[update below]
I was initially going to post this as a comment on Facebook but decided to do so on AWAV instead. I saw Jean-Luc Mélenchon today, at a half-day forum at Le Monde HQ on “What foreign policy for France in 2017?,” co-sponsored by Le Monde and the European Council on Foreign Relations. The chef de file of La France Insoumise fielded questions for 45 minutes from Le Monde’s Arnaud Leparmentier—known for his social-liberal bent—and ECFR’s Manuel Lafont Rapnouil. I’ve seen JLM at rallies addressing the faithful and countless times on television, but this is the first time in a smaller forum—and before an audience that clearly did not include too many of his supporters.
He was vintage showman Mélenchon, trash-talking and blustering from the get go. Quel guignol. I openly laughed at three moments at least, though not because he was trying to be funny. This is not exactly a revelation but on form JLM is the mirror image of Marine Le Pen. The manner in which the two confront journalists asking pointed questions is identical. And on substance, there is more overlap between them than one may imagine. E.g. JLM’s ‘France First’ nationalism is striking, as is the attitude toward the European Union, which took up much of the back-and-forth. Now JLM does differentiate himself from MLP in that he is not, in principle, hostile to the construction of Europe and does not advocate a fast withdrawal from the euro. But these are nuances. His attitude toward the EU and Germany is that they must simply capitulate to French demands et c’est tout. So a president Mélenchon would go to Berlin—or, better yet, summon Angela Merkel to Paris—and announce that the EU treaties need to be revised. Or else. I was trying to imagine the scene: of Mélenchon, flanked by Alexis Corbière and Liêm Hoang-Ngoc, reading the riot act to Madame Merkel and Wolfgang Schäuble. Ça prêtait à rire. When Leparmentier asked JLM who his allies would be in the European Council—i.e. what other EU member state would ally with France in its surenchère with Germany—and his “Plan B” in the event that Merkel & Co., along with most of the rest of the European Council, laughed in his face and told him he was off his rocker, he resorted to the time worn tactic of talking his way out of the rhetorical corner he had painted himself in to, of talking and talking and talking until the next question. It was likewise with a question on Russia, Crimea, and the inviolability of borders, in which he found himself ensnared in a total contradiction. So he just talked his way out of it.
One thing I’ll hand to JLM is that he is intellectually cultivated and no dummy. Ce n’est pas un con. And he does put on a good show. But he utterly lacks the temperament to be president of the French republic.
One new thing: JLM was asked to explain why Trump won the US election. It’s the first time I’ve heard JLM, for whom anti-Americanism is in his DNA, talk about internal US politics (entre autres, he’s steeped in the culture of the Latin American left, systematically referring the US as the “North Americans,” the “Yanquis,” etc). Though extolling Bernie Sanders—whose campaign he studied closely—he was nonetheless disconcertingly complaisant toward Trump’s campaign rhetoric and comprehending of why he won. I didn’t like that—as he is utterly wrong—but did find lucid one of his concluding remarks on this, which is that it is erroneous to think that the working class has always voted for the left. As JLM insisted, even when the PCF-led left was at the peak of its strength, at least 30% of the working class voted for the right. And these days that percentage is higher. And he explained why.
JLM is, as one knows, flying high in the polls at the moment, reaching 15 to 16%, which has made him the media star of the moment: e.g. making the cover of yesterday’s JDD and the subject of today’s Thomas Legrand édito politique and C dans l’air. And the rise is all at Benoît Hamon’s expense. That’s really too bad, as Hamon doesn’t deserve to be sinking in the way he is. I’m just a little dubious about JLM’s rising numbers, though, as I’d like to know where they’re coming from. Somehow it doesn’t make sense that there would be sizable defections from Hamon in his direction. There are anecdotes of Marine LP voters now tempted by JLM, which would be nice, but her numbers are showing no drop so far.
