1) Le Pen outpolled Sarkozy last May - view the chart of opinion poles in this article: http://electionsfrance.wordpress.com/2012/04/11/reflections-on-the-2012-presidential-election/
2) Sarkozy was very successful veering to the right to grab LePen's votes - it appears every single vote gained by Sarkozy from Jan. thru today was stolen from LePen. Again see the chart: http://electionsfrance.wordpress.com/2012/04/11/reflections-on-the-2012-presidential-election/
What is the real telling number, though, is how the working class voted:
IFOP found that far more manual laborers voted for LePen than any other candidate, and LePen and Hollande tied for support among non-manual workers (http://www.ifopelections.fr/component/article/?eid=530 ):
Sarkozy LePen Mélenchon Hollande Employé 19 28 11 28 Ouvrier 14 33 18 21
Finally, did Melenchon get "not much" of the working class vote?
Since the working class is almost all of the population (when including professional, govn't, etc), and Melenchon only won 11% overall, perhaps not. However, as IFOP showed, he did far better among manual laborers than any other category, almost twice his popularity amongst the population as a whole. That said, LePen did even twice as well as Melenchon amongst manual laborers (33% vs. 18%).
Further, Melenchon pulled off a huge burst of support for the left, doubling his support in only a couple of months to about 14% before the vote by pulling votes away from the Socialists, Greens, and FNs. ( http://electionsfrance.wordpress.com/2012/04/11/reflections-on-the-2012-presidential-election/
)
One could argue many proletarian voters for LePen were protest votes, disillusioned, unemployed, etc., and will go to Hollande in the runoff. Nonetheless, the 33% of manual workers voting for Front National is striking, and says more about the lack of a viable left, and about the disastrous state of French industry and desperation of the industrial proletariat than about LePen's 'solutions'.
On Mon, Apr 23, 2012 at 9:32 PM, <brandelune at gmail.com> wrote:
> Shane,
>
> I have not followed the campaign very closely but I don't remember any
> point in time when Le Pen's poll numbers were higher than Sarkozy's.
>
> Also, I don't think Mélenchon managed to get much of the working class
> vote. It seems to me that what he got was the active parts of all the
> trotskyist groups who had succeeded in getting a small share of the vote in
> earlier elections. This time, they were all down to barely above 1%, vs 5%
> each a few years back. In fact, Mélenchon's 11% is pretty much exactly what
> the Communists and the Trotskyists all together made in 2007 or 2002.
>
> Mélenchon was a bit shocked at not having gathered more than that. But it
> is quite a feat anyway, because he started at 4-5% in the polls, his group
> did not exists 4 years ago, and he managed to convince the Communist Party
> to ally with 2 other smaller groups. I'm not sure his Left Front will be
> able to get much seats in the coming general elections though. We'll see.
>
> Back to Sarkozy, I am pretty convinced that when he is out of the picture,
> his party, the UMP, will not manage to keep any consistency and will split
> (if not formally at least in terms of alliance at the general elections)
> into a hard right, a "gaulist" right and a soft-center right. Some will
> ally with the National Front, some with the Socialists. I think it won't
> take much before the UMP is gone from the picture altogether. With the
> Socialists holding the Senate (with the Greens), the Presidency and soon
> the National Assembly, and with Mélenchon's Left Front pushing on the left
> side, we're hopefully going to see some interesting things in France in the
> coming months.
>
> JC
>
> On Apr 23, 2012, at 11:38 PM, Shane Mage wrote:
>
> >
> > On Apr 23, 2012, at 9:39 AM, brandelune at gmail.com wrote:
> >
> >> If you need an update on the first round, check this article:
> >>
> >>
> http://www.opendemocracy.net/philippe-marli%C3%A8re/23-april-2012-nicolas-sarkozy-fights-for-his-political-life
> >
> > I disagree with this statement:
> > "Sarkozy, the right-wing candidate, has ended his presidential term with
> an electoral disaster. Over the past few weeks, he has constructed a
> political Frankenstein, whose first name is Marine. Mrs Le Pen has
> demonstrated time and again during the campaign that the Front National
> remains the same xenophobic party, always intent on polarising voters with
> race politics: from halal meat to immigration or policies of “national
> preference”, the FN continues to play to the traditional tune of the old
> extreme-right. Le Pen can be grateful to Sarkozy. His very right-wing
> campaign was Le Pen’s stepping stone for her own success."
> >
> > I believe that the "Buisson strategy" was designed and succeeded against
> Le Pen. By running a hard-right campaign on the FN's traditional
> anti-immigrant themes Sarkozy, who at one point actually had lower poll
> numbers than Marine, took aim at the FN's traditional base. It was
> successful in forcing Marine to return to the traditional FN campaign in
> order to protect her base, and thus cut her off from the workingclass vote
> that she was appealing to with her denunciations of austerity, "crony
> capitalism," and "Europe." At the high point of her campaign (the
> rhetorical high point of the whole campaign), when Sarkozy increased VAT in
> order to reduce corporate social-security contributions and called it a VAT
> sociale, Marine immediately denounced it as a "VAT patronale." From there,
> the FN campaign slid back down the right side of the hill, as
> Buisson-Sarkozy intended, and her working-class vote slipped back to
> Mélenchon. So Sarkozy avoided the humiliation of a third-place finish.
> But, as Marliere recognizes, Sarko remains in a terrible fix, and Marline
> will do her best (and she's the best rhetorician as well as the best
> looking of all the candidates) to make sure he loses. Le Pen père's
> response to the very first reported results: "Sarkozy est battu!" (with a
> broad smile).
>
>
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-- Peter Fay peterrfay at gmail.com