match. AFB: Average Forecasting Bias.

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Table 10.2 The 2002 French legislative elections (1st round and 2nd round) Poll predictions of CSA, IPSOS and SOFRES institutes and electoral simulations of Le Monde and Libération Poll’s seat predictions

SOFRES (05/02 to 06/01/02) Average IPSOS (05/24 to 06/05/02) Average CSA (06/5–6/2002) Le Monde (05/09/2002) Le Monde (04/24/2002) Le Monde (Average) Libération (05/14/2002) SOFRES IPSOS CSA Le Monde Libération

Right

Left

FN + MNR

341

213

1

368 380

186 189

1 1

Diverse Total seats 555 555 7

Simulations seats 278 297 2 302 265 10 290 281 6 unclear 240 unclear Average prediction error 42 1 −43 15 1 −16 11 1 −19 103 6 −109 unclear 62 unclear

577 577 577 577 577

7

legislative contest (Table 10.2). They all foresaw a victory for the Right, but still overestimated Left votes and seats. Clearly, the polls were a very poor device for accurate forecasting of the 2002 elections. Therefore, we offer an alternative approach, in a statistical political economy model, which we now develop below.

A political economy model for the presidential and the legislative elections: an instrument for reducing uncertainty Methodology Work on political economy models spans over twenty years in France, and has revealed a strong link between the voter’s judgment and central political and economic indicators. The first vote functions were built by Rosa and Amson (1976) and Lafay (1977). The first vote function explicitly constructed as a forecasting model was done by Lewis-Beck (1985). Later models introduced regional, as well as time series data ( Jérôme et al., 1993). This regional focus increased the number of observations, and allowed the accounting of the more

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local forces that have long operated in the electoral geography of France (Siegfried, 1913; Goguel, 1974). Recently, these regional pooled time series models have been elaborated for legislative, then for presidential, elections ( Jérôme et al., 1999, 2003; Jérôme and Jérôme-Speziari, 2001c,d). A political economy analysis of the vote has three basic branches: (1) the electoral–business cycle; (2) the “evaluation–reaction” functions developed by the Zurich school (Frey, 1978); and (3) the vote function we are examining here (Nannestad and Paldam, 1994). As the election draws near, we assume that voters are assessing the actions of government, voting for it if they are persuaded that the actions are good; otherwise, they punish the government by voting for the opposition. Further, the vote is viewed as retrospective and asymmetric, in the sense that people are more likely to punish than they are to reward. Moreover, we suppose that voters are more sociotropic than egotropic in their motive, looking at the nation’s economic situation rather than their own personal situation. For example, in 2002, taking the Left as the incumbent in the presidential and legislative elections, the prime minister will be judged by his economic performance first, but the president will not (because of cohabitation). Considering the foregoing elements, the vote for the incumbent (presidential or legislative) can be expressed in the following function,

Incumbent Vote = f (national political forces, government credibility, the economy, regional factors)

The presidential vote function and the FN vote function In order to estimate the presidential vote function for 2002, we have to add two equations, one to estimate (from first-round results) the second-round Right–Left vote split, and another to estimate specifically the votes for the FN. As the Left is the incumbent, its share is given by: [100 − vote share for the Right-wing candidates]. Further, we cannot forget that a major candidate can be eliminated on the first round, such as G. Deferre or J. Duclos in 1969, or L. Jospin in 2002. Only for experimental purposes, then, do we forecast the score Jospin would have had if he had qualified for the second round. As a final point, we will estimate a vote function for the FN, for we wish to see if we can reduce the uncertainty surrounding the results for this party.

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Thus, we write the overall presidential models as follows: First-round vote for Candidates of Incumbent’s Ideological Coalition = f (unemployment change, past legislative vote, regional forces, cohabitation, government credibility, Left incumbent, control dummies) (see Eq. 10.1). Second-round vote for Candidates of the Right = f (first-round vote for the Right, index of votes lost in areas shared by the FN and the Left, index of votes lost in areas shared by the FN and the Right, cohabitation, control dummies) (see Eq. 10.2). First-Round vote for the FN = f (FN vote in past legislative elections, index of radicalization of the Right, FN’s regional strength interacted with the rate of regional unemployment, the FN’s regional weakness interacted with the regional unemployment rate, control dummies) (see Eq. 10.3). VPT1 = Intercept + a⋅∆U + b⋅VLG + c⋅ZFA + d⋅COPMPT + e⋅POPM + f⋅GSRT + g⋅ALS88 + h⋅ALS95 + εt

(10.1)

VXDPT2 = Intercept + i⋅VXDPT1 + j⋅DEPVXDZFD/FN + k⋅DEPVXDZFG/FN + I⋅COHAB + m⋅ATYP + n⋅MIDIPY95 + o⋅LIM7481 + p⋅AQ748 188 + q⋅NPDC95 + εt (10.2) VFNP = Intercept + r⋅VFNLG + s⋅FNDRAD + t⋅FNDU sup + u⋅FNGU sup + v⋅FNBASUsup + w⋅FNBASUINF + x⋅CORS88 + εt

(10.3)

(See Appendix A for a complete list of the variables and their measures.) The legislative vote function The legislative vote function is the same as the one recently tested by Jérôme and Jérôme-Speziari (2001c). This model takes into account the electoral calendar inversion with a ratio indicating how the presidential vote influences the legislative ones. The swing ratio (Tufte, 1975) transforms votes into seats and is complimented here by some variables showing the nature of the election itself (e.g. a confirming election) and the electoral weight of the Extreme Right. Vote (first round, percent) for candidates of the incumbent family = f (change in unemployment, vote at the past presidential elections, regional forces, the volatility of the regional ideology and other dummies) (see Eq. 10.4). Seats (second round, percent) for the candidates of the incumbent family = f (vote at the first round of legislative elections, abstention at the first round, dummy variable for a confirming election, diverse

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dummies, areas shared by the FN and the Left when the Right is the outgoing majority, areas shared by the FN and the Right when the Left is the outgoing majority, cohabitation (dummy variable and other dummies) (see Eq. 10.5). VLT1 = Intercept − a⋅∆U + b⋅VPT1 + c⋅ZFLG + d⋅INSTAB + e⋅CORS93 + f⋅D8693 + εt

(10.4)

S = Intercept + g⋅VLT1 + h⋅ABST + i⋅CONFELEC + j⋅DUM78 + k⋅ZFNGDS + I⋅ZFNDGS + m⋅ZGDS + n⋅CORS78 + o⋅CORS81 + p⋅CORS86 (10.5) + q⋅CORS88+ r⋅CORS93 + s⋅CORS97 + t⋅CORS02 + εt

(See Appendix B for complete list of variables.) The results of the model and the forecast for 2002 The model for the presidential election Applying Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) to the pooled times series to estimate the models, we found the following: First-round presidential vote model (for the incumbent) VPT1 = 23.65−1.18.∆U + 0.51.VLG + 1.24.ZFA + 0.31.COPMPT + 0.067.POPM (10.03)** (− 2.52)** (11.75)** (3.34)** (9.52)** (6.01)** − 6.23.GSRT + 6.47.ALS88 + 7.64.ALS95 (− 11.08)** (3.13)** (3.68)** (10.6)

Adj.-R2 = 0.91 SEE = 2 N = 110 Period of time: 1974–2002 Figures in parentheses are t-ratios (** = statistical significance at 0.01 or better, two-tailed) Adj.-R2 = the coefficient of multiple determination corrected for degrees of freedom; SEE = the standard error of estimate; N = the number of observations. Second-round presidential vote model (for the Right) VXDPT2 = 4.87 + 0.87⋅VXDPT1 − 3.15⋅DEPVXDZFD/FN − 2.98⋅DEPVXDZFG/FN (2.7)** (24.83)** (− 4.96)** (− 3.53)** − 2.51.COHAB + 3.14.ATYP + 6.42.MIDIPY95 − 3.3⋅LIM7481 (− 5.43)** (4.43)** (3.45)** (− 2.64)** − 1.95.AQ748188 − 5.43.NPDC95 (− 1.94)* (− 3.14)** (10.7)

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Adj.-R2 = 0.9 SEE = 1.69 N = 88 Period of time: 1974–1995 Figures in parentheses are t-ratios (** = statistical significance at 0.01 or better; * = statistical significance at 0.05; two-tailed) Adj.-R2 = the coefficient of multiple determination corrected for degrees of freedom; SEE = the standard error of estimate; N = the number of observations. First-round presidential vote model (for the FN) VFNP = 6.839 + 0.66.VFNLG + 2.45.FNDRAD + 0.13.FNDUsup + 0.10.FNGU sup (8.98)** (10.28)** (3.57)** (1.68)° (1.91)* − 0.13.FNBASUsup − 0.11.FNBASUINF + 3.43.CORS88 (− 2.08)** (− 1.58)° (1.95)* (10.8)

Adj.-R2 = 0.85 SEE = 1.66 N = 66 Period of time: 1988–2002 Figures in parentheses are t-ratios (** = statistical significance at 0.01 or better; * = statistical significance at 0.05;° = statistical significance at 0.10; two-tailed) Adj.-R2 = the coefficient of multiple determination corrected for degrees of freedom; SEE =the standard error of estimate; N=the number of observations. The foregoing three presidential vote models give good statistical results. About 80–90 percent of the variance is explained and the coefficients have a statistical significance. The coefficients of the explanatory variables for the first-round presidential vote function (for the incumbent) have the expected signs (see Eq. 10.6). Past legislative vote (VLG) influences the current presidential election. The outgoing majority gains 1.24 percent, on average, depending on regional historical strength (ZFA). A one point rise in the unemployment rate (∆U) generates an electoral cost to the incumbment of 1.18 percent of the votes in a given region. A popularity gap of one point in favor of the prime minister (COPMPT) – compared with the president – gives 0.31 percent more votes to the prime minister’s camp. A prime minister popularity score of 50 percent yields 3.35 percent more votes to his camp. Finally, when the Left is the outgoing majority at the presidential election (GSRT) it receives on the average 6.23 percent of votes less, when compared to the Right. Table 10.3 gives a regional post-forecast. Aggregating the regional percentage of votes forecast by the model, and multiplying by the total valid votes at a regional level, we get 42.39 percent of votes for

190

Table 10.3

The 2002 French presidential election (1st round and 2nd round) 1st round*

Region

Alsace Aquitaine Auvergne Bourgogne Bretagne Centre Champagne-Ardenne Franche-Comté Languedoc-Roussillon Limousin Lorraine Midi-Pyrénées Nord Basse-Normandie Haute-Normandie Ile-de-France

Forecast

Actual

Prediction error

36.21 44.92 45.1 42.52 43.51 40.9 39.65 41.07 44.54 45.52 40.00 45.77 45.96 39.1 44.38 41.63

33.84 44.11 44.4 42.34 46.68 40.88 38.5 42.68 42.18 46.43 41.65 46.79 45.15 39.91 44.36 45.36

2.37 0.81 0.70 0.18 −3.17 0.02 1.15 −1.61 2.36 −0.90 −1.65 −1.02 0.81 −0.81 0.02 −3.73

2nd round** Vote prediction (based on total valid votes) 297491.49 670288.29 312303.02 342469.28 690096.22 499733.16 248864.27 235079.04 532668.42 182989.71 432502.48 634627.54 881866.89 287605.45 384876.31 1667111.05

Right forecast

Left forecast

59.46 53.65 53.4 55.2 51.42 53.33 55.4 51.75 55.34 51.62 52.65 48.34 52.74 57.32 50.46 52.57

40.53 46.34 46.59 44.79 48.57 46.66 44.59 48.24 44.65 48.37 47.34 51.65 47.25 42.67 49.53 47.42

Vote prediction (based on total valid votes) 354002.63 757769.71 348797.62 382569.32 835615.47 611098.21 294518.91 288422.47 562876.01 208460.7 565030.54 759369.26 961716.78 340367.27 459107.9 2222716.02

Table 10.3

(Continued) 1st round*

Region

Pays de la Loire Picardie Poitou-Charentes Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur Rhône-Alpes Corse

Forecast

Actual

Prediction error

40.43 43.4 44.14 41.46 40.81 39.89

42.95 40.84 44.34 36.77 40.81 40.36

−2.52 2.56 −0.20 4.69 0.00 −0.47

Total vote Left(%) *

2nd round** Vote prediction (based on total valid votes) 677585.54 398156.99 383407.04 885808.40 1073320.13 43666.99 11762517.80 42.39

Right forecast

Left forecast

54.66 53.53 53.45 60.06 56.53 56.93

45.33 46.46 46.54 39.93 43.46 43.06

Vote prediction (based on total valid votes) 830938.37 447014.96 441319.75 914559.49 1229647.35 52200.52 13868119.37 45.94

Percent of vote for Left (LO + LCR + PC + PS + Green Party + MDC + Diverse Left). Experimental case: Left qualified for the 2nd round (percent of vote).

**

191

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Forecasting the 2002 Elections

the plural Left. In the end, the actual score was 42.89 percent. Thus, we show that a well-specified political economy model was able to anticipate the potential weakness of the Left. The second-round presidential vote model (for the Right) has estimates that merit their own interpretation (see Eq. 10.7). Only 87 percent of the first-round votes (VXDPT1) return to the Right on the second round. Paradoxically, the votes loss is bigger in areas of strength shared by the Right and the FN (DEPVXD ZFD/FN) than in areas of strength shared by the Left and the FN (DEPVXDZFG/FN). This could be seen as a radicalization of the Right-wing electorate. In the end, during cohabitation (COHAB) with a Left-wing president, the Right endures an electoral cost of 2.51 percent of the votes on the average. An experiment (see Table 10.3) provides a hypothetical result for the Left at the second round. It yields a vote combination of 45.95 percent, and obtains an absolute majority only in Midi-Pyrenees. Of course this means that J. Chirac would have won with a 54.04 percent share. Estimates for the first-round presidential vote model for the FN (see Eq. 10.8) show further interesting conclusions. For the period of time we are studying here, we note that these voters are not completely loyal to their past legislative votes (VFNLG), for that coefficient is only 0.66. This might indicate that there is some volatility in the FN vote. Further, the FN receives an electoral premium of 2.45 percent, on average, in the traditional Right-wing bastions (FNDRAD), even though, the unemployment rate there is lower than the national average. This is due to the radicalization phenomenon of the Right-wing electorate. On the other hand, when the unemployment rate is above the national rate (for example 10 percent), this brings a 1.3 percent premium to the FN in the Right-wing regions (FNDU sup). In Left-wing regions, a similar rate of unemployment yields only 1 percent more additional votes (FNGUsup). This confirms that the FN obtains gains from regions where the economic crisis is sharper than the average. In regions where the FN is traditionally weak, it suffers an average electoral cost of 1.1 percent of votes (for 10 percent) when the rate of unemployment is lower than average (FNBASU inf) and a cost of 1.3 percent when above average (FNBASUsup ). In the end, with the estimated parameters for the FN we can forecast the vote for the FN at the first round of the presidential election (Table 10.4). The combination of votes forecast for each region gives 17.68 percent for the FN at the first round of the presidential election; whereas J.-M. Le Pen had obtained 16.86 percent of votes. It appears that once the correct explanatory factors are identified, the Extreme-Right upsurge could have been expected.