Despite my skepticism as to his present polling, it is clear that JLM is running a very good campaign and has modified both his rhetoric and image from that of 2012. He’s always known how to give a good speech—to put on a show—but has perfected his technique. The discourse is more populist and nationalist, and with a new ambiguity over immigration, which may not be to my taste but will be more so to the kind of voter attracted to his style of populism. In 2012 JLM was clearly the candidate of salaried public sector employees—with their special retirement regimes and a general status perceived by others as privileged, thus limiting his appeal—and with the Communist Party and unions in the front lines of his campaign; this time the PCF, CGT, and intérêts catégoriels of SNCF cheminots et al have been sidelined. At the March 18th rally at the République, their presence was discreet. And he has mastered the Internet and social media, notably in his use of YouTube.
The change in JLM’s strategy may be summed up in his campaign posters of 2012 and this year, seen below. In 2012, he resembled an Eastern European communist party apparatchik, as I wrote in my anti-JLM broadside back then. He was sinister looking; in one wall poster I saw at the time, someone had put a moustache on him, so he uncannily resembled you know who. In 2017 he’s Tonton Jean-Luc. La force tranquille à gauche de la gauche. We’ll see on April 23rd if it works for him.
UPDATE: Le Monde has an account of the April 3rd forum here. For the record, the other interventions were by Pouria Amirshai (for Benoît Hamon), Jérôme Rivière (for Marine Le Pen), Sylvie Goulard (for Emmanuel Macron), and Jean-Pierre Raffarin (for François Fillon).
Recent OpinionWay polls may hint at the Le Pen/Melenchon dynamic. (I’m looking at the list of polls here).
If you look at the last poll wholly before the March 20 debate (in the field March 10-16), you see that Le Pen is 28% and Melenchon 11%. Hamon is 12%.
In the poll straddling the debate (in the field March 17-23), Le Pen drops to 25% and Hamon to 11%. Melenchon is already up to 14%, which cannot be entirely because of Hamon’s wooden debate performance as much of the sample is from before the debate.
In the first poll wholly after the debate (in the field March 27-31), Le Pen drops slightly further, to 24%, Hamon remains at 11%, and Melechon slightly advances to 15%.
In other words, Melenchon gains exactly what Le Pen loses.
Now we don’t know who’s who here. And Macron and Fillon slightly lose ground as well–as does an obvious competitor of Melanchon’s for left votes, Nathalie Arthaud.
And there is always rounding error and margin of error generally.
But even assuming Melenchon got all of what Arthaud and Hamon lost (2%), that does not explain fully his 4% increase. Did his votes come from Fillon or Macron? Highly doubtful. It’s not unreasonable to think some of them came from Le Pen, for the reasons you gave–that on some dimensions at least, Le Pen and Melenchon, at least on cursory examination, have much the same message. (Many other observers have noted Le Pen’s social welfare policies lean left.)
I do understand this is just one set of polls and that other polls do not have this dynamic.
I enjoy your site!
Stephen Roop
Boston
USA
Melenchon had explicitly said he wanted to ‘beat Fillon ‘ in the polls and for some people who want to said Fillon to disappear into a black hole (or a dungeon in his castle) pushing Melenchon would provide some glee.
(The latest ‘I can hardly make ends meet’with 24k a month, IE., what a lower middle class family of four lives on for a year, is making the rounds.)
There are some working class men who are pissed at the state of manufacturing (apparently 800 French manufacturing plants /factories/workshops closed in 2016 alone ) and the way manual workers are forgotten. It gave us the Trump phenomenon. In France, those voters went to LePen. Traditionally Melenchon doesn’t seem to attract workers, or perhaps national subsidiary workers. I read the working class had moved to the FN – perhaps some are moving back to Melenchon.
