French election maps

[big bad fab]

Much appreciated.

Is there any particular reason for Fabius's strong showing in Aquitaine (Gironde, Landes, Pyrénées-Atlantiques) and Haute-Corse? It also seems that he did well in the Diagonale du vide.

During the 2006 primary inside the PS, Fabius was supported by the left wing of the party: Emmanuelli is from Landes and is very strong in Landes and Pyrénées Atlantiques.
Gironde's local organization ("fédération") was led by fabiusians (Anziani, Madrelle) for a long time. The same for Haute Corse.

[big bad fab]

Why did Le Pen do so well in Aquitaine (Gironde, Lot-et-Garonne)?

Le Pen seems to do better in Gironde and Lot-et-Garonne than in the other departments of Aquitaine.

It's also stretching it a bit to say he did "so well" in Gironde and Lot-et-Garonne, Gironde-5 was very close (Chirac was only a few % behind). Saint-Josse and CPNT do well there too (14.7% in Gironde-5 in 2002). Gironde-11 was also close.

edit: The FN also had a seat(s) in Bordeaux until this year.

Le Pen always did well along the Garonne valley (Gironde, Lot-et-Garonne, Tarn-et-Garonne, Tarn, but also Haute-Garonne), because of big or middle-size cities (Bordeaux, Agen, Marmande, Montauban, Toulouse, Castres) but also beacause of "rapatriés", "pieds-noirs", Europeans who went back in France when Algeria won its independence in 1962.
This is the electoral legacy if this French exodus....

IIRC, Tixier-Vignancour in 1965 did also well in these "départements". But it must be checked.

[big bad fab]

Why did Le Pen do so well in Aquitaine (Gironde, Lot-et-Garonne)?

Le Pen seems to do better in Gironde and Lot-et-Garonne than in the other departments of Aquitaine.

It's also stretching it a bit to say he did "so well" in Gironde and Lot-et-Garonne, Gironde-5 was very close (Chirac was only a few % behind). Saint-Josse and CPNT do well there too (14.7% in Gironde-5 in 2002). Gironde-11 was also close.

edit: The FN also had a seat(s) in Bordeaux until this year.

Le Pen always did well along the Garonne valley (Gironde, Lot-et-Garonne, Tarn-et-Garonne, Tarn, but also Haute-Garonne), because of big or middle-size cities (Bordeaux, Agen, Marmande, Montauban, Toulouse, Castres) but also beacause of "rapatriés", "pieds-noirs", Europeans who went back in France when Algeria won its independence in 1962.
This is the electoral legacy if this French exodus....

IIRC, Tixier-Vignancour in 1965 did also well in these "départements". But it must be checked.

Confirmed: Tixier Vignancour did very well there (in relative terms), up to Charente-Maritime BTW, like Le Pen 20 years later...

And in 1962, the "no" in the referendum on Evian agreements (which made Algeria an independent state) did very well also in the vallet Garonne (apart from the South East, old stronghold of the far right).

[big bad fab]

Confirmed: Tixier Vignancour did very well there (in relative terms), up to Charente-Maritime BTW, like Le Pen 20 years later...

And in 1962, the "no" in the referendum on Evian agreements (which made Algeria an independent state) did very well also in the vallet Garonne (apart from the South East, old stronghold of the far right).

Le Pen did well in Charente-Maritime in his first run and the FN did well till about '86 IIRC. Back then the FN vote was much lower in the quartiers populaires and with workers and more of a bourgeois-Royalist protest vote. A look at the evolution of the FN's base in Paris proper is very interesting. Should do a few maps on that.

BTW, any place where I could find departmental results for the Evian referendum?

Look at your personal messages on this site: I gave you one book where there is a map on 1962 referendum. But there aren't detailed numbers by department. I'll try to find them.

Le Pen's vote was never a bourgeois-royalist one. Sure, there was a small fringe of upgrade vote and a less small fringe of traditional catholic and military vote. But it wasn't a majority in FN's electorate.

In the beginning, it was more a "petit-bourgeois" and "boutiquier" one: small businesses in towns or small cities. The "Algérie française" vote was still pregnant (Le Pen himself is a mixture of Algérie française and Poujade, but more of the former; Mégret is closer to the real fascist model: European, elitist, technological).