Table 10.4

Forecasting the 2002 presidential FN score (1st round) Percent of vote for the FN (1st round)

Region Alsace Aquitaine Auvergne Bourgogne Bretagne Centre Champagne-Ardenne Franche-Comté Languedoc-Roussillon Limousin Lorraine Midi-Pyrénées Nord Basse-Normandie Haute-Normandie Ile-de-France Pays de la Loire Picardie Poitou-Charentes Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur Rhône-Alpes Corse

Actual

Prediction error

22.73 12.97 12.71 17.01 12.26 19.54 20.91 20.58 20.73 10.86 21.53 13.94 18.74 14.43 18.70 17.30 12.13 19.29 12.29 23.99 21.60 11.38

23.44 13.17 14.26 18.26 11.81 17.21 21.12 19.97 22.32 10.38 21.30 15.3 19.03 14.73 17.27 14.56 12.18 20.26 12.02 23.35 19.82 15.68

−0.70 −0.19 −1.54 −1.24 0.45 2.32 −0.20 0.60 −1.59 0.48 0.22 −1.35 −0.28 −0.30 1.43 2.73 −0.05 −0.96 0.26 0.64 1.77 −4.29

Vote prediction (based on total valid votes) 186775.98 193658.72 88002.51 137050.98 194549.63 238734.715 131270.08 117833.24 247984.61 43660.91 232828.46 193312.05 359623.35 106156.67 162252.81 692857.03 203275.04 176963.41 106754.34 512681.15 568049.21 12463.64 4906738.66 17.68

193

Total vote FN (%)

Forecast

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Forecasting the 2002 Elections

The legislative model In this section, we consider the estimates for the legislative contests. Applying OLS to the pooled time series gives the following results, in estimating the model for the first-round vote for the incumbent candidates (see Eq. 10.4). Vote function VLT1 = 6.85−2.84⋅ ∆U+0.80⋅VPT1 +3.03⋅ZFLG−1⋅04⋅INSTAB−15.82.CORS93−2.64.D8693 (3.05)**(− 4.71)**(17.54)** (5.58)** (− 2.28)** (− 5.77)** (− 5.46)** (10.9)

Adj.-R2 = 0.838 SEE = 2.64 N = 154 Period of time: 1978–2002 Figures in parentheses are t-ratios (** = statistical significance at 0.01 or better; two-tailed) Adj.-R2 = the coefficient of multiple determination corrected for degrees of freedom; SEE = the standard error of estimate; N = the number of observations. Below are the estimates for the second-round seats share for incumbent candidates (see Eq. 10.5): Swing ratio function S = − 49.42 + 2.48.VLT1 − 1.10.ABST + 12.72.CONFELEC + 16.56.DUM78 (− 5.04)**(15.11)** (− 5.67)** (5.85)** (4.88)** − 15.04.ZFNGDS + 6.90.ZFNDGS − 14.80.ZGDS + 34.96.CORS78 (− 4.89)** (2.44)** (− 5.33)** (3.15)** − 15.74.CORS81 + 26.18.CORS86 + 27.38.CORS88 + 50.80.CORS93 (− 1.47)° (2.43)** (2.55)** (4.45)** + 19.24.CORS97 + 45.35.CORS02 (1.80)* (4.24)** (10.10)

Adj.-R2 = 0.80 SEE = 10.50 N = 154 Period of time: 1978–2002 Figures in parentheses are t-ratios (** = statistical significance at 0.01 or better; * = statistical significance at 0.05; ° = statistical significance at 0.10; two-tailed) Adj.-R2 = the coefficient of multiple determination corrected for degrees of freedom; SEE = the standard error of estimate; N = the number of observations. Consider now the first-round results of Eq. 10.9. It appears that a 1 percent change in the unemployment rate (∆U) generates an electoral

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cost to the incumbent candidates of 2.84 percent of the votes. The impact is stronger than the one taking place at the presidential election. Moreover, the voters are more faithful to their past votes (at 0.80), than they were in the presidential model (at 0.66). As a result, the confirming effect of the presidential elections on the legislative elections seems to be very robust. The presidential election is the election a candidate must not lose. Finally, a regional area of strength yields a 3.03 percent average premium for the outgoing majority, whereas the electoral regional instability costs it on average 1.04 percent of votes. Looking at the swing ratio (see Eq. 10.10) shows that one more point of abstention (ABST) costs 1.1 percent of the seats in a given region. Furthermore, the dummy variable CONFELEC indicates that the incumbent candidates can expect an average premium of 12.72 percent of seats when the legislative elections confirm the record of the recent presidential ballot. This also means that if the outgoing majority loses the presidential election, its defeat at the legislative elections is going to be less severe than when the legislative elections are intermediate elections, as in 1993. Coming right after a presidential election, a slight correction seems to occur. Also, on the one hand, it appears that when the Right is the outgoing majority it has to endure an average electoral cost of 15.04 percent of the seats. On the other hand, when the Left is the outgoing majority it gains 6.9 percent of the seats, on average, in the areas of strength shared by the Right and the FN (ZFNDGS). Lastly, we can also state that when the Right is the outgoing majority it loses on the average 14.8 percent of seats in areas where the Left is historically strong and where the Left and the FN have no electoral weight (ZGDS). Table 10.5 allows us to compare the real results with the ones given by the forecasting models concerning votes and seats. As a whole, when we reintroduce the votes forecast by the vote function (Eq. 10.9) into the swing ratio function (Eq. 10.10), the political economy model gives 163 seats for the Left, whereas it obtained 171 seats in May 2002. The seats repartition is closely consistent with the reality. The larger gaps are for Aquitaine, Auvergne, Centre, Nord-Pas-de-Calais (NPDC) and Provence-Alpes-Côte-d’Azur (PACA). The sharpness of this result is in large part due to the integration into the model of the intrinsic economic and political characteristics of the regions.

Conclusion Facing the multiplicity of factors which have generated the first-round upheaval of the 2002 presidential election, this political economy

196

Table 10.5

The 2002 French legislative elections (1st round and 2nd round) 1st round + 2nd round

1st round Regions Alsace Aquitaine Auvergne Bourgogne Bretagne Centre Champagne-Ardenne Franche-Comté Languedoc-Roussillon Limousin Lorraine Midi-Pyrénées Nord Basse-Normandie Haute-Normandie Ile-de-France Pays de la Loire Picardie Poitou-Charentes Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur Rhône-Alpes Corse Total seats

Forecast 26.28 44.74 42.85 41.59 43.93 38.04 34.21 39.56 40.9 49.84 38.69 46.6 46.35 34.19 44.89 40.04 38.9 38.51 43.02 31.78 36.8 43.42

Actual 29.41 42.53 41.91 41.3 43.94 39.83 37.34 38.44 40.41 47.06 40.17 44.97 46.32 35.45 41.02 42.59 38.47 38.75 43.00 37.94 39.78 41.4

Prediction error −3.13 2.21 0.94 0.29 −0.01 −1.79 −3.13 1.12 0.49 2.78 −1.48 1.63 0.03 −1.26 3.87 −2.55 0.43 −0.24 0.02 −6.16 −2.98 2.02

Forecast

Actual

0 9 4 5 9 7 3 3 6 4 4 11 16 2 4 35 6 4 6 9 13 3

1 12 7 6 10 2 1 1 7 5 5 15 24 0 5 34 4 5 7 6 11 3

−1 −3 −3 −1 −1 5 2 2 −1 −1 −1 −4 −8 2 −1 1 2 −1 −1 3 2 0

163

171

−8

Vote function (1st round) Percent of vote for Left (LO + LCR + PC + PS + Green Party + MDC + Diverse Left) Swing Ratio (1st round + 2nd round) Seats for Left (LO + LCR + PC + PS Green Party + MDC + Diverse Left)

Prediction error

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model nevertheless demonstrates that one could predict the weakness of the electoral capacity of the Left (about 42 percent of votes). In the same way, the legislative vote function clearly shows that the Left could neither generate a reverse cohabitation nor be wiped out, as it was in 1993. In contrast, for want of an underlying explanatory model of the voter’s behavior, the pre-election polls had some difficulties in forecasting the political outcomes that were taking place. The preliminary definition of the relevant determinants of the votes, and the integration of the disparities and the local forces into the explanation turn out to be essential in the French case. Further, several factors have affected the vote for the Left and for L. Jospin, as follows: • the unexpected rise in the unemployment rate (a strong reversal in some regions); • the weakness of some historically strong areas of the Left; • the increase in abstention, punishing the outgoing majority; • the upsurge of the extreme Right in areas shared by the parliamentary Right; • the decline of the “cohabitation state.” Finally, taking into account the strong character of the “confirmation effect” of the legislative elections since the reordering of the electoral calendar, we can say about whoever loses the presidential election: Vae victis !

Appendix A • Presidential election: specification of the variables • First round • Vote function for the incumbent (Eq. 10.1). Explained variable VPT1: the combination of votes in regions where candidates are close to the outgoing majority. The Right is the outgoing majority in 1974, 1981,1988 and in 1995. The Left is the outgoing majority in 2002. Explanatory variables ∆U: variation of the regional rate of unemployment between December in year (t) preceding the presidential election and December in year (t − 1). VLG: votes for the candidates who are close to the outgoing majority at the past legislative elections (1973, 1978, 1986, 1993 and 1997).

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Forecasting the 2002 Elections

ZFA: variable scored 1 or (− 1), (zero otherwise) in each regional strength area at the presidential election. (− 1) is for the stronghold of the opposition, and 1 is for the stronghold of the majority. We call absolute strength areas, regions which – at the period of the election 1981, 1988, 1995 and 2002 – have never changed political color since 1974.

In 1974 Absolute strength areas for the Right (the majority) Alsace, Aquitaine, Auvergne, Bretagne, Centre, Champagne-Ardenne, Franche-Comté, Lorraine, Basse-Normandie, Ile-de-France, Pays-de-la-Loire, Poitou-Charentes, Rhône-Alpes, Corse. Absolute strength areas for the Left (the opposition) Bourgogne, Languedoc-Roussillon, Limousin, Midi-Pyrenées, Nord-Pasde-Calais (NPDC), Haute-Normandie, Picardie, and Provence-AlpesCôte-d’Azur (PACA).

In 1981 Absolute strength areas for the Right (the majority) Alsace, Auvergne, Bretagne, Centre, Lorraine, Basse-Normandie, Paysde-la-Loire, Corse. Absolute strength areas for the Left (the opposition) Bourgogne, Languedoc-Roussillon, Limousin, Midi-Pyrenées, NPDC, Haute-Normandie, Picardie, PACA.

In 1988 Absolute strength areas for the Right (the majority) Alsace, Centre, Lorraine, Basse-Normandie, Pays-de-la-Loire, Corse. Absolute strength areas for the Left (the opposition) Bourgogne, Languedoc-Roussillon, Limousin, Midi-Pyrenées, NPDC, Haute-Normandie, Picardie.

In 1995 Absolute strength areas for the Right (the majority) Alsace, Centre, Lorraine, Basse-Normandie, Pays-de-la-Loire, Corse.

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Absolute strength areas for the Left (the opposition) None In 2002 Absolute strength areas for the Right (the opposition) Alsace, Centre, Lorraine, Basse-Normandie, Pays-de-la-Loire, Corse. Absolute strength areas for the Left (the majority) None COPMPT: gap between the quarterly popularity (IFOP) of the prime minister and the president of the Republic, measured six months before the election in case of cohabitation (1988, 1995, 2002). POPM: quarterly popularity (IFOP) of the prime minister measured six months before the election, when it takes place at the expected date. The election in 1974 was an unexpected one, caused by the death of President G. Pompidou, so this variable scored zero at this date. GSRT: variable equal to 1 when the Left is the outgoing majority – that is, only in 2002 – (zero otherwise). ALS88 and ALS95: dummy variables scored 1 for Alsace in 1988 and in 1995 (zero otherwise), due to the off-norm scores of the Right in this region.

Second round Swing ratio translating first-round votes for the Right into secondround seats. Explained variable VXDPT2: combination of regional votes for the candidate of the Right (percent). The Right is the outgoing majority in 1974, 1981, 1988 and 1995 and is in the opposition in 2002. Explanatory variables VXDPT1: combination of regional votes for the candidates of the Right block (percent). DEPVXDZFD/FN: dummy variable scored 1 (zero otherwise) when the decline of votes for the Right in strength areas shared with the FN between the two rounds is above the average. This is the case (in 1988 and 1995) for Alsace, Centre, Champagne-Ardenne, Franche-Comté and Lorraine. DEPVXDZFG/FN: dummy variable scored 1 (zero otherwise) when the decline of votes for the Right in strength areas the Left shares with the FN between the two rounds is above the average. This is the case (in 1988 and 1995) for Haute-Normandie, NPDC, Picardie.

200

Forecasting the 2002 Elections

COHAB: dummy scored 1 (zero otherwise) in 1988 and in 1995. This variable calculates the decline for the candidate of the Right at the second round, when the Right is the ruling coalition with a president belonging to the Left. For the forecast, this variable will be zero because the Left is the ruling majority with a president belonging to the Right. ATYP: dummy scored 1 when the Right gains votes between the two rounds whereas the average trend indicates a decline (Alsace in 1974 and 1981; Franche-Comté in 1974; Lorraine in 1974; Midi-Pyrenées in 1974, PACA in 1981 and Rhône-Alpes in 1981); and zero otherwise. MIDIPY95: dummy scored 1 in 1995 (zero otherwise). It is for the smallest decline in votes since 1995. The National Front has a weak effect on this region. LIM7481: dummy scored 1 (zero otherwise) in 1974 and in 1981. In this area of strength of the Left, the Right is losing more on the average, than on the national level. AQ748188: dummy scored 1 (zero otherwise) in 1974, 1981 and 1988. It is the specific case where the Right is losing more in this Right strength area than on the national level (on the average). NPDC95: dummy scored 1 (zero otherwise) for the smallest result for the Right at the second round in 1995.

Vote function for the FN (Eq. 10.3) Explained variable VFNP: votes (percent) obtained by the FN at the first round of the presidential election. Explanatory variables VFNLG: votes (percent) obtained by the FN at the first round of the previous legislative elections (1986, 1993 and 1997). FNDRAD: dummy scored 1 (0 otherwise) in rightist regions (at least four out of five times since 1974), where the FN is strong and when the unemployment rate is – on the average – below the national rate too (Alsace, Franche-Comté, Lorraine, Ile-de-France, Rhône-Alpes, Centre). In such regions voters radicalization, due to incentives other than economic ones, is benefiting the FN. FNDUsup: dummy scored 1 (0 otherwise) in rightist regions (at least four out of five times since 1974), where the FN is strong crossed by the rate of regional unemployment (in December prior to the election) when it is – on the average – above the national rate from 1988 to 2002

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(Champagne-Ardenne and PACA). In such regions voters radicalization, due to economic motives is benefiting the FN. FNGUsup: dummy scored 1 (0 otherwise) in leftist regions (at least three out of five times since 1974) where the FN is strong to the detriment of the Left, crossed by the rate of regional unemployment (in December prior to the election) when it is – on the average – above the national rate from 1988 to 2002 (NPDC, Picardie, Haute-Normandie and Languedoc-Roussillon). FNBASUsup : dummy scored 1 (zero otherwise) in regions where the result for the FN is below its national result on the average crossed by the rate of regional unemployment when it is above the national rate – on the average. FNBASUinf: dummy scored 1 (zero otherwise) in regions where the result for the FN is below its national result on the average crossed by the rate of regional unemployment when it is below the national rate – on the average. CORS88: dummy scored 1 (zero otherwise) for Corse in 1988.

Appendix B • Legislative elections: specification of the variables • First round • Vote function for the incumbent (Eq. 10.4). Explained variable VLT1: the combination of votes in regions where the candidates are close to the outgoing majority (percent). The Right is the outgoing majority in 1978, 1981, 1988 and 1997 and the Left is the incumbent in 1986, 1993 and 2002. Explanatory variables VPT1: the votes for the candidates close to the outgoing majority at the presidential election (first round) prior to legislative ones that is: 1974, 1978, 1988 and 1995 for the Right and 1981, 1988 and 2002 for the Left. ∆U: evolution of the rate of regional unemployment between December year (t) prior to the presidential election (data source: INSEE) and December year (t−1). ZFLG: variable indicating the strength areas of Right/Left at the legislative elections. The regions where the Right or the Left have had a majority (in 7 elections out of 7 for the Right, 5 out of 7 for the Left) since 1978 are scored 1 (zero otherwise). The sign “+” is for a region with

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the same political color as the government, the sign “−” is for a region having the same ideology as the opposition. For the Right the regions are: Alsace, Basse-Normandie and Pays-de-la-Loire. For the Left the regions are: Limousin and NPDC. INSTAB: variable indicating the volatility of ideology for some regions at the legislative elections. The instability is scored 1 (zero otherwise) and is for Aquitaine, Auvergne, Languedoc-Roussillon, Midi-Pyrenées, Haute-Normandie, Picardie and Poitou-Charentes. D8693: dummy scored 1 in 1986 and in 1993, and zero otherwise. It deals with the only two cases since 1973, with a parliamentary majority – elected after a presidential election – able to end its mandate. CORS93: dummy scored 1 in 1993 (zero otherwise), in order to correct an aberrant point.

