87% of 18-24 did not come this Sunday for the first round of regional and departmental elections.
Faced with an election whose stakes are still little understood by all French people and whose campaign has turned a lot around games of political alliances, young people have lost interest in the regional.
For the political scientist Mathieu Gallard, the deconfinement and the joy of returning to normal life have probably defused the vote-sanction against the government that we often observe in presidential elections.
As we know, young people still vote less than their elders, but this year for the regional ones, they have more than confirmed the rule.
While the overall abstention rate in France reached a record level of 66.1% on Sunday evening, that of 18-24 year olds stands at 87%.
Disinterest in politics?
Action-sanction?
Or a preview of what the next elections will be in France?
This figure questions the vote of young people, in a very particular context of Covid-19.
20 Minutes
interviewed Mathieu Gallard, study director at Ipsos.
Has a record of abstention among young people been broken in France?
Globally, it is the highest abstention rate for an election since the start of the Fifth Republic, excluding a referendum.
We find this in the vote of 18-24 year olds with 87% of abstention.
The levels were much lower for the previous municipal and regional elections where we were rather around 50-60% of abstention.
This is a national average, who is behind this figure?
When we question young people, a whole part of them tells us that they would be motivated to demonstrate for the climate, for example, or to sign petitions, but voting does not seem to them to be the best way to express their ideas.
There are also different youths with more or less obstacles to electoral participation.
In all the rather young cities, as in the Parisian suburbs for example, there were absolutely apocalyptic levels of abstention.
In Saint-Denis, we are at 79% abstention and in Clichy-sous-Bois 88%.
Because at their young age, is added the fact of being often from immigrant and working-class backgrounds and therefore of being less socially integrated.
However, what determines whether or not to vote globally is the fact of being well integrated socially.
How to explain these record abstention rates among young people?
There are structural elements that we find in each region and that explain why each time, there is a little more abstention in these elections. The French, and even more particularly young people, do not really understand the skills of the regions, what a regional council is used for and how it can have an impact on their daily life. So going to vote for elections where we do not understand the stakes, that does not motivate much. The second structural aspect is this distrust of political elites and the political system in general: the impression that elected officials are corrupt, inefficient and far removed from the concerns of the French.
There are also much more cyclical elements linked to the current situation. We are coming out of the health crisis, there is deconfinement, we take off the masks… Young people are returning to the normal life they had left for a year and a half and they did not necessarily want to follow the electoral campaign. Especially since it was very much focused on the political game: will the National Rally (RN) conquer regions? Will LR and LREM join forces? Things very far from the concerns of the French. And then the weather was fine, it was Father's Day, the young people perhaps did not have the head to go to vote.
Finally, the intermediate elections between two presidential elections are traditionally used as an outlet for the French, that is to say to express a sanction vote against the government in place.
But LREM is in any case so weak at the regional level that this dimension of vote to let off steam cannot even be exercised.
There were very few regions where the party could win.
It does not make sense to let off steam against a party that is 10%.
And then this dissatisfaction is somewhat diluted by the return to normal life.
Two months ago, 30% of French people were satisfied with the management of the health crisis, today we are at 54%.
All this means that the voting sanction aspect automatically disappears.
What impact has this abstention had on the different parties and can it have on future elections?
It is not the 18-24 year olds who vote the most for the RN, rather the 25-35 year olds, but they too abstained a lot, so this may partly explain the poor results of the National Rally. LREM is also very attractive to young people and this has had an impact on the party's poor scores. Finally, there was a clash within the left between the Socialist Party (PS) and Europe Ecologie - Les Verts (EELV). This abstention may have put the Greens at a bit of a disadvantage because the EELV electorate is much younger than the PS electorate. But for all these parties, this does not announce what will happen in 2022 in the presidential election.
What happened on Sunday does not mean that we will reach this record level of abstention in all the next elections.
Already because the euphoria linked to deconfinement will no longer be there.
And then because we know that there are huge differences depending on the election.
In the 2017 presidential election in the first round, we were only 29% abstention among young people.
In France, the presidential election is the one that decides everything and there the French and young people really feel that it can have an impact on their daily life.
Whatever happens, there will be a stronger abstention among young people in 2022 because they always abstain more than the others, but it is absolutely certain that we will not find this abstention rate whatsoever. globally or among young people.
Elections
Regional results: From the North to the South of France, hiccups in the organization of elections
Elections
Results of the regional: "They did not move" ... the National Gathering denounces its voters
Elections
Youth
Abstention
Vote
Youth
Regional elections