During the 1990s, the blue-collars vote became more important.
But the "petit-bourbeois" vote, afraid of immigrants, has remained strong: see the inner North-East: Haute-Marne, Aube, Marne, Meuse, Jura, Doubs, where immigration is not very high (contrayr to Moselle, Meurthe-et-Moselle, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, Alsace,...) but where, in the end, the FN did better than in his traditional strongholds in the Mediterranean south.

[big bad fab]

Hashemite, I've just sent you, on your gmail and hotmail boxes, a pdf file with maps on the 1962 referendum on Evian agreements, with results by departments.

Hope it will be useful.

[big bad fab]

Strange map

A bit strange in comparison to the first 1946 referendum (just a map of the left of these days).
Sure, communist strongholds can be seen in this map.
But, the national average dilutes a bit this effect and Bretagne and Ile-de-France may have given MRP and radical voters to the "OUI" (but not the East).

[big bad fab]

Gironde would be fine.

[big bad fab]

Sorry to drop another idea amid your 07 runoff series, but had you posted a map on Pierre Juquin, presidential election 1988, as communist candidate but outside the party ? Should be interesting for Atlasians.

He gathered more than usual marginal candidates.

But his map is weird: sort of PCF map but only the south !

Not at all a far-left map (LCR or LO: an arch of strongness from North-West to North to North-East).

Not at all a green map (from North-West to urban Ile-de-France plus the large centre-East, with Lyon, Alsace, Jura, the Alps and Dauphiné).

Juquin's map can't be compared with any other one. Really puzzling.

[big bad fab]

Lemme finish Gironde.

Sure, just a suggestion. Take ya time !

[big bad fab]

How Gironde has evolved ! Thanks for this intricated map.

Inner Gironde, more on the popular left in the past, is now appealed by Sarkozy'07.

On the other hand, more posh areas in Bordeaux itself, in the western suburbs of Bordeaux and in the southern Medoc (wines....) has voted for the left.

Blue-collar Sarkozy, "bobo" PS....

[big bad fab]

Very interesting.
2 points: Sarkozy of course grabbed the FN vote. And Chirac has disappeared: it explains Correze and all the Massif Central (especially western Massif Central)'s swing.

I think a 1969 vs 1995 would be fine: Pompidou-Chirac vs something else...

[big bad fab]

OMG, Ille-et-Vilaine in the last (or first...) rank !

But not very different from 1995-2007.

For 1969-1995, just take Poher as the "left" candidate. I think we'd be surprised...

[big bad fab]

The swing's level would be interesting, not just the colour.
But, anyway, I'm not here to decide what you have to do. It's your thread !

[big bad fab]

Xahar, please read some posts before: Poher would be the "other", as Jospin was in 1995.

[big bad fab]

Useless fact from the 1969-1995 comparison. There was no swing in the Aude. Poher and Jospin got the exact same.

That was, indeed, my point: Pompidou and Chirac had similar maps and Poher was, de facto, the left candidate. Many left voters in fact voted for him, even with "political disgust".

I precisely wanted to say that "la Chiraquie" et "la Pompidolie" were very similar.
Chirac has won only one "normal" election: 1995.
He lost a normal one in 1988, but it was still a seventies-eighties left-right map.

Pompidou ran only one presidential election.

Hence a comparison 1969-1995.

But forget it...

[big bad fab]

You can see where Pompidou's personal vote was strongest, can'st thou. Chirac too, but to a latter extent. The decline of the old Catholic-Anti Clerical divide is there as well.

Pompidou got over 80% in Cantal, btw.

I think that deserves a "lol".

It shows that even if it was Poher against him, Pompidou was THE candidate on whom voters decide, for or against him.

The electoral map of 1969 was a "gaulliste-pompidolienne", i.e. it was made of De Gaulle strongholds (former occupied France during WW2) and of "la Pompidolie" in the Massif Central (similar to "la Chiraquie").

Poher should have been stronger than that in the North West and the North East, in old MRP strongholds, but he wasn't indeed the centrist candidate, he was just the "other" candidate and gathered socialist, radical and even some communist voters.

As Chirac was the "other" candidate in 2002: the electoral map is a FN one.

[big bad fab]

Thinking of doing a PS 1993 map.

Definitely a good idea. At this point, 1993 seems to be a nice year for the French Socialists.