Second round Swing ratio translating first-ballot legislative votes into seats (Eq. 10.5) Explained variable S: seats (percent) per region for the candidates of the outgoing majority. Explanatory variables VLT1: the combination of votes in regions where the candidates are close to the outgoing majority (percent). The Right is the outgoing majority in 1978, 1981, 1988 and 1997 and the Left is the incumbent in 1986, 1993 and 2002. ABST: abstention rate (percent) at the first round of the legislative elections. CONFELEC: dummies scored 1 (zero otherwise) in 1981, 1988 and 2002 when the legislative elections are confirmation ones for the presidential ballot vote. DUM78: dummy scored 1 in 1978 (zero otherwise), because this election has two distinctive features. On the one hand it takes place during the V. Giscard d’Estaing’s seven-year term, while the Assembly has been elected during President Pompidou’s mandate. On the other hand, the outgoing majority has obtained a wide seat majority while having a first-round votes minority. ZFNGDS: dummy scored 1 in areas of strength shared by the Left and the FN (zero otherwise) (Languedoc-Roussillon, NPDC, Haute-Normandie and Picardie) when the Right is the outgoing majority. ZFNDGS: dummy scored 1 in areas of strength shared by the classic Right and the FN (zero otherwise) (Alsace, Bourgogne, Centre,

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Champagne-Ardennes, Franche-Comté, Lorraine, Ile-de-France, PACA and Rhône-Alpes) when the Left is the incumbent. ZGDS: dummy scored 1 in areas of strength of the Left (zero otherwise) (Aquitaine, Auvergne, Limousin, Midi-Pyrenées and Poitou-Charentes) when the Right is the incumbent. CORS78, CORS81, CORS86, CORS88, CORS93, CORS97 and CORS02: dummies scored 1 (zero otherwise) for Corse in 1978, 1981, 1986, 1988, 1993, 1997 and 2002. Note 1. The explanatory model is calculated for the period 1974–1995, because of the elimination of the Left at the second round. A projection is then constructed doing as if the candidate for the Left would have been qualified (see Table 10.3).

References Frey, B.S. Politico-Economic Models and Cycles, Journal of Public Economics, 9 (1978), 208–220. Goguel, F. Du 5 mai 1945 au 19 mai 1974, Revue Française de Science Politique, 24 (1974), 893–910. Jérôme, B. Do the French Voters have the Political Business Cycle in Mind? Paper prepared for the Annual Meeting of the European Public Choice Society, Sienne (04/26–29/2000). Jérôme, B. and Jérôme-Speziari, V. Gare au ralentissement économique à gauche, Libération (08/23/2001a), 4. Jérôme, B. and Jérôme-Speziari, V. Le chômage, cauchemar du candidat Jospin, in Etienne Lefebvre, Le Journal du Dimanche (09/02/2001b), 5. Jérôme, B. and Jérôme-Speziari, V. Les résultats de 2002 à travers leurs déterminants économiques, Les Echos, Rubrique idée (04/17/2001c). Jérôme, B. and Jérôme-Speziari, V. Ils ont trouvé la formule qui donne le résultat des élections, L’Expansion, n°656 (11/8–21/2001d), 74–75. Jérôme, B., Jérôme-Speziari, V. and Lewis-Beck, M.S. Reordering the French Election Calendar: Forecasting the Consequences for 2002, European Journal of Political Research, 42(3), 425–440. Jérôme, B., Jérôme, V. and Lewis-Beck, M.S. Polls Fail in France: Forecasts of the 1997 Legislative Election, International Journal of Forecasting, 15 (1999), 163–174. Jérôme, B., Lewis-Beck, M.S. and Lafay, J.D. Les prévisions des modèles politicoéconomiques, in Lafay, Cheminement du futur, Le Figaro Economie (03/19/ 1993). Lafay, J.D. Les conséquences électorales de la conjoncture économique: essais de prévision chiffrée pour mars 1978, Vie et Sciences économiques, 75 (1977), 1–7. Lewis-Beck, M.S. (1985) Un modèle de prévision des élections législatives (avec une application pour 1986), Revue Française de Science Politique, 35 (6), 1080–1091. Mayer, N. and Perrineau, P. Le Front National à découvert (Références académiques, Presses de Sciences Po, 1996). Nannestad, P. and Paldam, M. The VP-Function: a Survey of the Literature on Vote and Popularity Functions after 25 Years, Public Choice, 79 (3–4) (1994), 213–245.

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Perrineau, P. Le symptôme Le Pen (Fayard, 1997). Roger, P. L’extrême droite pourrait arbitrer 319 circonscriptions aux législatives, Le Monde (04/14/2002), 9. Rosa, J.J. and Amson, D. Conditions économiques et élections: une analyse politicoéconomique (1920–1973), Revue Française de Science Politique, 26 (1976), 1101–1124. Siegfried, A. Tableau Politique de la France de l’Ouest sous la troisième République, (Paris: Armand Colin, 1913). Tufte, E.R. Determinants of the Outcomes of Midterm Congressional Elections, American Political Science Review, 69 (1975), 812–826.

11 Vote Functions in France and the 2002 Election Forecast Eric Dubois and Christine Fauvelle-Aymar

Introduction The 2002 French elections which, at least for the presidential first-ballot vote, surprised most commentators is a good occasion to take an in-depth look at the vote function literature applied to the French case. The vote function methodology has been used in France to explain election outcomes for more than 25 years. The first paper was the study of Rosa and Amson (1976) devoted to the empirical analysis of the vote for left party candidates, that was then considered as a purely protest vote. Since this first study, the political situation as well as the economic situation has changed a lot. What have we learnt in those 25 years? The first section of the chapter presents the basic elements of the vote functions. Then, we evaluate the literature on vote functions applied to French election outcomes. We will see that the contribution of this literature is more important concerning the political part than the economic part of the vote function. The third section of the chapter is devoted to the estimation of a vote function for French legislative elections. We offer some empirical results, especially for the 2002 legislative election. We also try to evaluate the robustness of the estimation, in particular, by considering a different set of data and by estimating different formulations of the equation. In the last section we examine the important problem of the transformation of the first-ballot vote into the final outcome. This leads us to estimate different formulations of a swing ratio function. 205

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Presentation of the vote function The aim of the vote function is fundamentally to explain the election outcome by taking the pre-election situation into account. This growing literature, which is based on the pioneer works of Kramer (1971) and Fair (1978) concerning the United States, is now rather extensive.1 The literature on the vote function is mainly empirical and the aim of these studies is to explain the election outcome by using a vector of explanatory variables X.2 Therefore, one has to estimate an equation of the following type: Vt = f (Xt) + et where V stands for election outcome in the year t (measured, for example, by the percentage of vote in favour of the incumbent, or in favour of the left-wing parties . . .), f is the vote function and e is an error term. Generally, the relation between X and V is assumed to be linear and therefore the estimation method which is used is ordinary least squares (OLS). 3 The dependent variable Since the aim of the vote function is to explain election outcome, the dependent variable can be either the incumbent vote, the opposition vote or the vote for one of the parties (or coalition of parties). 4 The fact that the incumbent vote is the most frequently used variable originates in the responsibility hypothesis according to which citizens vote for (against) the government if the economic situation is going well (badly).5 Nevertheless, in the French case, this choice raises some problems. First, there is the existence of the Front National (FN). Where should the vote for this extreme-right party be catalogued? Together with the vote for right-wing parties or always with the opposition?6 This question seems particularly important after the 2002 presidential election where the strength of the FN vote may explain the absence of the Left at the second-ballot vote. The second problem refers to the existence of “cohabitation” where a president and a prime minister from opposing party coalitions serve together. Which party should be considered as the incumbent, the party of the president or the party that has a majority at the Assembly? Almost all the options have been envisaged in the literature.7 Owing to these problems, it is better to consider as the dependent variable the vote for one of the competing party coalitions. The choice

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of the left-wing vote is preferable since it is easier to compute than vote for the right-wing parties because it avoids choosing if one should or should not include the FN vote with the Right vote. National/local data Two main approaches have been used to explain and/or forecast election outcomes in France. The first approach considers national data and introduces a low number of explanatory variables. These variables, that we will present later in the chapter, are generally an economic indicator and/or a political one. Their aim is to take into account the responsibility hypothesis. Among the studies belonging to this approach, one can mention Rosa and Amson (1976), Lecaillon (1980), Lewis-Beck (1985, 8 1991), Courbis (1995), Fauvelle-Aymar and Lewis-Beck (1997) and Dubois (2001). The second approach uses local data (either at the regional or at the departmental level) and, in addition to the economic and political indicators, introduces many explanatory variables either to study some particular dimensions of the vote (for example, the role of abstention, Fauvelle-Aymar et al., 2000) or to account for local specificities ( Jérôme et al., 1993; Lafay, 1993, 1995; Jérôme and Jérôme-Speziari, 2002; Auberger and Dubois, 2003). Among the main advantages of using local data, there is the fact that it increases the number of observations and therefore the number of degrees of freedom of the econometric estimation. 9 Moreover, the use of detailed data allows one to explain more precisely the electoral behaviour, the researcher being closer to the phenomenon under study. In particular, it is then possible to account for the influence of the local specificities on election outcome. The use of local data has disadvantages also. In particular, there are problems linked to the availability of some data at the local level. The empirical study below in this chapter will compare estimations made on national and local data. Forecasting election outcomes Even if most of the vote functions were primarily designed for explaining election outcome, some of these functions have also been used to forecast them. By electoral forecasting, we mean ex ante forecasting, that is, an election forecast that may be published before the election.10 The vote functions should fulfil some conditions in order to be used to forecast the election outcome. The first and essential condition is that the explanatory variables used in the estimated equation should be available before the election.11 Given this condition, it turns out that a model that has a good ex post explanatory power may have a really poor ex ante forecasting

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capability. Actually, it is really different to offer a good ex ante forecast and to provide a good ex post explanation. For example, the Jérôme and Jérôme-Speziari (2002) vote function uses a dummy variable equal to one in 2002 (and to zero otherwise) as an explanatory variable for the first-ballot presidential vote. The justification of this dummy variable is that it was the first time during the Fifth Republic that at a presidential election, the Left runs for the presidential election while having a majority in the National Assembly. The introduction of this independent variable totally prevents the use of this equation to forecast the election outcome before the election since one would have to forecast the estimated coefficient of this dummy variable.12 A second condition is to try to stay as parsimonious as possible in terms of the number of these explanatory variables. This condition should necessarily be fulfilled when one uses national data since the number of observations is very low. Therefore, the statistical validity of the estimation prevents the use of a large number of explanatory variables since it reduces the degrees of freedom of the estimation. This is especially the case in France owing to the very low number of elections that have been held since the birth of the Fifth Republic in 1958. 13 This problem is non-existent for the estimation based on local data. However, when using local data, the researcher has a high incentive to incorporate many variables in the model. That may increase the ex post explanatory power of the equation but it is not certain that it will increase the ex ante capabilities of the estimation. Indeed, it may increase the instability of the estimation since some explanatory variables may offer good explanation of the past elections but not of the future ones.

The determinants of the election outcome The aim of the vote function is to determine the variables to be included in the X vector, that is, to study the determinants of the election outcome.14 Two categories of factors have been used to explain vote share: economic factors and political factors. Economic voting On the whole, it is on the economic part of the vote function that most researchers have concentrated their efforts. 15 Two economic indicators, unemployment and inflation, are considered to be “the big two” (Nannestad and Paldam, 1994) economic variables that explain election outcomes. Some studies use an indicator of the economic growth instead of the unemployment indicator. Among the main results that emerge

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from the literature, there are the facts that the voters are generally more sociotropic than egocentric,16 and rather myopic. 17 The studies dealing with the French vote functions that have been published in the last twenty years have never tried to evaluate the relevance of these results in the French case. It was not the case with the first studies that introduced only economic variables in their estimation (Rosa and Amson, 1976; Lecaillon, 1980; Lewis-Beck and Bellucci, 1982). The problem concerning these first studies is that their results need to be reassessed owing to the major economic and political changes that occurred in France since the end of the 1970s. The recent studies continue to introduce some economic determinants in their estimation. However, the authors generally concentrate their research and their comments on the non-economic variables explaining election outcome. 18 In sum, concerning the economic dimension of vote, the vote function literature applied to the French case does not appear to offer really new results. None of these studies has, for example, tried to evaluate if the economic determinant of vote in France may be different from those in other countries. Even if some studies have used both the economic growth rate and the unemployment rate as economic indicators, none has tried to compare their respective explanatory power.19 However, these two indicators may measure different things. Hence, compared to economic growth about which voters have only perception (and information by the way of media), unemployment is a reality (the voter being either unemployed or experiencing some spells of unemployment). Therefore, the comparison of the unemployment indicator with the economic growth index may be a way to evaluate, in the case of France, the historical sociotropic/egocentric controversy.20 The political and institutional factors Most of the vote function literature does not claim that the economy is the sole force that governs the electoral decision of voters.21 Numerous other factors may (and do) influence voter’s choice such as, in the French context, European construction, immigration policy, the problem of urban insecurity, to mention a few. These factors, which are mainly political,22 have not yet received all the attention they deserve. One reason is that their influence is fundamentally more difficult to capture than the influence of economic factors. Concerning political factors, two main approaches are utilised in the vote function for France. Most studies apply the standard method that consists of using the government popularity index as an indicator

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of the opinion of the voter about the government performance on issues other than the economic ones.23 This approach has the obvious advantage of parsimony which is especially useful in the French case. Nevertheless, it does not offer much explanation about the precise political factors that influence election outcome. The only thing shown is that a high popularity helps the incumbent to win the election. The second approach consists in taking directly into account the political factors suspected of governing voter choice.24 Among these factors, one can mention the influence of the political ideology and the political history at the local level. Jérôme et al. (2003) show, for example, that regions that have never changed their political preferences since 1974 are more likely to vote for their preferred party whereas regions that are politically unstable are less likely to reward the incumbent party. Even if the definition of the related explanatory variable raises questions, 25 the main contribution of this empirical study is to confirm that one has to take into account local specificities when using local data, and especially to introduce measures of the ideology of the local entities. We will present in the empirical section an easier and more robust way to account for these particularities. A second sort of explanatory variable measuring “ideology” is the vote share at the “preceding” election. The “preceding” election can be either the closest election in the past26 (Auberger and Dubois, 2003) or the last presidential election when the estimation concerns the legislative election (or the opposite) ( Jérôme etal., 2003). In other words, in these studies, the “preceding” election variable is not the lagged dependent variable. The justification for introducing a variable concerning past election outcome is to assess both the permanent and the short-term ideological strength at the local level (region or department). In other words, this variable is, in some part, not really different from the dummy variables we just presented that were used to take into account the political strength of the region. Using a past election outcome variable to account for the short-term strength of the political parties raises one problem related to the time elapsed since the last election. The longer it is, the less this variable will measure what it is supposed to. This is especially true when one uses the past presidential election outcome in the legislative election equation, at least for the 1978, 1986 and 1993 elections. Another problem refers to the institutional component of the vote and in particular the fact that the different elections do not exert the same ideological appeal. 27 Owing to these two problems, it seems better not to introduce a “preceding” election variable in the estimation. Other variables may be used to account for the permanent ideological strength of the region

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such as for example the lagged dependent variable. 28 Concerning the measure of the strength of the political parties at the approach of the election, it seems better to retain a popularity indicator of the political parties even if this indicator is a much larger political indicator.29 The influence of abstention has also been introduced in the vote functions for France (Fauvelle-Aymar et al., 2000). This study develops the hypothesis of a relation between election outcome and turnout. The theoretical idea is that voters choose at once between voting for one party, voting for another one, or abstaining. Therefore, turnout and vote are treated in the framework of a simultaneous equation model (2SLS). Considering all types of French elections (except the municipal), this study shows that there is a strong interdependence between vote shares and abstention. 30 Lafay and Servais (2000) study the influence of political scandals that are defined “as the indignation provoked in public opinion by the revelation that a politician, a political group or a political institution has committed an action which is judged illegitimate, illegal, unethical, or shameful” (p. 189). Their empirical study shows that political scandals strongly and negatively influence the vote share of the incumbent.31 Concerning the institutional determinants of the vote, two factors have been studied. The first one is the type of election. The different elections that regularly occur in France (presidential, legislative, municipal, cantonal, regional and European elections) do not have the same institutional characteristics and especially the same political salience. As is well known, their peculiarities strongly influence the level of political mobilisation, the turnout being much higher at presidential elections than at European elections.32 It turns out that the type of election also influences the election outcome. The empirical study of Fauvelle-Aymar et al. (2000) shows that the electorate seems more reluctant to vote for a left-wing candidate at presidential elections than at legislative, cantonal or European elections. The second institutional factor that has been analysed is the influence of “cohabitation” where a president and a prime minister from opposing party coalitions serve together. The main issue in relation to cohabitation concerns the attribution of responsibility for the economic situation. As it seems now clear after three cohabitations, it is the prime minister that, at election time, will be considered as responsible for the economy, the president being mainly confined to foreign affairs (Lewis-Beck, 1997b; Jérôme et al., 2003; Lewis-Beck and Nadeau, 2000). The contribution of the literature on vote functions for France is clearly more important concerning the political and institutional components

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of vote compared to the economic part of it. Nevertheless, the influence of some particular aspect of the French political system has not yet been investigated. For example, one interesting question will be to evaluate the respective weight of the economic and political factors according to the type of election. For example, is a bad economic performance more costly for the ruling party, in terms of vote, when it runs for a presidential race than for another election type?

