Presidential: abstention, more than ever the great unknown

Europe 1 with AFP 4:42 p.m., April 01, 2022

One week before the first round of the presidential election, the level of abstention remains more than ever the great unknown of an atypical election which, according to specialists, will be played out in the very last straight line.

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

Are we going to beat the abstention record of April 21, 2022?

"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 FranceInfo.

Many political scientists fear that the record of April 21, 2002 (28.4%), the highest level ever recorded for a 1st round of a presidential election, could be beaten, much more than in 2017 (22.2% ) which was already not a good vintage.

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

Crystallization of the vote

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, the 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.

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.

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"This abstention prompts 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, in the end, will mobilize or not", warns Brice Teinturier.

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.

Little issue?

"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 of more workers and employees who are less mobilized “, 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", believes Gilles Finchelstein.

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

"For months, Emmanuel Macron has not seemed in difficulty in any voting intention. On the other hand, if the gap between Macron and Le Pen were to narrow - for example from 52% to 48% - the election would become more motivating and would surely mobilize more", he adds.