LOL

[big bad fab]

Some comments on latest historical maps from Hashemite:

- Rocard 1969 is very interesting, as these national and old results (a quite lefty Rocard at the time) would remain similar to his results inside the PS (from 1979 to the 1990s):

strongholds in Bretagne  (Louis Le Pensec...), Loire-Atlantique (Claude Evin...) and Anjou (Monnier, former mayor of Angiers), Franche-Comté, Isère and Grenoble (Hubert Dubedout, former mayor, was a mendésiste and a hero for pragmatic local socialism), Western Ile-de-France (Rocard was elected in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, Yvelines), even Gers.

- Lecanuet 1965 is a very unsurprising one: centrist map + Rouen (Lecanuet's city).
Remember Lecanuet was the first main candidate to know how to use television. Some in France called him a French Kennedy. It was 43 years ago...

- In 1870 plebiscite map, you can already read the first socialist maps of the twentieth century (before the Tours Congress in 1920).

[big bad fab]

- In 1870 plebiscite map, you can already read the first socialist maps of the twentieth century (before the Tours Congress in 1920).

A few other things on that. Apart from urban republicans who hated him (the original opposition to him) plus some conservative (meaning royalist) Catholic areas (Breton west, Gironde, parts of the rural east), industrial areas out east and some leftie rurals.

You're right, but my point was to say that, in a nutshell, what you can stare at a glance is the left map of the early 20th century.

You're right except for Loire-Atlantique and Gironde: it's more an influence of urban vote (anti-"order") and industrial areas along Loire and Gironde "estuaires", than any Cahtolic vote (especially in Gironde; truer in rural Loire-Atlantique of course).

Difficult to have those old maps. I've just checked in an old "Larousse encyclopédique en 12 volumes" published in 1958, but nothing on electoral geography... What a pity !

[big bad fab]

Very interesting.

The tie map is revealing: Sarkozy is Le Pen plus remnants of the 70s right (Cantal-Lozère-Haute Loire and the string between Manche and Vendée).

The 55% map for Royal (OMG...) is also interesting: Oise, Eure-et-Loir  and Vaucluse still for Sarkozy, but not Seine-et-Marne, Meuse, Vendée or even Hauts-de-Seine... How the right has changed...

I'm a bit surprised by Hauts-de-Seine for Royal if she wins 53% nationally (but haven't checked anything...).

[big bad fab]

This map is fascinating in a number of ways, not just because CPNT is a cool party, but it's also a cool demographic guide.

A map of French forests, bays, muds and "young" mountains:
Landes-Médoc, Sologne, Saintonge, Cévennes, Quercy, Queyras, Mercantour,
Somme, pays de Retz, Isigny-Manche
Pyrenees, Alps, Corsica.

More a hunting map than anything else.

[big bad fab]

You've posted Finistère, which is very interesting with the "pays léonard" and the "presqu'île de Crozon" heavily and homogeneously on the right, but many rural parts on the left, in addition to urban areas around Brest and Quimper.

You request requests, so.... what about Aveyron and Dordogne (Périgord): they may be interesting with 4 or 5 different local areas in each one ?

[big bad fab]

Dordogne is a very puzzling one for me: how the SW of this département can be more left-wing than the Périgord noir around Sarlat, which is richest and more conservative ?

A bit like in Gironde, it seems as if it was blue-collar and suburban Sarkozy against "bobo" Royal....

Aveyron is divided along its traditional lines: old mining region and cities for the left, rural north and center for the right.

[big bad fab]

Loire Atlantique is quite clear geographically: pays de Retz, Guérandais and rural north and east vs Nantes and greater Nantes.

Calvados is really changing: Caen suburbs are now deep in the south...

Correze is shocking: so red for former Chirac's stronghold...

[big bad fab]

Btw, it's fascinating to see how little voting patterns in the Ardeche have changed since the Third Republic. Left seems to be stronger in the SW now than back then, but that's close to being the only difference.

The left has built up a bit of strength up north (2nd constituency), a traditionally right-wing country. The PRG won it in 1997, and the PS won in it in 2007. Ironically, the UMP holds only one seat, the 3rd constituency, which includes the red lands of the southwest (the Cevennes).

North of Ardèche is now a far suburb of Lyons-Vienne-Saint-Etienne metropolis (even the valley of Rhône between Lyons and Valence is almost one unique metropolis).