Estimation of a vote function for French legislative elections The aim of our empirical study is to offer answers to two questions: 1. Is it better to use local data? 2. What variables should be included in the vote function when using local data? We wish to build a robust vote function for French election outcomes that could be used to study some particular dimensions of the vote or to forecast election outcomes. The variable that we try to explain is the vote share received by the left-wing parties at the first round of the legislative election. The basic model We will estimate an equation of the following form: Vit = α + β Unem it + δ Popt + εit where:33 • V it is the vote share of the left-wing parties at year t in region (or department) i or at the national level. • Unem is the economic explanatory variable. The choice of this variable is dictated by the availability of the data. It turns out that the unemployment rate is the only economic indicator available at the local level.34 More precisely, we use the following variable: the unemployment rate multiplied by a dummy variable equal to one when the Left is the incumbent and to minus one otherwise.35 The dummy variable allows us to account for the fact that the responsibility hypothesis, on which the vote function is built, works both when the Left is the incumbent and when it is in the opposition. As the unemployment situation influences the vote for the Right incumbent, it indirectly

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affects the Left opposition vote share (in the opposite direction).36 One may expect a negative coefficient for this variable. • Pop is the popularity index. The popularity indicator considered here is the popularity index of the political parties. To consider the popularity of political parties instead of the popularity of the prime minister (or the president) allows reduction of the noise present in the popularity index.37 This variable is available only at the national level. • ε is the error term. No variable is introduced to evaluate the influence of cohabitation. The reason is that this potential effect is impossible to assess in the case of our sample of elections. There were three cohabitations in France following the 1986, 1993 and 1997 legislative elections. Therefore, a dummy variable for “cohabitation” should equal one in 1988 and in 2002.38 However, these two elections were at the same time “confirming elections” that is, a legislative election just following a presidential election (as in 1981).39 Therefore, this dummy variable cannot distinguish between this latter effect and the cohabitation effect. 40 Owing to this problem, we choose not to introduce an election dummy variable. The following table presents the results for the national, regional and departmental level (Table 11.1). To allow easy comparison, we consider the same sample of elections in the three cases. These elections are the five legislative elections that were held in 1986, 1988, 1993, 1997 and 2002. The Left was the incumbent in 1986, 1993 and 2002 and the Right in 1988 and 1997. The estimation at the national level is not satisfactory. First, the sample is extremely small. Second, neither coefficient for the two independent variables is statistically significant at conventional levels. This result is in particular explained by a problem of high multicollinearity. The simple coefficient of correlation between Pop and Unem at the national level

Table 11.1

Vote equations (1986–2002) National model

Intercept Unem Pop Adj. R2 N

Regional model

42.89*** −0.22 2.22

35.87*** −0.17*** 8.54***

0.70 5

0.31 110

*, ** and *** significant at 10 %, 5% and 1% level respectively.

Departmental model 42.90*** −0.22*** 2.86* 0.15 480

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is − 0.73. When only one explanatory variable is introduced at a time (either the popularity index or the unemployment rate), they both have the correct sign and the coefficients are significant at the 5 per cent level. The results improve when the estimation is made on local data. The two explanatory variables are highly significant. One problem that we encounter is linked to the value of the coefficient associated with the popularity indicator. It differs considerably between the two estimations. An increase of 0.1 point for the popularity indicator leads to an increase in vote of about 0.9 points in the estimation based on regional data but of less than 0.3 points in the estimation based on departmental data. The main explanation for this high instability of the coefficient associated with the popularity indicator is linked to the fact that this variable is only known at the national level. Therefore, the inclusion of these data is nearly similar to the introduction of one dummy variable by election. In other words, in addition to taking into account the influence of popularity, it measures the influence of the particularities of each election. The only solution to this problem would be to have local data on popularity, data that are unfortunately not available. Concerning the coefficient associated with the unemployment rate, it is highly similar in the two estimations. An increase of 1 point in the unemployment rate brings a diminution of the vote for the Left of about 0.2 point. Finally, owing to the low number of French elections and therefore to the low number of observations when one uses national data, it is better to use the local data.41 The answer of which data-set is preferred is less clear when one compares the two estimations based on local data. The increase in the number of observations (480 in the departmental estimation compared to 110 in the regional one) does not lead to better explanatory power, the R2 of the regional estimation being higher than the one of the departmental estimation. The main interesting point when using local data is that it allows the researcher to take into account the local particularities of the vote and, in particular, the permanence of electoral behaviour. We will now study how the introduction of the local specificities in the estimation changes the former empirical results. Local specificities When using local data, one has to take into account the fact that some regions (or departments) are more inclined to vote for the Left, whereas others prefer the Right. These structural patterns refer in particular to the fact that voting has a strong sociological dimension that may be related to particularities of each region (its political history, its sociodemographic characteristics concerning religious practice, education, age,

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income distribution . . .).42 There are different ways to take these local particularities into account. One method would be to use different explanatory variables measuring the social and demographic structure of the region. Among other limits, this method is really tedious and does not present much interest in the case of pooled time series data.43 Two other methods seem preferable. The first one is to use the lagged dependent variable.44 It is one of the simplest ways of introducing local specificities in a sample of pooled data. The second method consists in allowing the constant or the disturbance in the equation to differ by region or by department.45 In other words, the equation to estimate is one of the following forms: Vit = αi + β Unemit + δ Popit + εit Vit = α + β Unemit + δ Popit + ui + εit In the first specification (which is estimated by OLS procedure), α is a constant that differs by region or department. This method of estimation is called the fixed effects approach and amounts to introducing as many dummy variables as there are regions or departments. 46 This approach is finally a generalisation of the model where some dummy variables are introduced to account for local specificities, as for example, in Jérôme et al. (2003). That study introduces only a limited number of dummy variables (and not as many as there are regions) and therefore acts as an arbitrary constraint on the estimation.47 For example, the constant of the model is constrained to be the same in all the left-wing regions (or in all the regions for which no dummy variable has been introduced) whereas in the generalised model they may differ for each region. This may seem a less strong hypothesis since it does not require, for example, that two regions classified on the Left should have the same electoral behaviour. In the second specification, called the random effects model, it is a part of the random disturbance that is specific to each region. More precisely, in addition to the usual error term (εit), there is the term ui which is the random disturbance characterising the ith region and is constant through time. This second equation is estimated using a feasible generalised least squares procedure. 48 Whereas they are based on different estimation procedures, the aim of these two approaches is identical. It is to model differences in electoral behaviour across regions or departments. 49 Taking into account the local particularities of the vote greatly increases the explanatory power of the estimation as one can see with the estimations presented in the Table 11.2.

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Table 11.2

Specifications of the departmental model Fixed effects

Intercept Unem Pop Vot(−1) Adj. R2 N

– −0.23*** 2.73*** – 0.83 480

Random effects

Lagged dependent variable

43.03*** −0.23*** 2.74*** –

8.70*** −0.58*** −0.74 0.79***

0.83 480

0.79 480

*, ** and *** significant at 10 %, 5% and 1% level respectively.

This table compares the three different methods of estimation.50 The first two columns refer to the pooled data analysis method. As one can see, the use of this approach greatly increases the value of the R2 (the R2 of the departmental equation was 0.15 in Table 11.1). 51 These two estimations are rather similar but the Hausman test indicates that the random effects model should be preferred to a fixed effects estimation.52 In the third estimation, the lagged dependent variable is introduced.53 The result is not very satisfactory. The value of the R2 is below those of the fixed and random effects models and the popularity coefficient has the wrong sign and is not significant. Table 11.3 presents the same estimation for the regional case. The regional estimation results lead to the same conclusion. The explanatory power of the regression greatly increases when using the pooled data analysis models and the use of the lagged dependent variables should be rejected. 54

Table 11.3

Specifications of the regional model Fixed effects

Intercept Unem Pop Vot(−1) Adj. R2 N

– −0.17*** 8.44*** – 0.81 110

Random effects

Lagged dependent variable

35.97*** −0.17*** 8.44*** – 0.81 110

*, ** and *** significant at 10 %, 5% and 1% level respectively.

8.06*** −0.58*** 3.73** 0.71*** 0.76 110

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In sum, these results show (1) that one has to take into account the local particularities of each electoral region (or department) when using local data to estimate a vote function, (2) the best way to do it is to use the methodology developed for pooled data analysis. One can therefore conclude that it is really better to use local data than national data to estimate vote functions. But which level of detail should one use? It is difficult to evaluate which estimation, at the regional or departmental level, is the best. Their explanatory power, measured in terms of R2, is identical. Another way to compare the two estimations is to calculate their prediction power. The following table (Table 11.4) presents the result of the ex post prediction of the model at the regional and departmental level. The predictions are of average vote share at the national level for the Left-wing parties. To obtain them, we simply calculated the mean of the prediction at the local level.55 The table also indicates the absolute mean error (AME) of the forecast computed using the national value of the forecast. The AME of the prediction is lower in the department case. Table 11.4 gives the figures for the 2002 legislative election. As one can see, the error of the prediction concerning this election is below the AME for the regional model (1.78 versus 1.91), and a bit higher for the departmental model (2.65 versus 1.24). The closeness of these errors to the average suggests a conclusion about the 2002 election: it was not, contrary to what most commentators said, really different from preceding legislative elections.56 Finally, it appears that the estimation on departmental data in general is slightly better than the estimation using regional data, because overall it produces less error. This result is not surprising since the department is, in France, the sole electoral entity that is considered as homogeneous (Bon and Cheylan, 1988: 7). Table 11.4

Ex post prediction (1986–2002) Predicted vote share Regional model

Departmental model

1986 1988 1993 1997 2002

41.84 49.71 38.69 46.59 43.00

43.25 49.14 42.15 48.48 43.87

AME

1.91

1.24

Actual vote share

45.26 49.43 42.11 47.25 41.22

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In order to check the reliability of the results, different tests and estimations have been performed. Concerning the explanatory variables, several other variables have been introduced. For example, the popularity indicator used in the former estimations was replaced by other indicators such as the popularity differential between the left-wing and the right-wing parties, the popularity of the Socialist Party (instead of the left-wing parties). In each case, we used the indicator either in absolute value or in relative value. 57 The empirical results did not change at all. We also estimated the vote function by excluding Corsica (the region or the two departments), as it is done in numerous studies, on the basis that figures for Corsica are highly specific. It turns out that the results are not different when these data are included or excluded from the regression. In other words, the data for Corsica cannot be considered as outliers.58

Forecasting the election outcome We will now study the forecasting power of our estimation. How did this model perform for the 2002 legislative elections? We calculated the ex ante forecast based on the estimated coefficient for a reduced sample including only the pre-2002 legislative elections. 59 Using regional data, the 2002 forecast is 43.31 per cent and it is 45.78 per cent for the departmental data whereas the Left received in reality 41.22 per cent of the total expressed votes. Compared to AME of the prediction (see Table 11.4), the forecast errors for 2002 are slightly higher whether one uses regional data or departmental data. One can also notice that if the ex post predictions were better while using departmental data (Table 11.4), the ex ante forecasts are worse, than with the regional data. However, if one wants to draw a conclusion about the respective forecasting power of these two levels of analysis, one should take into account that the forecast standard error is higher in the regional than in the departmental model. The figure is 0.62 for the department and 1.13 for the region forecast standard error of estimate. As it is this standard error of estimate that gives the width of the confidence interval of the forecast, one can conclude that this interval is larger for the regional than the departmental forecast. In sum, the 2002 forecast based on departmental data is less accurate but also less uncertain. Therefore, the choice of the level of analysis (regional or departmental) depends on what is considered to be the most important when forecasting. Given the particularities of the French electoral system, to know the first-ballot vote share does not necessarily offer accurate information

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concerning the final result of the election. Other estimation is needed to be able to forecast the second-ballot outcome and in particular the number of seats in the Assembly. From votes to seats in the Assembly The main problem that researchers encounter when they want to forecast the final outcome of French elections (that is, the party that will hold the Presidency or the partisan composition of the National Assembly) is to model the second-ballot vote. The principal method that has been used to forecast the number of seats is to estimate a “swing ratio” which is an equation that relates the number of seats to the first-ballot votes. Estimations based on local data are undeniably preferable when one wants to estimate a swing ratio function, in particular, because they allow to be taken into account the divergence in vote share among regions, whereas estimation on national data strongly smoothes the variance of the local results. The simplest swing ratio function is of the following type: Sit = αi + βVit + εit Where S stands for the number of seats and V for the first-ballot vote (both in percentage). Estimated on our data, we get the following equations: At the regional level: Sit = − 74.35 + 2.60Vit + eit (4.28)

(6.79)

Adj. R2 = 0.60, n = 110 At the departmental level: Sit = − 105.86 + 3.20Vit + eit (17.68)

(24.04)

Adj. R2 = 0.56, n = 480 Using these equations, 60 we can compute the number of seats that the Left-wing parties will get at the Assembly. To obtain them, we first predicted the fitted value at the local level for each election and then multiplied these data by the absolute number of seats in the local unit.61

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Table 11.5 gives the sum, by election, of these seats. One can compare the AME of the seat prediction of each level of analysis. As we can see, the AME is lower for the estimation based on regional data than for the estimation based on departmental data. Therefore, one can conclude that it is better to estimate seat functions on regional data. One explanation of this result is related to the fact that the departmental level is too detailed when one analyses the number of seats. The average number of seats in the regions is 25.2 compared with 5.8 in the departments, with one-third of the departments where there are only two or three deputies. When the department has six seats, a seat share (the fitted value of the equation) between 8.34 and 24.9 per cent leads to predict one seat for the department. The fitted seat share should be in the interval [2 per cent; 5.9 per cent] to predict one seat in a region with 25 seats. Therefore, using regional data allows more precise predictions. One can also notice in Table 11.5 that the ex post predictions are really bad for some elections. It is especially the case for the 1993 election where the model predicts a number of seats much higher than the actual one. One explanation of this result is linked to the particularities of the French electoral system. In this system, to gather more than 50 per cent of the vote (national average) does not automatically mean a majority assembly at the end of the second round. For example, the final result of the 1988 legislative election was 292 seats for the Left-wing parties that received 49.43 per cent of the first-ballot vote. At the 1993 election they gathered only 83 seats whereas their vote share at the first round was 42.11 per cent. In other words there is not a direct relation between vote share at the first round and seat share at the end of the second round.

