What Moves Left-Right Ideological Identification in France?

• In Event: Misunderstanding and Misinformation In and About French Politics

Abstract

The left-right ideological cleavage is thought to be “prégnant” (Haegel 1990) in terms of structuring French political life. Yet, we do not know much about how the distribution of left-right ideology in French public opinion evolves over time and what factors (conjunctural and/or cyclical) these movements seem to be related to. The main reason for this state of affairs has been the lack of appropriate time-series data on left-right identification among the French public. Happily, such data have been made available to us by French polling firm TNS Sofres (now Kantar Public). A monthly time-series of 420 data points, covering the period 1981-2018, allows us to closely model 37 years of macro-level fluctuations in left-right ideological identification in France. Key predictor variables being looked at include the economy (unemployment and inflation), partisanship (party in power at Élysée and Matignon), leadership (individual Presidents and Prime Ministers) as well as domestic and supranational (EU-related) “shock” events. We model both short-term and medium-term effects. Our time-series findings should help to better assess the current period of French political life where the division between left and right seems to have been blurred by the election of centrist Emmanuel Macron and the continuing rise of extreme-right leader Marine Le Pen.

Authors

• Eric Belanger, McGill University

• Mathieu Turgeon, The University of Western Ontario

• Michael S. Lewis-Beck, University of Iowa