French election maps

[parochial boy]

Although I imagine everybody is more interested by MACRON and PANZERGIRL these days, France's electoral history is so much more interesting.

Here's a fun map comparing the two far-left candidates Arlette Laguiller and Olivier Besancenot in 2002 - Arlette won 5.7%, Besancenot won 4.2%, so a 1.47% advantage to the former. Mapped at the constituency level, it produces an interesting map



In broad general terms, Arlette's lead over Besancenot was highest in the more working-class areas, particularly old decaying industrial regions (some, but not all, former Communist strongholds). In contrast, Besancenot did better than Arlette or came closest to her in the less working-class, especially most bobo, places - as the blue (Besancenot beat Arlette) constituencies in Paris, Lyon, Grenoble, Nantes, Bordeaux, Toulouse should tell you...

Awesome! I'd never thought about it, but that is more or less exactly how you would expect the results between the two parties to look. Maybe a little bit surprised about Nanterre though, and that Besancenot did relatively worse in Ille-et-Villaine that the rest of Brittany.

Would love to see some more maps from that election

[parochial boy]

So how do native french working class vote, searching it up, there is articles of how, COMMUNISTS VOTE FOR TEH LE PEN. In 2012, did they vote for the socialists, with LePen in second place. What are working class areas in France?

They heavily vote for Le Pen

Really? That's sad then, any statistics on this regard, and some from 2012. I don't fully believe this, looking at maps from 2012. Though in 2017, I expect LePen to make huge gains.

From Ipsos - Le Pen won 29% of Ouvriers in the first round, compared to 27% for Hollande.

Polling from 2017 suggests Le Pen is in the mid-40s with working class voters, with Melenchon in 2nd on about 17%; Macron and Hamon in third and fourth and Fillon on only 7%. See here

[parochial boy]

Any idea why she scored quite well in Hautes-Alpes and in the Geneva commuter belt areas in Ain and Haute-Savoie? That area doesn't have a particularly large black population (although there is quite a large North African community), and it doesn't have any sort of leftist tradition, although there is quite a strong Christian-Democrat centrist one.

Also, one thing I have wondered about is how the hell Hollande managed to win in Cantal and Haute-Loire in 2012? I mean, you can say secularisation, but even so, there doesn't seem to be much, demographically speaking, that would give such traditionally right wing areas any reason to vote Hollande. Maybe Cantal being close enough to Correze to have a home-boy knock on, but I can't see that stretching as far as Haute-Loire

[parochial boy]

Brilliant thanks! From a purely biased local perspective I think it is quite interesting that the 74 has become a relatively weak department for the FN, when Le Pen won there in 2002. Even the deindustrialisimg towns in the arve valley arent too strong for Le Pen, as even these have benefited from the knock on effect of Greater geneva.

Could the same néoruraux effect also be behind the same bans of greeen strength that seems to run from Haites-Alpes througt to Aveyron? The various versions of EELV seem to regularly pick up random xommunes down that way

[parochial boy]

Sorry for more questions, on an old map, but I was going through the old posts in this fascinating thread and, this one caught my attention

Saint-Malo (2007):

Is there any explanation for the left wing vote in Paramé? That is one of the last places in Brittany I would expect to vote for the PS

[parochial boy]

So, I've done a few maps comparing the 2002 and 2017 elections, as they're superficially quite similar - with the FN making the second round, and the radical/far left scoring well in both elections. So I wanted to have a little look at how things have moved on since 2002.

The first map is taking the FN's second round result and comparing the swing towards the Le Pens, nationally the FN improved its score by 16.1%, so anything in Green swung by less, and grey swung by more:


The second map is a comparison of the first round scores of the FN against the joint far left (Hue, Besancenot, Laguiller and Gluckstein). Nationally, the FN (and I've excluded Megret's results here) exceeded the far left by 16.9% to 13.8%, so it's close enough that you can get a picture of the Commies v the fascists by department.



The last map follows on from that, in comparing Le Pen 2017 vs Mélenchon, Poutou and Arthaud combined. Le Pen got 21.3% to the combined radical left's 21.3%, so almost identical for comparing where in the country prefers the Commies or the Fascists.



Comparing the three maps, you get a pretty good picture I think of how the far left and far right have moved on in 15 years - in particular the way the far right has gained in the North East and gone backwards in big urban areas (especially Paris). A couple of other things stood out to me though - the fact the FN haven't progressed (as) much in PACA but also in the Garonne valley in comparison to other areas. Also, the Centre and Northern Burgundy have really swung hard right, not that surprising for such a rural and sparsely populated area (it's the heart of the "diagonale du vide" after all).

[parochial boy]

Yeah, you really see in these maps the rise of the "France périphérique".

The fact that Rhòne is now a left wing department. It's just... wrong...