Table 11.5

Ex post prediction (1986–2002) Predicted number of seats

Regional model 1986 1988 1993 1997 2002 AME

226 298 147 267 180 27.4

Actual number of seats

Departmental model 217 284 171 281 155 33.0

243 292 82 307 171

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The R2 of the seat estimation is 0.60 (regional data) compared to 0.82 for the vote function. This result is not particular to our estimations. All the empirical estimations of a swing ratio function based on French local data obtain this result (see for example Auberger and Dubois, 2003). Different explanations may be advanced to explain the relatively low explanatory power of the seat function. One explanation refers to the fact that the French political system is a multiparty system. At the first ballot, voters have a choice between many parties62 whereas at the second round their choice is limited to two or three parties. Therefore, some parties for which some people voted for at the first round are no longer present at the second. What do these voters do at the second round? They may abstain or vote for one of the remaining parties. This explains why the second-ballot vote is not directly related to the first round of the election. This problem is particularly exacerbated for the FN due to its electoral strength. According to their first-ballot vote, the candidates of this party may be present at the second round in front of either one candidate (from the Left or the Right) or two candidates (from the Right and the Left). This latter configuration is called a triangular contest. If in the first case, the final result is easy to guess, it is harder concerning the second. If the vote for the FN logically reduces the vote for the Right, it also reduces, but more weakly, the vote for the Left. To give an example, at the 1997 legislative election, among the 76 triangular contests of the second ballot, 47 were gained by the Left and 29 by the Right. Problems may also occur without the presence of the FN at the second round. At the second round, the voters that voted for the FN at the first round, may choose either to abstain, to vote for the Right or to vote for the Left. The consequences of these three electoral choices will not be the same for the composition of the Assembly. In other words, concerning the estimation of the swing ratio function, the implicit hypothesis that the French political system functions as a bipartisan system is all the more problematic. Improving the seat forecast Different solutions have been considered in the literature to increase the explanatory power of the swing ratio function. Some studies have introduced a dummy variable in their analysis to take into account the probability of occurrence of a triangular contest63 (Jérôme and JérômeSpeziari, 2002; Auberger and Dubois, 2003). Another solution is to estimate a vote function for the FN and to take these votes into account when estimating the swing ratio function. The main difficulty of this

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approach is to find the explanatory variables that may explain the FN vote. 64 Some more research is needed on this subject.65 Here, we will only test the first proposition. In the following estimation of the seat function, we introduced in addition to our former explanatory variables, a variable (Tri) that indicates the occurrence of a triangular contest with a candidate of the extreme right-wing parties.66 One can expect a positive sign for the coefficient associated with this variable since it is generally argued that the FN hurts the right-wing parties more than the left ones. The results are the following:67 Sit = − 107.60 + 3.21V it + 0.07Triit + eit (17.33)

(23.29)

(3.48)

Adj. R2 = 0.57, n = 480 The coefficient associated with this variable is significant (at the 1 per cent level) and, as expected, its sign is positive. The Table 11.6 compares the ex ante and ex post 2002 forecast for the Left seats in the Assembly, utilizing the departmental data. To obtain the ex ante forecast, we introduced the 2002 vote forecast that we obtained before in the seat equation that is estimated on all the elections before 2002. On the first row, the first value (220) is the ex ante forecast obtained with the first seat equation (with departmental data and without the Tri variable)68 and the second (202) is the ex ante forecast with the estimation that takes into account the occurrence of a triangular contest. In reality, the number of seats for the Left in 2002 was 171. The problem is that the Tri variable is only known at the end of the first round. In the table, the figures refer to the forecast based on the realised number of triangular contests. If one wants to make an ex ante forecast before the first round of the election, one has to draw different scenarios. One can consider that the two extreme scenarios are (1) a situation without any triangular contests, (2) the same situation as in 1997 (where the number of triangular contests was the highest of the Fifth Republic). The seat forecast

Table 11.6

Seats for the 2002 elections (departmental data)

Ex ante forecast Ex post prediction

Specification 1

Specification 2

Specification 3

220 155

202 145

200 188

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corresponding to the first scenario is 202, whereas it is 210 seats in the second scenario. The result in the table is similar to the first scenario forecast.69 The introduction of the Tri variable improves the forecast, since there is an error of 49 seats with the first specification and of 31 with the second specification. The figures of the second row are the predictions that we obtain when we introduced the actual 2002 vote share of the Left in the seat equation estimated on all the elections before 2002 (and with the actual number of triangular contests). 70 As one can see the error is strongly reduced.71 This result indicates that a large part of the error in the 2002 seat forecast is due to the error in the 2002 vote forecast. It is the reason why we choose to estimate a third specification. Specification 3 is an equation that directly relates the seat share at the departmental level to the determinants of the vote (instead of the vote share), that is the popularity indicator and the unemployment rate. 72 The forecasts given by this estimation are as good as the forecasts given by the seat function. 73 Therefore, one can conclude that it is finally as good to estimate a direct relation between seat and the determinants of the vote, rather than a swing ratio function. This result opens a new area of research for electoral forecasting models. Instead of trying to improve the vote function, it may be preferable to improve directly the seat function. This seat function should use as explanatory variables the determinants of the vote instead of the vote share.

Conclusion One aim of this chapter was to offer a brief survey and to evaluate the vote function literature applied to the French case. Numerous interesting points have been studied in the literature, especially concerning the political part of the vote function. But on the whole, it seems that each author builds his or her own vote function without comparing it to the existing ones. The aim of our empirical study was not to offer another new function. It was to define the basic conditions that a reliable vote function should respect. Hence, owing to the particularities of the French party system, we argue that it is preferable to use the left-wing vote share for the dependent variable, rather than the vote for the incumbent. The empirical study shows that it is really better to use local data to estimate vote functions. It allows for the accounting of the local specificities of the vote. We also argue that the best econometric approach when using

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local data is to apply the methodology of pooled data analysis. However, the choice of the level of detail (regional or departmental) is not settled once and for all. The use of departmental data definitely increases the number of observations but faces the problem of a lack of data at the local level (i.e., as the popularity indicators). What should the agenda for future research be? We have seen that many things deserve more attention. In particular, much work is needed concerning the modelling of the seat function. The equation that may allow the transformation of the first-ballot vote into seats is yet to be discovered. One track to explore is the direct estimation of the seat function. That may reduce the loss of information and also the error of the forecast due to the fact that the ex ante forecast of the seat number is based on the ex ante forecast of the first-ballot vote.

Appendix: the variables – definition and sources V: vote share (in per cent) received by the left-wing parties at the first round of the legislative election as a percentage of the total number of expressed votes (blank and null votes excluded). The leftwing parties include Extreme Left, Communist Party, Socialist Party, Left Radical Party, ecologists parties and various minor left parties. Source: Ministère de l’Intérieur (French Home Office). Some of these data come from the database of the CIDSP–BDSP, Université de Grenoble. Pop: popularity of the left-wing parties given by the SOFRES polls institute 3 months before the ballot. This variable is built by weighting the sum of the popularity indexes for the Communist Party, the Socialist Party, and the Ecologist Party, the three expressed in a ratio (per cent of people that have a good opinion on the party/per cent of people that have a bad opinion on the party). The weights are computed according to the political strength (the vote share of the Left vote) of each party (communist/socialist/ecologist) at the previous legislative elections: 1978: 0.50/0.50/0.00, 1981: 0.40/0.60/0.00, 1986: 0.30/0.70/0.00, 1988: 0.20/0.80/0.00, 1993: 0.20/0.80/0.00, 1997: 0.20/0.60/0.20, 2002: 0.20/ 0.65/0.15. Unem: unemployment rate in the quarter preceding the quarter of the election ballot multiplied by a dummy variable equal to one when the Left is the incumbent and to minus one otherwise. Source: INSEE. Tri: percentage of districts in each department where there is a triangular contest with a candidate of the extreme right parties. Source: Auberger and Dubois (2003).

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Notes The authors would like to thank Michael Lewis-Beck for his helpful comments and his careful revision of the English of this text. We also benefited from useful suggestions by Jean-Dominique Lafay and Patricia Vornetti. 1. According to Lewis-Beck and Paldam (2000), there are at least 200 articles and books devoted to the study of vote and popularity functions. Recent special issues of journals have been devoted to the vote function. See for example, International Journal of Forecasting (1999), Electoral Studies (2000), American Politics Research (2001). 2. When the objective is to explain the popularity of the government, the function is called a popularity function. Here, we will not comment at all on the popularity function literature. 3. We will consider below slightly different methods of estimation. 4. Generally, the models use as dependent variable the first-ballot vote share. An exception is Auberger and Dubois (2003) who consider the second-ballot vote at the legislative election (or the first ballot when there is no second round). 5. All the recent studies of French electoral outcome consider the incumbent vote as the dependent variable while the first studies used the vote for the left-wing parties. 6. Obviously, the FN party is ideologically closer to the Right, but, at the same time, its members behave as opponents when the Right is governing. 7. We will return later to the notion of cohabitation. 8. This was the first vote function that was explicitly aimed at forecasting French election outcomes. 9. The degrees of freedom of an estimation are equal to the number of observations minus the number of explanatory variables (including the constant). 10. The ex ante forecast value of the dependent variable is based on the coefficient of an equation which is estimated on a sample that excludes the election that is forecast. This should not be confused with the ex post prediction which is simply the fitted value of the dependent variable (where the equation is estimated on the whole sample including the election that is fitted). 11. It is eventually possible to have, in the estimation used to forecast, one variable that is not available before the first ballot. The solution is then to draw different scenarios according to the value we expect for this variable. 12. As the value of this dummy variable was zero for all past elections, this variable cannot be present in the estimation used to make ex ante forecast about the 2002 election. It turns out that in the empirical study (including the 2002 data) this estimated coefficient is one of the highest of the estimation (their results indicate that the cost for the Left of this new political configuration amounts to 6.23 per cent of the vote). 13. There were 12 legislative elections and 7 presidential elections. 14. The aim of some studies is mainly to forecast the election outcome. 15. See the survey of Lewis-Beck and Stegmaier (2000). 16. The electoral decision of a sociotropic voter is related to his or her opinion about the general economic situation while the decision of an egocentric voter depends on his or her personal situation. 17. The voters consider the recent past and not the economic situation that occurred a long time ago to evaluate the government performance.

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18. For example, Lafay and Servais (2000) focus on the impact of scandals on the vote and Jérôme et al. (2003) study the role played by the inversion of the electoral calendar that occurred in France in 2001. 19. The choice of one of these indicators is generally driven by a problem of data availability. The unemployment rate is, for example, one of the few economic series that exist at the local level in France. 20. It is not really true to argue that no one has tried to sort out egocentric versus sociotropic for the French case. But these issues have been studied only with survey data (and not with aggregate election data). See for example, LewisBeck (1988, 1996, 1997a) who shows that the French voters are sociotropic and that pocketbook effects are negligible. 21. The first studies introduced only economic determinants in their estimation (for example, Rosa and Amson, 1976; Fair, 1978). 22. In the case of France, there are also institutional factors (see later on this point). 23. Obviously, government popularity is likely to be influenced by economic factors but the correlation is not perfect (Lewis-Beck and Rice, 1992). 24. It is then necessary to use local data since the introduction of a large number of explanatory variables imply the need to increase the degrees of freedom of the estimation. 25. In Jérôme et al. (2003) the ideological strength of a region is measured by a dummy variable that equals one if the region has always been on one side of the political spectrum between 1974 and 1997. In Jérôme and Jérôme-Speziari (2002), the dummy variable is slightly different. Its definition is the same but the data is recalculated at each election. One problem associated with these dummies is that sooner or later there will be no more case where the dummy will be one. In 2002, there is, for example, no longer any region whose political colour remains on the Left since 1974 (6 regions still have a right-wing ideology). This means that it will be necessary, in the future, to compute a new variable to account for the ideological strength of the regions. 26. Except when it was the municipal elections, since these elections are more difficult to assess according to the right-wing/left-wing criteria. 27. See p. 211. 28. See p. 215. 29. It also measures the opinion about the parties’ programs, the image of the parties. 30. As a general rule, increased participation benefits the left-wing party but less when it is the incumbent. 31. It is a cross-section analysis that considers the first ballot of the 1995 municipal election in a sample of 92 cities. 32. The figures are 71.60 per cent for the last presidential election (first-ballot vote) and 46.76 per cent for the last European election. 33. See the Appendix for a precise definition of the variables and for the sources of the data. 34. This problem of data availability considerably reduces our sample of elections since the series of unemployment data at the local level starts in 1978 concerning the regions and only in 1982 concerning the departments. 35. As is usual, we consider that the Left is the incumbent when it has a majority at the Assembly (whatever party the president belongs to).

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36. Partisan considerations may play a role, especially if one considers that each party represents constituencies with different views and interests regarding the macroeconomic variables. The left-wing parties may be considered as more inclined to fight unemployment and therefore this may increase the vote for a left-wing opposition when the unemployment is growing. On these points, see in particular the partisan political business cycles literature (Hibbs, 1977; Alesina, 1987). We will not test this partisan hypothesis in our empirical study. 37. Especially when the prime minister changes whereas there is no change in the political orientation of the government. 38. But not in 1997 (whereas the 1997 legislative election followed the 1993 one) since in 1997 there was no longer any cohabitation (it ended with the 1995 presidential election). 39. At confirming legislative elections, it is generally argued that the result is biased in favour of the party that just won the presidential election. 40. It seems preferable to use presidential elections data to assess the electoral effect of the cohabitation. 41. With five elections as in our sample, the R2 of the national estimation is not significant when there are the two explanatory variables. 42. On the sociological determinants of the vote, see for example, Boy and Mayer (2000). 43. As the socio-demographic variables are highly structural, they do not change a lot from one election to another. Moreover, one may encounter a problem of data availability since some of these socio-demographic variables are not frequently updated. 44. In other words, it is the percentage of vote received by the Left at the last legislative election. 45. Whereas in the standard OLS estimation, the constant is constrained to be the same in all electoral units. 46. It is why this method is also called the least squares dummy variable model. 47. One advantage in introducing these dummy variables could be to offer some genuine explanation of the electoral results but it appears that these variables are generally defined in an ad hoc way. For example, these dummy variables do not explain why some regions keep their ideological preference while others change them from one election to another. 48. On these pooled data analyses, see Greene (1997). 49. Different statistical tests can be used to test which approach is the most appropriate. See p. 216. 50. Due to a lack of space, we do not present the value of each regional specific effect. Therefore, in the table, there is no constant in the equation with fixed effects. 51. One should notice that the second estimation is made using a random effects model. This method amounts to using a feasible generalised least squares procedure and there is no precise counterpart to R2 in this FGLS procedure (Greene, 1997). The R2 that is given in the tables is the pseudo-R2 calculated by Eviews. 52. A Fisher test indicates that it is better to use a fixed effects model than a standard OLS model without any effects and a Lagrange Multiplier test indicates

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53. 54. 55. 56. 57.

58. 59. 60.

61.

62. 63.

64.

65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72.

73.

