Abstention could break record in first round

What if the big winner of the first round was… nobody?

Abstention, a traditional stake in the polls and a barometer of the health of democracy, remains very uncertain in a campaign swept away by the war in Ukraine.

“Everything will be played out in the last eight days and we have two possible patterns”, sums up the pollster (Ipsos) Brice Teinturier.

“Either in the last ten days, as in 2017, the mobilization goes up and we can hope at that time for a contained abstention, we will say 25%, or we are really on a different pattern, and there indeed we can be in the zone of 28, 30% abstention”, he analyzes for

.

The fear is then that the record of April 21, 2002 (28.4%), which had brought the extreme right for the first time in the second round to everyone's surprise, will be beaten.

Besides, the 2017 score (22.2%), which was not a good vintage, would be enviable.

"Measuring and estimating abstention correctly with polls is often tricky because to declare that one abstains is to derogate from the image of a good citizen", however warns political scientist Bruno Cautrès (Cevipof), for that it “seems premature to make this forecast” of an abstention of more than 30%.

Be careful with pollsters

Like him, many specialists are calling for caution because of the indecision and increasing volatility of “intermittent” voters who are making their choice later and later.

“When I was young, we learned that in a presidential election, crystallization took place in January or February.

Now the crystallization takes place on the day of the vote, ”notes the director general of the Jean Jaurès Gilles Finchelstein Foundation.

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Scalded by the precedent of the regional elections of 2021 where the level of abstention (two thirds of the voters in the end) had been underestimated and, as a result, that of the overvalued RN, even the pollsters warn against certain interpretations of their surveys suggesting that the election is already over, and Emmanuel Macron re-elected.

“This abstention encourages us to be somewhat cautious about what we measure because there may be an ultimate distortion of the levels of voting intentions that we measure today according to the categories which,

the end, will mobilize or not”, warns Brice Teinturier.

Abstention more unfavorable to Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon

Because the risk of abstention does not threaten all the candidates in the same way.

“The electorate which is the least sensitive to abstention is that of Emmanuel Macron, because it is a well-to-do, integrated electorate and this is also the case for the electorate of Valérie Pécresse”, underlines the Deputy Chief Executive Officer of Ipsos.

On the other hand, they would then have nothing to gain with a strong mobilization.

"Abstention is, on the other hand, potentially unfavorable to the electorate of Jean-Luc Mélenchon and that of Marine Le Pen because these two electorates are both younger and made up more of workers and employees who are less mobilised. “, he completes.

Recalling "what happened on April 21, 2002, when many voters, convinced that Lionel Jospin was going to be qualified, allowed themselves different votes", he does not, however, exclude a risky demobilization of Macron voters if the match seems bent.

"For participation to reach the usual level of a presidential election - around 80% - the existence of a stake must be perceived" because "the novelty of the period is that electoral participation is no longer automatic.

Little stake, little participation, ”says Gilles Finchelstein.

"When an election gives the feeling that its result is known in advance, then it motivates less", abounds Bruno Cautrès in

.

Beyond the match which tightens in the second round, with a winning Marine Le Pen within the margin of error, the forecasts for the first round (where the RN candidate is six points ahead of the third, Jean-Luc Mélenchon ), could therefore deter voters…

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• Elections

• Presidential election 2022

• Survey

• Abstention

• Emmanuel Macron

• Marine Le Pen

• Jean-Luc Melenchon

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