While the leaders of the National Rally, including Marine Le Pen, appear before the Paris criminal court for “embezzlement of public funds”, we can wonder about the future of a political party, which, a few months ago again, seemed at the gates of power. Has the RN reached its limits? This is the thesis of Luc Rouban, who published “The hidden sources of the RN vote”. Interview.
You describe the RN as a “black hole” which attracts ever more votes. Who are his new voters?
I wanted to understand the expansion of the RN voteparticularly notable between 2022 and 2024. It reached nearly 11 million votes in the first round of the presidential election and nearly 8 million votes in the second round of the legislative elections in 2024. This is considerable compared to the legislative elections of 2022. Gold , this vote is no longer that of the electorate of the former National Frontwhich was very popular. The hard core of the popular electorate is still there, but we have an RN vote which now concerns the middle and upper classes. In the first round of the legislative elections, executives voted RN by more than 20%. Then, the RN made enormous progress in areas favorable to the left, such as the civil service, including among category A executives and among teachers (for 18% of them).
The analytical keys applied to the National Front no longer work in your opinion. Particularly on the issue of racism…
Indeed, no study indicates an explosion of systemic racism which would have suddenly seized the French. All sociological surveys show a greater form of tolerance in French society and less racism, less anti-Semitism, less xenophobia. Another convincing element is that the RN achieves very high scores in the French Overseas Territories, particularly in Mayotte and the Antilles. We cannot imagine that these voters have become racist!
If the question of immigration plays such an important role in the RN vote, it is because it is part of the rejection of uncontrolled globalization, with the arrival of a new poverty, but also of ‘a new precariousness. This creates tensions in the confrontation of different socialities but it also reveals the failure of republican integration. Immigration reveals the flaws of a socio-political system ultimately lacking in solidarity and marked by desocialization. It conveys the image of a society open at the bottom, faced with new competition on the labor market, but closed at the top, where social mobility is more difficult than elsewhere. France is suffering of globalized liberalism, which pushes for precariousness and forced mobility, without having the advantages of a liberalism favoring initiative and individual success.
Is the RN vote part of a vast “populist” or “neo-fascist” international movement?
These concepts and this analysis grid do not explain the RN phenomenon. Historical populism does not fit with what the surveys show us. Fascism, Nazism or left-wing populism in Latin America imply a cult of the strong leader, an image of a united people. In the surveys we have carried out, we see that the RN electorate does not demand strong leadership but local leadership, control of political action at the local level. The demand of RN voters is close to that of the “yellow vests”, with demands for direct democracy, the citizens’ initiative referendum, all the tools supposed – sometimes in a utopian way – to allow control of public action on a daily basis. To reduce the RN vote to neo-fascism is to forget that the voters – I mean the voters – who we interviewed are not looking for the end of public freedoms or the independent judiciary. Above all, they expect efficiency and the definition of the rules of the social game.
You analyze the RN vote as strongly correlated with a subjective perception of social success…
The subjective relationship to politics has replaced class voting. It is no longer the objective position in terms of socio-professional category that will determine the vote, but the view that voters have on their own situation within society. For example in terms of social mobility and success, those who are at the bottom vote RN or LFI, those who are at the top vote Macron.
The question of loss of professional identity would play a major role in the RN vote…
The relationship with work is a fundamental element of social identity. However, France is truly the country where work is the most poorly recognized, the most poorly rewarded, the most disappointing, to the point that retirement has been mythologized as the last space of autonomy and freedom.
Also look at everything that happened with farmers: it’s not just a question of remuneration but a question of social recognition. The farmer is recognized because he is in a territory, in a small rural community. The civil servant, the teacher, the policeman, in the past, even if they were poorly paid, were recognized. This is what the left has failed to embody. The RN has become the spokesperson for this expectation of social respect, of protection of identity in the face of contempt from a certain globalized elite.
The RN would embody a right-wing “social critique”…
Absolutely. What we can call a “right-wing social critique” has developed, and the left did not see it coming. This criticism focuses on the fact that the social mechanism works for a small minority of privileged people. This is what INSEE data confirms: work no longer allows for enrichment, unlike inheritance and financial assets. However, RN voters take a critical look at social mobility and the social lie hidden behind the idea of Republican “meritocracy”.
RN voters are very demanding of “politics” and a protective state…
One of the main drivers of the RN vote is the search for a mastery of collective destiny and individual destinies. It is a search for political action which is fundamentally opposed to macronism perceived as a loss of control in the face of globalization, immigration, a loss of professional identity and a certain social downgrading. All these phenomena come together and voters are calling for the return of the State. However, Macronism, but also part of the PS, embody a form of weakening of the State. RN voters refuse an “economist” discourse according to which, basically, politics would have disappeared behind economic interests, that general enrichment would benefit everyone.
This demand for state would also be reinforced by new threats external to the nation?
The international context reinforces this demand for the State. The RN has no more solutions (and perhaps fewer) than the others, but it embodies a refusal. We have long been told that international trade would resolve all conflicts, that it was “the end of history”. We are witnessing a return of nationalism, wars and “realpolitik” with the invasion of Ukraine, the conflict in the Middle East and tensions in the China Sea. The relationship with the world has changed. It expresses a new anthropology of power. This is the whole question of global warming, which also embodies a loss of control over nature. The RN embodies the refusal to change our lifestyles in the face of this development, while the left, environmentalists and the center call for adaptation.
In your opinion, the RN has captured the Gaullian heritage?
Gaullism evokes a period of greatness for France on the international scene. Emmanuel Macron has suffered numerous diplomatic setbacks and the nation seems to be declining on the international scene, in the Middle East and Africa, in particular. The nostalgia for a strong France is captured by the RN.
Furthermore, the RN seeks to recover the “social right” and protective image associated with Gaullism, which allows it to occupy a strategic space on the political scene. The RN thus positioned itself against pension reform or for the defense of public services, abandoning the neo-liberalism of the former FN and trapping the Republicans. For the moment, the RN is in a position of strength.
Do you think that the RN is at the gates of power?
I don’t think so. First of all, it has not completely “desulphurized”, as evidenced by the trial carried out on the subject of parliamentary assistants. He remains suspect of double talk. Furthermore, the RN has a very important point of weakness: it is not credited with real governmental capacity and lacks support among the social elites. His words carry, his analysis of society seduces, but his capacity to really change things is considered quite low. In my opinion, it has perhaps reached its peak and will now have to face a political shift in favor of LR if Michel Barnier succeeds in his affair.
Comments collected by David Bornstein.