Vote Functions in France and the 2002 Election Forecast that it is better to use a random effects model than a standard OLS model without any effects. The estimation is OLS without any effects. The statistical test registers, as in the departmental case, in favour of the random effects model. Auberger and Dubois (2003) show that the means of the departmental vote and the national vote are not statistically different. That is also the conclusion of Parodi (2002). For example, when we take the difference between the percentage of voters having “a good opinion” and those having “a bad opinion”, the relative value of the indicator refers to the ratio of these two percentages. The use of more formal methods to detect outliers in a regression (such as those based on the studentised residuals) leads to the same conclusion. We still use the random effects model. These estimations are made using OLS without any specific effects since it is the more appropriate according to the statistical test that assesses the validity of using either a fixed effects model, a random effects or a model without specific effects. The method of estimation used does not prevent the fitted value (the seat share in percentage at the local level) from being below zero or superior to one. In those cases, we rounded the fitted value respectively to zero or to one. At the 1997 legislative election, almost fifty differently labelled partisan groups were present at the election (Lewis-Beck, 2000: 4). Such as a dummy variable equals one when both the Left and the FN are politically important at the local level and the Right is the incumbent and equals zero otherwise. Obviously, one can use as explanatory variable the score of this party at the past election (cf. Jérôme et al., 1993) but this is not enough as it does not allow explanation of the evolution and the fluctuation of the vote for the FN. For a first attempt to estimate a vote function for the FN, see Jérôme and Jérôme (2002). The value of this variable is 100 in 1986, since there were no triangular contests but only one ballot. See the appendix for the source of this variable. The estimation is made on departmental data since we only have data for the Tri variable at this level of analysis. The ex ante forecast on regional data is 233 seats (without the Tri variable). This result is not surprising since there were, in 2002, only 9 triangular contests for 555 electoral districts compared to 76 in 1997. On regional data, the ex post forecast is 180 seats (specification 1). This time, specification 1 is better than the specification including the Tri variable. To estimate this equation, we used a random effects model as the test shows that it is the most appropriate. Both the coefficients associated with the popularity indicator and with the unemployment indicator have the correct sign and are significant at the 1 per cent level. On regional data, the ex ante forecast is 210 seats and the ex post forecast is 191 seats.

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References Alesina, A. (1987), Macroeconomic Policy in a Two-party System as a Repeated Game, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 102: 651–678. American Politics Research (2001), Forecasting the 2000 Presidential Election, 29(3). Auberger, A. and E. Dubois (2003), Situation politico-économique et résultats des élections législatives françaises, Revue Economique, 52(3), forthcoming. Bon, F. and J.-P. Cheylan (1988), La France qui vote, Hachette, Paris. Boy, D. and N. Mayer (2000), Cleavage Voting and Issue Voting in France, in M.S. Lewis-Beck (ed.), How France Votes, New York: Chatham House Publishers, pp. 153–175. Courbis, R. (1995), De la modélisation macro-économique à la modélisation macro-politique: propos d’étape, Journal de la Société de Statistique de Paris, 136(1): 47–70. Dubois, E. (2001), A Reliable Model to Forecast National Vote at the French Presidential and Legislative Elections, presented to the EPCS Meeting, Paris, April 18–21. Electoral Studies (2000), Economics and Elections, 19(1–2). Fair, R.C. (1978), The Effect of Economic Events on Votes for President, Review of Economics and Statistics, 60(2): 159–172. Fauvelle-Aymar, C. and M.S. Lewis-Beck (1997), L’Iowa donne l’opposition gagnante, Working paper, The University of Iowa, and Libération, 23 mai 1997. Fauvelle-Aymar, C., J.-D. Lafay, and M. Servais (2000), The Impact of Turnout on Electoral Choices: An Econometric Analysis of the French Case, Electoral Studies, 19(1–2): 393–412. Greene, W.H. (1997), Econometric Analysis, Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall. Hibbs, D.A. (1977), Political Parties and Macroeconomic Policy, American Political Science Review, 71: 1467–1487. International Journal of Forecasting (1999), Political Forecasting, 15(2). Jérôme, B. and V. Jérôme-Speziari (2002), Prévision des élections de 2002: les enseignements du modèle politico-économique, presented to the AFSP Meeting, Lille, September 18–21. Jérôme, B., V. Jérôme-Speziari and M.S. Lewis-Beck (2003), Reordering the French Election Calendar: Forecasting the Consequences for 2002, European Journal of Political Research, 42: 425–440. Jérôme, B., J.-D. Lafay, and M.S. Lewis-Beck (1993), Legislatives: Les previsions des modèles politico-économiques, Working Paper, LAEP, University of Paris 1. Kramer, G.H. (1971), Short-Term Fluctuations in U.S. Voting Behavior, 1896–1964, American Political Science Review, 65(1): 131–143. Lafay, J.-D. (1993), Les prévisions des modèles politico-économiques, Le Figaro, 19/03/1993. Lafay, J.-D. (1995), Les interactions entre économie et politique, Journal de la Société de Statistique de Paris 136(1): 17–28. Lafay, J.-D. and M. Servais (2000), The Influence of Political Scandals on Popularity and Votes, in M.S. Lewis-Beck, How France Votes, New York: Chatham House Publishers, pp. 189–205. Lecaillon, J. (1980), La crise et l’alternance, Paris: Cujas. Lewis-Beck, M.S. (1985), Un modèle de prévision des élections législatives françaises (avec une application pour 1986), Revue Française de Science Politique, 35(5): 1080–1091.

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Lewis-Beck, M.S. (1988), Economics and Elections, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. Lewis-Beck, M.S. (1991), French National Elections: Political Economic Forecasts, European Journal of Political Economy, 7: 487–496. Lewis-Beck, M.S. (1996), Cross-national election surveys: A French pre-test, Electoral Studies, 15(4): 513–528. Lewis-Beck, M.S. (1997a), Le Vote du ‘porte-Monnaie’ en Question, in Daniel Boy and Nonna Mayer (eds), L’électeur a ses raisons, Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, pp. 239–261. Lewis-Beck, M.S. (1997b), Who’s the Chef? Economic Voting under a Dual Executive, European Journal of Political Research, 31(3): 315–325. Lewis-Beck, M.S. (2000), Introduction: The Enduring French Voter, in M.S. Lewis-Beck (ed.), How France Votes, New York: Chatham House Publishers, pp. 1–13. Lewis-Beck, M.S. and P. Bellucci (1982), Economic Influences on Legislative Elections in Multiparty Systems: France and Italy, Political Behavior, 4(1): 93–107. Lewis-Beck, M.S. and R. Nadeau (2000), French Electoral Institutions and the Economic Vote, Electoral Studies, 19: 171–182. Lewis-Beck, M.S. and M. Paldam (2000), Economic Voting: An Introduction, Electoral Studies, 19(1–2): 113–121. Lewis-Beck, M.S. and T.W. Rice (1992), Forecasting Elections, Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press. Lewis-Beck, M.S. and M. Stegmaier (2000), Economic Determinants of Electoral Outcomes, Annual Review of Political Science, 3: 183–219. Nannestad, P. and M. Paldam (1994), The VP-Function: A Survey of the Literature on Vote and Popularity Functions After 25 Years, Public Choice, 79(3–4): 213–245. Parodi, J.-L. (2002), L’énigme de la cohabitation, ou les effets pervers d’une présélection annoncée, Revue Française de Sciences Politiques, 52(4–6): 485–504. Rosa, J.-J. and D. Amson (1976), Conditions économiques et élections, Revue Française de Science Politique, 25(6): 1101–1124.

12 National Economic Voting in France: Objective versus Subjective Measures Éric Bélanger and Michael S. Lewis-Beck

Economic voting work on France is plentiful. Indeed, on that subject, France has been investigated more than any other democracy, except the United States (Lewis-Beck and Stegmaier, 2000). These efforts suggest that the French voter is highly sensitive to swings in the national economy. Investigations generally follow one of two designs: aggregate time series or individual surveys. In both designs the economy is measured, but in apparently irreconcilable ways. The time series studies explore popularity or vote functions, searching for the effects of objective economic indicators, such as growth, unemployment, or inflation. The surveys formulate vote (intention) equations that include subjective economic indicators, such as sociotropic assessments of national economic performance. While both sets of economic measures – the objective and the subjective – show significant effects, they are not the same economic measures. This means that economic voting models tacitly assume that the effect of objective economic indicators must closely correspond to that of individual economic perceptions or, inversely, that subjective perceptions stick closely to the actual state of the economy. But without direct comparison of objective and subjective indicators of the economy measured at the same (macro or micro) level, these assumptions are open to question. Can these modeling and measurement differences be reconciled, with subjective measures as substitutes for the objective measures? Do subjective measures actually perform better than the traditional objective ones? Are they theoretically preferred? It is such questions that we explore below. We look at aggregate time series data in France for the period 1978–2002. First, we examine how the different economic indicators relate to each 231

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other, and to the vote. Second, we specify a simple vote function under cohabitation, and estimate it variously with standard macroeconomic measures. Third, we compare results from that specification to results from a specification with subjective economic measures. Fourth, we explore the “value-added” when objective and subjective measures are combined into the same equations. Fifth, we specify a presidential popularity function, and compare the performance of objective and subjective economic indicators. Finally, we draw conclusions on which set of measures better tap the dynamics of economic voting in France.

Objective and subjective economic measures, and the vote Standard macroeconomic indicators in the vote and popularity functions for France are growth, unemployment, and inflation (Rosa and Amson, 1976; Lafay, 1991; Lewis-Beck, 2001). Their correlations with each other, and with the vote, are reported in Table 12.1. The data are election year observations, on the 15 contests (legislative, presidential, European) from 1978 to 2002. These macroeconomic indicators are correlated with each other in the expected way. Also, there is evidence of a strong Phillips curve tradeoff, with unemployment and inflation correlated at − 0.80. In terms of their association with the vote (for or against the incumbent coalition), economic growth has the strongest objective relationship, r = 0.35. The standard subjective economic indicators that have been explored can be grouped into two dimensions – target and time. Target refers to Table 12.1 Correlations between objective and subjective economic indicators, and the vote

Vote GDP U I NBI EFI PBI PFI

Vote

GDP

U

I

NBI

EFI

PBI

PFI

1.00 0.35 0.03 −0.16 0.42 0.60 0.28 0.45

1.00 0.17 −0.38 0.47 0.64 −0.03 0.44

1.00 −0.80 −0.36 0.37 −0.78 −0.40

1.00 −0.13 −0.76 0.32 −0.10

1.00 0.62 0.70 0.83

1.00 0.18 0.65

1.00 0.73

1.00

N = 15; vote is the two-party vote share (Left versus Right) of the incumbent candidate for presidential elections or of the governmental coalition for legislative and European elections. Economic indicators are measured as observed in the first quarter of election years. See Appendix for more details.

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whether the voter assesses the nation (the collectivity) or the self (the pocketbook). The former has been called sociotropic, the later egocentric. Time refers to whether the voter looks forward or backward. The former makes the voter prospective, the later retrospective. Survey research on the French case has found sociotropic evaluations, both retrospective and prospective, decidedly stronger than egocentric evaluations (Lewis-Beck, 1988, 1997a; Lewis-Beck and Chlarson, 2002). To date, these effects have been uncovered only in cross-sectional election surveys. But data, hitherto neglected, are available to test for these subjective effects in the time series models. INSEE, the French government agency for economic data collection, has since 1978 asked a national sample of adults whether they thought some aspect of the economy was “better” or “worse.” They have posed that question for the nation and for the household, both retrospectively and prospectively. Thus, for each election year, we constructed a national subjective economic measure, for each of the four items. For example, the National Business Index (NBI) = percent who judge the economy “better” – the percent who judge it “worse.” In 2002, NBI = − 23, suggesting 2002 was a relatively bad year, but not as bad as the last presidential election in 1995, when NBI = − 37. (For a detailed look at other years on this measure, as well as the results on the other measures, see the Appendix.) Besides NBI, a retrospective sociotropic measure, it was also possible to construct a prospective sociotropic measure Economic Future Index (EFI), a retrospective egocentric measure Personal Business Index (PBI), and a prospective egocentric measure Personal Future Index (PFI). In Table 12.1, it is observed that these subjective measures are correlated with each other, but not so highly that they appear redundant. Of special note is the correlation of the retrospective and prospective sociotropic measures, r = 0.62, which suggests that prospective evaluations are not a simple projection of retrospective ones. How do these subjective measures relate to the objective ones? As expected, the collective measures, NBI and EFI, are highly correlated with the key macroeconomic indicator – growth in GDP – at 0.47 and 0.64 respectively. These correlations are higher than those for the pocketbook measures with GDP, and suggest that they are tapping the real macroeconomy, albeit with some subjective weighting of the different economic factors. That is, citizens do not perfectly report the GDP growth rate; they effectively adjust it up or down a bit, depending on the particular economic components, and the weights of those components, that go into their calculus of the national economic performance. In sum, a subjective national economic measure, such as NBI, takes into account a part of the economic voter calculation

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that GDP neglects. (This line of argument is developed more fully in Nadeau and Lewis-Beck, 2001.) A question, then, is whether this assessment, once taken into account, increases or decreases economic voting. In Table 12.1, one sees that the sociotropic measures, NBI and EFI, do correlate highly with the vote, at 0.42 and 0.60 respectively. Further, these correlations with the vote are much higher than those coming from macroeconomic indicators (at 0.35, − 0.16, and 0.03). The implication is that the subjective measures do a better job of explaining the French economic voter.

Objective economic voting under cohabitation According to classical economic voting theory, when the economy improves (worsens), the voter is more (less) likely to vote for the incumbent. This simple reward–punishment model of the economic vote has received considerable empirical support. The rational, or perhaps psychological, mechanism for its operation comes from the Responsibility Hypothesis, which places blame or praise for the workings of the economy with the government (Lewis-Beck and Paldam, 2000). The Responsibility Hypothesis gets a special twist in France, because of the constitutional arrangement of their dual executive (Lewis-Beck, 1997b; Lewis-Beck and Nadeau, 2000). When the government is unified, with the president and the prime minister coming from the same party coalition, then the target of responsibility is the president. However, under cohabitation, when power is divided between the president and the prime minister, the target of responsibility becomes more diffuse, and the economic vote diminishes in impact. Thus, a simple economic vote function that takes cohabitation into account, in what amounts to an interaction effect, could be written as follows, Vote = b0 + b1 (Economy) + b2 (Economy × Cohabitation) + e where the hypotheses would be: b1 > 0; b2 < 0. Evidence to support this argument comes from Column 1, Table 12.2 (and appearing in Lewis-Beck and Nadeau, this volume). The model is estimated with ordinary least squares (OLS) on a time series from 1967 to 2002, and the macroeconomic measure is GDP growth. The equation provides a reasonable fit, the coefficients are easily significant, and the expected economic effects noteworthy. Further, the model survived a number of diagnostic tests. It suggests that, in general, a one percentage point growth in GDP will generate, on average, about a two percentage

Éric Bélanger and Michael S. Lewis-Beck Table 12.2

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Objective economic voting under cohabitation, 1978–2002 Economic indicator used

Economy Economy × cohabitation Intercept R2 Adj. R2 D-W N

GDP (1967–2002)

GDP

U

I

1.95 (0.56)** −1.60 (0.85)* 46.78 (1.41)** 0.44 0.37 1.70 20

1.23 (0.82) −0.79 (1.08) 46.53 (1.47)** 0.16 0.02 2.18 15

−0.40 (0.59) 0.41 (0.24)* 49.29 (5.39)** 0.20 0.07 2.56 15

−0.15 (0.35) 0.22 (1.37) 47.94 (2.67)** 0.03 −0.13 2.67 15

Entries are unstandardized OLS coefficients with standard errors in parentheses. ** p < 0.01, * p < 0.05 (one-tailed). The dependent variable is the two-party vote share (Left versus Right) of the incumbent candidate for presidential elections or of the governmental coalition for legislative and European elections. Economic indicators are measured as observed in the first quarter of election years. Cohabitation refers to elections held when the party of the sitting president does not belong to the governmental coalition.

point growth in popular vote for the incumbent coalition. However, during cohabitation, that effect is significantly reduced, to something like one-half of a percentage point. The rest of Table 12.2 tries to replicate this result, using the shorter time series at hand, which reaches back no farther than 1978 but does allow coverage and comparison with the subjective economic measures. What do these different tests show? In Column 2, Table 12.2, the GDP model is reestimated over the shorter series. The signs of the coefficients are correct, and the coefficient values are not too different from Column 1, but they fall short of conventional significance levels because of the smaller N. The situation improves somewhat when unemployment is substituted for GDP, in Column 3. The signs are in the expected direction, the cohabitation coefficient is significant at 0.05, and the R2 has increased. Still, it is far from a strong result. Finally, with the inflation variable, in Column 4, the situation is worst of all; while the signs are correct, significance is far away, and the fit is negligible. In sum, the macroeconomic results, when judged on the 1978–2002 data, do not fulfill the promise of the earlier result on GDP. If they were used alone, the case for economic voting in France, cohabitation or not, appears weak indeed.

