Paris (AFP)
Rebelote for abstention: the electoral surge hoped for for the second round of regional and departmental did not take place and unsurprisingly, it remained Sunday at a very high level, around 65% according to pollsters, after the record of first round (66.72%).
It is between 64.3 and 66.3% in the second round against 66.7% in the first round, according to estimates by Ifop Fiducial for TF1 / LCI, Elabe for BFM / RMC, Opinionway for CNews, Ipsos for France Télévisons Radio France and the Parliamentary Channel.
The Harris Institute for M6 is the one that gives the lowest abstention at 64.3%.
The small gain of one or two points of participation between the two rounds in no way equals the rebound of nearly 10 points in the previous regional ballot in 2015 (41.59% in the first round, 50.09% in the second) .
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"There was no democratic burst, this election was evaded by more than 31 million French as of last Sunday", summarized the pollster Frédéric Dabi (Ifop) on LCI.
"In a context of emerging from the crisis, proximity to the summer, pre-presidential campaign, this election has never found its place," he adds.
"The citizens remained beside the calls to vote of the political leaders or the media. There is a form of impermeability to all that", analyzes with AFP the specialist of the abstention Céline Braconnier.
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"There is an unfavorable climate of opinion which is very established and which could not be modified in a week", abounds Pierre Lefébure, political scientist of the Sorbonne-Paris North University.
In the first round, on June 20, the French had never shied away from a ballot so much since the five-year referendum on September 24, 2000, the absolute record of abstention under the Fifth Republic with 69.8%.
But the weeks go by and are therefore alike and this double electoral disavowal amplifies a heavy trend of recent decades that the five-year Macron has not succeeded in reversing.
More than half of the voters have shunned the ballot box since his election in each vote, from the legislative of 2017 to the municipal of 2020, with the notable exception of the unexpected surge of the Europeans of 2019 (50.12% participation).
"There is a form of resignation and distance that has taken hold," warns Céline Braconnier.
"The reflux of the RN shows that it is not immune to abstention, in particular because of its young and disadvantaged electorate," she said.
The national trend should not mask regional disparities and rebounds in local participations.
Thus in the Paca region, with a particularly clear duel for voters between LR Renaud Muselier and RN Thierry Mariani, participation increased according to Ipsos by more than 4 points (62.2% of abstention against 66.3% in first round), partly explaining the great success of the outgoing president.
"There is a small but negligible recovery, even in Paca", relativizes the pollster Jérôme Sainte-Marie (PollingVox).
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"This may show that the RN is no longer scary and that there is a form of trivialization including in the mobilization," he says.
According to Ipsos, as in the first round, it is always in the Grand Est (70%) and the Pays de la Loire (68.5%) that we find the most abstainers, ahead of the Hauts de France and the Normandy (66.8%) and Center-Val de Loire (66.6%).
The prize for good citizenship always goes to Corsica (41.8%) which clearly stands out from the rest of France, ahead of Occitanie (61.9%) and New Aquitaine (62.8%), Paca coming to slip among good students (62.2%).
Several specialists, however, warn against an extrapolation of this democratic gadget for the presidential election of next year.
"The presidential election keeps a separate status in the eyes of voters, that of the only election that really matters, with a clear offer, and the electoral campaign will be much more followed in the media," said Pierre Lefébure.
"We should not draw a lesson for the presidential election where there may be a high intensity, split campaign," approves Céline Braconnier.
© 2021 AFP