Looking at Arun’s pictures from the two meetings, I was struck by the fact the publics looked different. I’m not good at it, it was an impression so forgive me – it seems to me that if I had been in charge of costumes for a tvshow involving a demonstration with lots of extras, I’d have received different instructions about each ‘crowd’. One ‘looked’ like college students, teachers, librarians, nurses, engineers, geeks (+ retirees.) The other looked like a combination of granola students, college profs, electricians, union reps (+ retirees). Obviously my reading of visual cues may be off – when I’m in England I am always flabbergasted because I can’t identify cues at all. But clearly neither was the same crowd as the Fillon rallye a month ago.
I’m most surprised at Fillon ‘s scores. I don’t get how he can be that high with his stealing money and saying ‘so what? ” (ET alors).
Two other people have told me about a weird shift from MLP to Melenchon, especially following the first TV debate.
Next debate: tonight.
On Fillon’s current poll numbers, which are ticking upwards, don’t forget that he has plunged some 10 points since January, and that the high teens is still very low for the candidate of the ex-UMP. It is not surprising that the party’s hardcore base would stick with him, particularly as he has aligned himself 100% with its conservative/reactionary world-view. And then there are those right-wing voters who are turned off by Fillon’s affaires but who feel they have no other choice, with Marine LP too risky and Macron representing continuity with Hollande. A certain number of Fillon’s voters will be holding their noses while putting that ballot in the envelope.
The latest polls (IFOP and Elabe) have Mélenchon at 16 and 17%, and with Hamon below 10. Marine LP is also dropping, having lost 2 to 4.5 points over the past six weeks. Mélenchon’s surge is ergo at their expense. If he’s attracting working class voters from MLP, hat’s off to him. It shows that his populist ‘la France d’abord’ discourse is working for him. But I have a hard time comprehending why Hamon voters would move toward him. As Myos presciently observed from my photos, Mélenchon and Hamon are not addressing the same demographics. Their respective support bases are not the same. And there are marked differences in their positions on key issues (notably Europe).
Assuming he doesn’t make the second round do they go back to her?
Presumably they’re not ”no, never”, because they were once.
4% is a lot. Can she win them back and turn them out? (And while we’re at it, how many of his initial 11% go with them?)
Seems to me it crucially depends on whether the anti-establishment message is the one that counts this year. With each additional elephant Macron’s claim to be ‘anti-système’ gets harder and harder to deliver with a straight face.
Just two further comments.
First, I don’t think Arun is recalling correctly Fillon’s polling numbers history. Fillon’s poll peak was right after he won the Republicain primary (34% national support, in one poll in late November). He was already cascading downward in December. Even before Penelopegate (January 25) he was down to the mid-20s. After January 25 he skidded further down, polling between the high teens and the low 20s. The man is plainly made for high wire–he’s oscillated in a pretty narrow band since, only dropping again, and fairly briefly, after being mis en examen. Now he’s on the rebound again. back in the high teens according to four recent polls all taken after the April 4 television debate.
Second, what if at least some of Hamon voters may be willing to vote at least tactically for Melenchon? Some of Hamon’s voters came from the endorsement of Hamon by Yadot/EE-LV; it was not a lot of voters but Hamon got a noticeable small jump in the polls right after the endorsement on February 26; there are many far left voters in EE-LV, though they are not all far left voters. This year seemingly quite small movements might matter a lot. In terms even of the Hamon/Le Pen leads, we’re getting into margin-of-error territory. If Melenchon keeps surging, the second round could be Melenchon-Le Pen or even, bizarrely, Melenchon-Macron. He seems to have a fair amount of running room. Between Hamon, Arthaud and Poutou, there’s 11-12% of the electorate. How much of it would Melenchon need to get into the second round?
Good point about many EELV voters – who are admittedly not numerous – being far left and more inclined to vote for the écolo convert Mélenchon in the absence of an EELV candidate. And it does appear manifest that Hamon voters are now moving to Mélenchon for strategic reasons, to insure that a left candidate makes it to the 2nd round. Thus Mélenchon current polls numbers, at 18%, even 19. I would have never considered such a thing possible even two weeks ago but voilà. We are living in crazy political times.