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Subjective economic voting under cohabitation Would things look better when subjective economic measures are substituted for the objective ones? They might not. It may be that the series is too short, peculiar, or poorly modeled, so preventing any economic voting effects from emerging. Certainly, if the subjective measures are not clearly superior to the objective ones, we would have little reason to expect that they would do better. But Table 12.3 shows that they do. The same model is reestimated, but the economic indicator is always a subjective one, rather than an objective one as in Table 12.2. Subjective economic voting turns in much improved results. First, the fitness of the model, as judged by the R2, is elevated. Further, when the subjective economy looks better, regardless of its measure, the incumbent coalition makes significant vote gains under unified government. And, that impact appears significantly reduced under cohabitation, by all measures (save EFI). In terms of sociotropic evaluations, the effect of retrospective and prospective evaluations appear about evenly balanced, as implied by their roughly equivalent R2. A surprise showing comes from the prospective pocketbook evaluation variable, PFI. Most survey work on pocketbook effects in France shows none of a retrospective nature, Table 12.3

Subjective economic voting under cohabitation, 1978–2002 Economic indicator used

Economy Economy × cohabitation Intercept R2 Adj. R2 D-W N

NBI

EFI

PBI

PFI

0.16 (0.09)* −0.10 (0.06)* 51.46 (3.49)** 0.33 0.22 2.09 15

0.24 (0.10)** 0.04 (0.16) 52.76 (2.88)** 0.37 0.26 2.17 15

0.44 (0.24)* −0.47 (0.22)* 49.19 (2.16)** 0.34 0.23 2.70 15

1.13 (0.31)** −2.58 (0.75)** 48.02 (0.83)** 0.60 0.53 2.45 15

Entries are unstandardized OLS coefficients with standard errors in parentheses. ** p < 0.01, * p < 0.05 (one-tailed). The dependent variable is the two-party vote share (Left versus Right) of the incumbent candidate for presidential elections or of the governmental coalition for legislative and European elections. Economic indicators are measured as observed in the first quarter of election years. Cohabitation refers to elections held when the party of the sitting president does not belong to the governmental coalition.

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but significant prospective pocketbook voting was reported by Lewis-Beck (1997a) in an examination of the 1995 French National Election Survey. (Still, the substantive individual meaning with the aggregate data at hand is somewhat suspect, considering the net negative effect that appears to occur under cohabitation.) One question is whether adding the macroeconomic indicators to these subjective economic voting models gives any “value-added” to the explanation. The macroeconomic indicators under study here – GDP, unemployment, inflation – find their closest conceptual, if not empirical, parallels with the retrospective and prospective sociotropic measures. Therefore, in Table 12.4, we add these macroeconomic indicators to the NBI and EFI vote functions. In none of the equations does this addition improve the model. The adjusted R2 drops in five out of the six equations, when compared to the baseline adjusted R2, respectively,

Table 12.4 Subjective national economic voting and the “value-added” from objective national economic indicators Subjective economic indicator used NBI Subjective economy

0.14 (0.11) Subjective economy × −0.10 cohabitation (0.07) GDP 0.23 (0.72) U I Intercept

R2 Adj. R2 D-W N

0.15 (0.10) −0.10 (0.07)

−0.02 (0.63)

EFI 0.16 (0.09)* −0.12 (0.07)

0.26 (0.13)* 0.05 (0.17) −0.19 (0.79)

0.26 0.42 (0.10)** (0.12)** 0.02 −0.05 (0.16) (0.14)

−0.45 (0.52)

0.15 0.78 (0.31) (0.34)* 50.67 51.55 50.72 53.45 57.43 52.47 (4.40)** (5.36)** (3.93)** (4.18)** (6.14)** (2.48)** 0.34 0.33 0.35 0.37 0.41 0.57 0.16 0.15 0.17 0.20 0.25 0.45 2.04 2.10 2.11 2.25 2.20 1.96 15 15 15 15 15 15

Entries are unstandardized OLS coefficients with standard errors in parentheses. ** p < 0.01, * p < 0.05 (one-tailed). The dependent variable is the two-party vote share (Left versus Right) of the incumbent candidate for presidential elections or of the governmental coalition for legislative and European elections. Economic indicators are measured as observed in the first quarter of election years. Cohabitation refers to elections held when the party of the sitting president does not belong to the governmental coalition.

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of 0.22 for the NBI equation and 0.26 for the EFI equation as found in Table 12.3. Only in the last equation, in Column 6, Table 12.4, does the adjusted R2 increase; but that equation does not really represent an improvement because the added inflation variable is wrongly signed, suggesting that inflation favors a government vote. (This perverse result is probably a product of collinearity, with inflation and EFI correlated at −0.76.) In sum, inclusion of the objective variables alongside the subjective variables does not enhance the explanation of the economic vote in France. The economic effects of the French voter, such as they are, seem fully, or at least better, captured by subjective measures of the economy.

National economics and the presidential popularity function Sharp evidence of the superiority of subjective economic indicators comes in comparing rival specifications of the French presidential popularity function. In Table 12.5, in the first three columns, a simple presidential popularity function under cohabitation is specified, using the standard macroeconomic indicators. Presidential popularity is measured with IFOP national monthly surveys asking respondents if they

Table 12.5

National economics and the presidential popularity function Economic indicator used

Economy Economy × cohabitation Intercept R2 Adj. R2 D-W N

GDP

U

I

NBI

EFI

2.93 (1.48)* 3.55 (2.08)* 36.82 (2.85)** 0.59 0.50 1.17 12

−2.81 (1.01)** 1.58 (0.41)** 64.03 (9.53)** 0.65 0.57 1.85 12

0.16 (0.86) 5.43 (3.39) 38.96 (5.80)** 0.24 0.07 2.16 12

0.69 (0.09)** −0.26 (0.06)** 64.89 (3.66)** 0.89 0.86 1.73 12

0.54 (0.22)** −0.32 (0.36) 52.73 (5.96)** 0.54 0.44 1.48 12

Entries are unstandardized OLS coefficients with standard errors in parentheses. ** p < 0.01, * p < 0.05 (one-tailed). The dependent variable is the popularity of the president as recorded in the first quarter of election years. Economic indicators are measured as observed in the first quarter of election years. Cohabitation refers to elections held when the party of the sitting president does not belong to the governmental coalition.

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are “satisfied or not with (name) as President of the Republic.” In the last two columns is the same presidential popularity function, but with the substitution of NBI and EFI, the collective subjective indicators. Note first that, of the macroeconomic indicator models, only that for unemployment (U ) conforms to theory. (A finding that receives support from the pooled time series work of Jérôme et al., 1999.) That is, as the economy does worse, the incumbent president generally loses approval (see the negative coefficient, − 2.81) but that loss is reduced under cohabitation (see the positive coefficient, 1.58). For the subjective indicator models, both the NBI and EFI popularity functions conform to theory. That is, bad (or good) economic effects are significant, but blunted under cohabitation. (Hence the positive sign of the Economy coefficient, and the negative sign of the Economy × Cohabitation coefficient.) Further, these models turn in strong statistical fits. By far the largest fit is for the NBI function, adjusted. R2 = 0.86, suggesting that presidential approval is heavily determined by subjective perceptions of national economic performance. Finally, it must be said that various diagnostic tests were run on the models presented in Tables 12.2 to 12.5. The regression results appear robust on a number of accounts. The main results remain virtually unchanged when we exclude European elections from the sample, which suggests that the coefficients are reasonably stable. The Durbin–Watson statistics reported in the tables indicate an absence of first-order autocorrelation. Furthermore, the residuals of each model show no problematic time trend and the error terms appear normally distributed. Finally, the estimated effects do not seem influenced by the presence of outliers. Of all 19 models considered, only two studentized residuals exceed the value of 2 (the largest being 2.25) and Cook’s D values all fall below a cutoff point of 1. In sum, these regression diagnostics all speak of the robustness of the models presented herein.

Summary and conclusions In France, the case for economic voting has been based on models tested against aggregate time series data, which use objective economic indicators, or against survey data, which use subjective economic indicators. A difficulty with the objective economic voting models is that they do not capture the subjective component in economic voting. A difficulty with the subjective economic voting models from surveys is that the result is not aggregated to a national level, where its impact can be assessed against an overall election outcome. Here we have shown

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that subjective economic indicators, when aggregated to the national level, perform better empirically than objective economic measures. Why is this the case? We believe it is because the subjective measures, in particular the sociotropic ones, summarize at a national level how economic voters make their calculation. That is to say, the real economic voter looks at different elements of the economy – prices, growth, employment, trade balance, the region, the stock market – giving them different weights. It adds up to a final total, which might be crudely registered as “better” or “worse” in a national poll asking about the economy. When all of these individual scores are summed, into something like a NBI, they express a national-level measure of these weighted elements and perceptions. This same argument has been made for national economic voting in US elections (Nadeau and Lewis-Beck, 2001). In that study, a pooled analysis of the American National Election Studies, 1956–1996, it was demonstrated that an NBI measure performed better than the traditional macroeconomic indicator of real disposable income. In the study at hand, we have made the demonstration in a somewhat different way. On the basis of the results reported herein, we are optimistic that still sharper economic effects in French elections can be found, and the sometimes confusing dynamics of economic voting under cohabitation made clearer.

Appendix: data and sources Year 1978 1981 1981 1984 1986 1988 1988 1989 1993 1994 1995 1997 1999 2002 2002

Type Cohab Vote L P L E L P L E L E P L E P L

0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 1

51.6 48.2 43.2 42.7 49.0 46.0 44.1 52.0 40.4 54.6 52.6 41.6 52.3 48.1 45.5

Pop

GDP

55.5 2.09 36.3 −1.09 – −1.09 33.7 1.27 38.0 2.27 56.7 3.76 – 3.76 47.3 4.12 25.3 −1.61 42.3 0.44 49.3 1.86 31.3 0.82 56.0 2.12 48.7 0.37 – 0.37

U

I

NBI

EFI

PBI PFI

4.8 6.8 6.8 9.2 10.2 10.2 10.2 9.7 11.1 12.4 11.8 12.5 11.5 8.8 8.8

9.21 12.66 12.66 8.83 3.53 2.42 2.42 3.38 2.13 1.72 1.74 1.47 0.27 2.14 2.14

−23 −39 −39 −49 −36 −32 −32 −24 −53 −52 −37 −49 −17 −23 −23

−18 −40 −40 −43 −14 −15 −15 −10 −29 −18 −9 −27 −6 −15 −15

4 −7 −7 −13 −10 −11 −11 −7 −10 −14 −10 −14 −7 −4 −4

4 −2 −2 −6 3 0 0 1 −3 −4 −1 −5 1 1 1

Vote – Two-party vote share. ‘Two-party’ means that vote shares are restricted to total for the Left versus total from the Right. Vote shares

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come from the first ballot, except for presidential elections (second ballot, with the exception of 2002). Data are for legislative (L), presidential (P), and European (E) elections. Source: Inter-Parliamentary Union. Pop – Popularity of president in the first quarter of the election year. Source: IFOP. Objective economic indicators (source: OECD, first quarter of the election year) GDP – Annual percent change in GDP per capita. U – Unemployment rate in percent. I – Annual percent change in consumer’s price index. Subjective economic indicators (source: INSEE, first quarter of the election year) NBI – National business index (sociotropic retrospective). EFI – Economic future index (sociotropic prospective). PBI – Personal business index (egocentric retrospective). PFI – Personal future index (egocentric prospective). References Jérôme, B., V. Jérôme, and M.S. Lewis-Beck. 1999. “Polls Fail in France: Forecasts of the 1997 Legislative Election,” International Journal of Forecasting 15: 163–174. Lafay, J.-D. 1991. “Political Dyarchy and Popularity Functions: Lessons from the 1986 French Experience,” in Helmut Norpoth, Michael S. Lewis-Beck, and Jean-Dominique Lafay (eds), Economics and Politics: The Calculus of Support, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, pp. 123–140. Lewis-Beck, M.S. 1988. Economics and Elections: The Major Western Democracies, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Lewis-Beck, M.S. 1997a. “Le vote du ‘porte-monnaie’ en question,” in Daniel Boy and Nonna Mayer (eds), L’Électeur a ses raisons, Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, pp. 239–260. Lewis-Beck, M.S. 1997b. “Who’s the Chef ? Economic Voting Under a Dual Executive,” European Journal of Political Research 31: 315–325. Lewis-Beck, M.S. 2001. “Modèles économétriques du vote,” in Pascal Perrineau and Dominique Reynié (eds), Dictionnaire du vote, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, pp. 644–646. Lewis-Beck, M.S. and K. Chlarson. 2002. “Party, Ideology, Institutions and the 1995 French Presidential Election,” British Journal of Political Science 32: 489–512. Lewis-Beck, M.S. and R. Nadeau. 2000. “French Electoral Institutions and the Economic Vote,” Electoral Studies 19: 171–182. Lewis-Beck, M.S. and M. Paldam. 2000. “Economic Voting: An Introduction,” Electoral Studies 19: 113–121. Lewis-Beck, M.S. and M. Stegmaier. 2000. “Economic Determinants of Electoral Outcomes,” Annual Review of Political Science 3: 183–219.

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National Economic Voting in France

Nadeau, R. and M.S. Lewis-Beck. 2001. “National Economic Voting in U.S. Presidential Elections,” Journal of Politics 63: 159–181. Rosa, J.-J. and D. Amson 1976. “Conditions économiques et élections: une analyse politico-économétrique (1920–1973),” Revue française de science politique 26: 1101–1124.

Index 2002 French presidential election 33–4 and beyond 68–70 assessing strategic voting 98–103 credibility of candidates 36–8 dominant form of strategic voting 106 implications of strategic voting 103–5 institutional factors that did not affect 120–1 issue voting 38–45 multivariate analysis of the 88–90 outcome of the 114–19 salient issues 34–6 three-wave survey of the 96–8 understanding the 178–82 21 April 2002 12, 34, 35, 41, 45, 74, 81 to 5 May, 2002 14–16 Abrial, S. 72 n.20 abstention dominant types of, in France 157 explanation of 156 abstention from indifference 156, 157, 158, 162, 170–1 Aldrich, J.H. 173 n.7 Alesina, A. 172 n.2, 227 n.37 Alvarez, M. 138 American voting behaviour 48 Amson, D. 185, 205, 207, 209, 232 Andersen, R. 69, 70, 71 n.11 Anderson, C. 127 Appleton, A.M. 157 Auberger, A. 207, 210, 221, 224, 225 n.5, 228 n.56 Ayrault, Jean-Marc 15 Banques de Données Socio-Politiques (BDSP) 70 Bélanger, Eric 9 Bell, D.S. 173 n.10 Berry, W. 60 Betz, H.-G. 67

bloc recursive model 57 closed party identification 62, 64, 66 open party identification 63, 65, 67 Bodet, Marc-André 108 n.1 Bon, F. 217 Boy, D. 18, 45 n.2, 68, 76, 108 n.3, 173 n.11, 227 n.43 Bréchon, P. 76, 156, 157, 172 nn.(4, 5), 173 n.6 Brûlé Ville Associés (BVA) 123, 182 Cameron, D. 52 Campbell, A. 48, 51, 158, 162, 174 n.22 Campbell, J.E. 146 Capdevielle, J. 50, 76, 95 Carmines, T. 41 Catholicism 77, 84, 87, 88 Centre d’étude de la vie politique française (CEVIPOF) 96 Centre d’études et de connais-sances sur l’opinion publique (CECOP) 96 Centre d’Informatisation des Données Socio-Politiques (CIDSP) 70, 95 Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) 70 Chevènement, Jean-Pierre 6, 14, 15, 21, 27 nn.(3, 5, 14), 34, 37, 38, 45n.7, 97, 113, 115, 121 Cheylan, J.-P. 217 Chiche, J. 44, 45 nn.(2, 6), 157, 172 n.3 Chirac, Jacques 1–2, 4–5, 7, 10, 12, 14–20, 23, 27 n.3, 33, 34, 35, 36, 39, 45 n.7, 75, 89, 97–107, 111–13, 115–18, 121, 123, 137, 141, 155, 159–60, 172 n.2, 173 n.10, 178–80, 192 comparing the credibility of Jospin and 179–80 Chiroux, R. 166, 173 nn.(10, 13) Chlarson, K. 53, 71 n.9, 95, 110, 114, 116, 117, 124, 233 Christ, C. 71 n.12 243

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church attendance 59–66 Citizens’ Movement see Republican Pole clarity of responsibility 6, 127, 128 institutional factors that affect 120 measuring 129–30 class voting 78–83 cleavage voting 38 cohabitation in France 140 on election turnout 155–9 powers of the president and prime minister during 140–2 powers of the president and prime minister without 139 powers of the president in France 140 powers of the prime minister in France 140 responsibility of the prime minister under 149–50 vs. no cohabitation 142–4 Cole, A. 172 n.1 Communist Party 14, 19, 41, 95, 121, 179, 224 comparative study across time, problems in doing 76–7 Converse, P. 50, 53, 54, 76 Cook, R.D. 148, 239 Courbis, R. 207 Cox, Gary 108 n.1 Criddle, B. 173 n.10 crime 2, 3, 4, 35, 36, 38, 41, 44 criminality 33, 34, 40, 44–5 cross-national models of economic voting 133–4 accuracy of economic voting model over time 132 basic macroeconomic model 130, 132 unexpected macroeconomic model 131–2 cross-pressures 7, 156–7, 158–9, 161–2, 164–71 turnout 158–9 Davis, O.A. 156, 158 Delbos, G. 13 Démocratie libérale (DL) 14, 34, 160–1 Deutsch, E. 54

divided government see dual governance Doherty, J. 138 Dolez, B. 13, 20, 21, 23, 27 n.15, 170 Dorussen, H. 126 dual governance and economic voting 137–9, 140–4 effects on the economics and popularity link 142 France compared to the United States 144–9 hypotheses 138–9 in France 137 in French and American national elections 145–9 in United States 137–8 national election 144–5 dual-ballot systems see two-round election system Dubois, E. 8, 9, 207, 210, 221, 224, 225 n.5, 228 n.56 Dupeux, G. 48 Dupoirier, é. 95, 108 n.3, 157, 173 n.11 econometrics 10 economic growth 6, 9, 130–1, 208–9, 231, 232–5, 240 economic vote impact of cohabitation on 137 economic voting 117–19, 122 effect of cohabitation on 123 France vs. US 144–9 in France 127–8, 137 in United States 137–8 models and the 2002 national assembly election results 129–32 past evidence on dual governance and 137–9 resolving the Franco–American, paradox 149–51 see also cross-national models of economic voting see under dual governance economics and leadership in France and United States 139–44 economy coefficient 136, 141, 239

Index election outcome, determinants of the economic voting 208–9 political and institutional factors 209–12 electoral contest of 2002, political economic context and the double credibility of Chirac and Jospin compared 179–80 economic slowdown 181 evolution of the balance of power between the right and the left 181 far right hardens against the classic right 180 reordering the electoral calendar 179 the rise of economic pessimism 181–2 uncertainty about the Extreme Right 180 electoral geography 3, 12, 19, 75, 186 see also Siegfried, André electoral map the 1981 to the 2002 presidential election 19–20 the 1995 to the 2002 presidential election 18–19 electoral map of 2002 geographical disparities of the votes 16–18 nature of election 17–18 electoral support role of popularity 141 electoral tidal wave 12, 14–15 Elgie, R. 5, 6, 93, 94, 101, 108 n.9, 111, 113, 172 n.2 Enelow, J.H. 156, 158 Evans, J. 4, 67, 69, 71 n.11, 72 n.20 ex ante forecast 8, 207, 208, 218, 222, 224, 225 nn.(11, 13), 228 nn.(69, 74) ex poste prediction 8 Eymann, A. 158 Fair, R.C. 206, 226 n.22 Fauvelle-Aymar, C. 8, 9, 157, 161, 169, 207, 211 Feldman, S. 160 Fiorina, M.P. 58, 173 n.9 Fleury, C. 54, 55, 56, 58, 161

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forecast for 2002, results and the first-round presidential vote model 188 second-round presidential vote model 188–9 forecasting elections 7–8 from votes to seats in the Assembly 219–21 improving the seat forecast 221–3 models 8–9 France class voting in 78–83 cohabitation in 140 cohabitation vs. no cohabitation 142–4 dominant types of abstention in 157 dual executive system 143–4 economic voting literature 127–8 emergence of new political forces in 20–6 national economics and the presidential popularity function 238–9 normalisation of party identification 52–6 objective and subjective economic measures and the vote 232–4 objective economic voting under cohabitation 234–5 party identification 48–52 powers of the president 139 powers of the prime minister 139–40 strategic voting vs. non-strategic voting 95–6 subjective economic voting under cohabitation 236–8 Franco–American economic voting paradox, resolving the 149–51 Franklin, M.N. 33, 152 n.1 French legislative elections, estimation of a vote function for basic model 212–14 local specificities 214–18 French presidential elections, rules that govern 111–14

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Index

French presidential voting assessing strategic voting 98–103 implications of strategic voting 103–5 French voter vs. US voter 49–52 French voting behaviour, impact of institutional rules on 114–19 Frey, B.S. 186 Front national (FN) 34, 37, 107, 161, 206 FN vote function 186–7 full information model 57, 58–9 full path model of party identification and ideology on vote 56–68 geography-based analyses 13 Glavany, Jean 15 Goguel, F. 13, 186 Goldthorpe–Heath class schema, adaptation of the 77 government responsibility, diffusion of 122–3 Greene, W.H. 227 nn.(49, 52) Greens 5, 14, 21, 36, 38, 40, 41, 44, 58, 69, 121, 161, 179 Grunberg, G. 76, 79, 85, 124, 173 n.13 Gschwend, T. 7, 156, 161, 173 nn.(8, 14), 174 n.26 Gujarati, D. 128 Haegel, F. 52 Hibbs, D.A. 227 n.37 Hinich, M.J. 156, 158 ideological identification 5, 9, 10, 124 ideology and party identification 55–68 French voter motivated by 49–50 measuring 161, 210–11 two-ballot system affects the importance of 114–15, 116, 123–4 immigration 2, 3, 4, 6, 37, 38, 40, 41, 44–5, 83, 126, 209 Indridason, Indridi 108 n.1 inflation 6, 9, 127, 130–1, 208, 231, 232, 237, 238 and economic growth, measuring 130–2

Inglehart, R. 48 institutional environment, understanding of the 119–24 issue voting 38–45 assessment of the influence of 41–5 Jacobson, G.C. 173 n.9 Jérôme, B. 7, 112, 179, 181, 182, 185, 186, 187, 207, 208, 210, 211, 215, 221, 226 nn.(19, 26), 228 n.65, 239 Jérôme-Speziari, V. 7, 179, 181, 186, 187, 207, 208, 221, 226 n.26 Jospin, Lionel 1–2, 4–5, 10, 14–19, 21, 24, 33–4, 36, 45 n.7, 69, 97–107, 111–13, 115–18, 120–2, 155, 173 n.10, 178–9, 182, 186, 197 comparing the credibility of Chirac and 179–80 Key, V. 54 King, G. 33, 165 Klingemann, H.-D. 48 Kramer, G.H. 138, 150, 206 la fracture sociale 75 Lafay, J.D. 137, 185, 207, 211, 225 n.1, 226 n.19, 232 Laguiller, Arlette 5, 15, 34, 38, 41, 45, 101–3, 108 n.8 Lancelot, A. 13, 20, 157, 162 monograph on abstention 157 Laurent, A. 3, 13, 20, 21, 23, 27 n.15, 76, 172 n.1 Laver, M. 172 n.2 Lazarsfeld, P.F. 158, 162 Le Pen, Jean-Marie 1, 3–7, 10, 12, 14–20, 24, 34–6, 38, 40–1, 44–5, 69, 74, 83, 87–8, 91, 97–108, 115–17, 124, 126, 148, 155, 165, 178, 180, 192 electoral map of 2002 16–17 first ballot of the 2002 presidential elections 10–11 speech on 21 April 2002 74 victory in the 2002 election, views on 2 Lecaillon, J. 207, 209 legislative model 194–5

Index legislative vote function 187–8 les variables lourdes, model of 62, 63, 90 Leuffen, D. 7, 173 n.8 Lewis-Beck, M. 6, 7, 9, 11, 45 n.2, 53, 54, 55, 56, 58, 71 n.9, 95, 108 n.1, 110, 114, 116, 117, 118, 122, 123, 124, 126, 127, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 144, 146, 152 n.1, 161, 172, 179, 181, 185, 186, 207, 209, 211, 225 n.1, 226 n.21, 228 n.63, 231, 232, 233, 234, 237, 240 Lijphart, A. 129, 157 Lutte ouvrière (LO) 15, 38, 161 marais argument 54, 55 Martin, Pierre 108 n.1 maximum likelihood (ML) model 59 Mayer, N. 3, 4, 44, 45 nn.(2, 6), 53, 68, 69, 74, 75, 76, 80, 180, 227 n.43 Merrill Shanks, J. 71 n.4 Miller, A. 59 Miller, W. 71 n.4 Mouvement des citoyens (MDC) 161 Mouvement national républicain (MNR) 14–15, 34, 41, 44, 180 multivariate analysis of the 2002 presidential election 88–90 Muxel, A. 174 n.21 Nadeau, R. 6, 7, 98, 110, 117, 137, 138, 139, 144, 152 n.1, 211, 234, 240 Nannestad, P. 186, 208 national economic performance 9 National Front (FN) 1, 4, 8, 10, 15, 18, 19–20, 23, 25, 41, 58, 83, 87, 91, 178 national political performance 9 Nie, N. 52, 162 Niemöller, B. 57 Norpoth, H. 137, 138, 143, 144, 150 Nye, Joseph, S. 33 operationalisation 159–62 Ordeshook, P.C. 158

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Paldam, M. 126, 127, 129, 138, 186, 208, 225 n.2, 234 Palmer, H. 110, 120, 122, 123, 126, 129, 130 Parodi, J.-L. 155, 228 n.57 Parti communiste français (PCF) 161 Parti des Radicaux de Gauche (PRG) 69 Parti socialiste (PS) see Socialist Party partisan preferences 7, 158, 166–7, 169–71 see also voter preferences party identification 47, 60 and ideology 56–68 ideological cues superseded by 47 in France 48–52 normalisation of 52–6 relationship between socio-structural background variables and 57–68 tenets of 48–9 two-ballot system affects the importance of 114–15, 116, 123–4 pension funds 3, 33 Percheron, A. 51 Perrineau, P. 53, 72 n.19, 75, 76, 180 Petrocik, J.R. 138 Pierce, R. 50, 52, 53, 54, 56, 57, 69, 71 nn.(2, 3, 7), 76, 157, 161, 172 n.2 Platone, F. 19 Pôle républicain 15, 69 political earthquake 12, 14–15 to an electoral tidal wave see under 21 April 2002 political economy model 185–6 political forces in France, emergence of new 20–6 political science 10 Powell, G.B. 110, 119, 120, 127, 129, 130, 139 pre-election surveys from March 2001 to April 2002 182–5 president of France, powers of the 139 presidential model 8, 185–7 presidential vote function 186–7 prime minister of France, powers of the 139–40

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Ranger, J. 19 Rassemblement pour la République (RPR) 3, 58, 95, 160, 180 regime preferences 7, 156, 158–9, 160–2, 165–7, 169–71 see also voter preferences religion 83–8 in France see under France on voting behaviour in France, impact of 83–8 role of 4 religious voting model 75–6 in France 83–8 Responsibility Hypothesis 138, 144, 206, 207, 212, 234 Rice, T. 141, 146, 226 n.24 Riker, W.H. 158 Roger, P. 180 Rosa, J.-J. 185, 205, 207, 209, 226 n.22, 232 Rosenthal, H. 157, 172 n.2 runoff elections 108 n.2

social inequalities 3, 36, 38, 40–1 Socialist Party (PS) 17, 19, 25, 41, 50, 86, 112, 115, 116, 120, 161, 173 n.10, 179, 218, 224 Stegmaier, M. 136, 225 n.16, 231 Stimson, J. 41 strategic vote 98 strategic voting assessing 98–103 definition of 98 dual-ballot systems 94–5 implications of 103–5 questions designed to tap 96–7 strategic voting in France 95–6 types of 98–102 vs. non-strategic voting 95–6 Strøm, K. 129 Subileau, F. 157 Sundquist, J. 172 n.2

Safran, W. 139 Salmon, F. 13 Sartori, G. 173 n.8 Schmitt, H. 156, 172, 173 n.14 Schousen, M. 138 Schrameck, O. 111, 166, 173 n.10 Section Française de l’Internationale Ouvrière (SFIO) 69 Sen, S. 157 Shepsle, K.A. 172 n.2 Shugart, M.S. 172 n.2 Siegfried, A. 3, 12, 13, 75, 186 analysis of votes 12–13 tradition 13, 75 Sigelman, L. 138, 173 n.9 single-executive system 144 single-member plurality (SMP) 93 Smith, E. 71 n.4 social background variables 58, 59 social class categorization of 77 position and voting, link between 75–6

territorial reconstructions 13, 21–3 1965–1995 21–3 2002 23–6 homogeneous territory 20–1 territory-based approach 13 territory-based vote distribution 13 Thomassen, J. 48 Thurner, P.W. 158 Tiberj, V. 3, 4, 45 Toinet, M.-F. 157 Tomz, M. 174 n.27 Tsebelis, G. 129 Tufte, E.R. 187 turnout 158–9 logit method predicting 163–9 two-round election system according to Cox 94–5 according to Duverger 93 according to Elgie 93–4 advantages of 93 favouring 107–8 role of strategic voting in 93–5 two-executive system 143–4 two-stage least squares regression (2SLS) 58

Index unemployment 3–4, 6, 8, 9, 24, 34, 36, 38, 40, 118, 130, 181–2, 192, 209, 212, 214, 223 Union pour la Démocratie Française (UDF) 14, 58, 95, 180 Union Pour la Majorité (UPM) 70 Union pour la Nouvelle République (UNR) 69 United States dual governance 137–9 economics and leadership 139–44 single-executive system 143–4 van der Eijk, C. 57 Verba, S. 162 vote function, presentation of the dependent variable 206–7 forecasting election outcomes 207–8 national/local data 207 voter preferences partisan vs. regime 156–69

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voters, behaviour of 12–13 votes intervention of institutes in the determination of 119–24 reasons to measure at national level 144 voting behaviour American 48 French 114–19 regime concerned 159 role of institutions 119–24 Wattenberg, M.P. 173 n.9 Weber, E. 49 Weisberg, S. 148 Whitten, G. 6, 110, 119, 120, 122, 123, 127, 129, 130, 139 Williams, P. 49 Ysmal, C.

95

Zaller, J. 160 zero impunity

35