DOMINIQUE SCHNAPPER
461
The massive fact that will ring like a clarion call was the
number of votes received by Jean-Marie Le Pen, the candidate of
the nationalist and xenophobic right. The polls, so remarkable in
France, had noted his gains, but they had been wrong about the size
of the movement. French law does not permit the publication of the
results of polls during the week preceding elections. The polls thus
are known to the political administrators and to journalists. During
the last week of the campaign they revealed the progress of the Na–
tional Front candidate. But it seems that certain voters, reluctant to
declare their vote for the extreme right, preferred to say that they
would vote for Chirac (the same was true for the communist vote
during the 1950s). From this comes the underestimation of the vote
for Le Pen and its thunderous effect.
The effect was even stronger because the intellectuals for some
time had been under the illusion that French political life, from the
socialist party to the R. P. R ., had reached a certain consensus about
democratic values: rejection of communism; reticence about all
ideologies; renewed adhesion to the values of human rights; a
pragmatic and open attitude to economic life and to foreigners. The
Commission de la Nationalite, in a report to the first minister, had
managed to bring together personalities of different sensibilities and,
after six months of work, had agreed on the principles defining a
reasonable attitude towards immigrants and their French-born
children . This seemed to many a symbolic consensus - established
around common values of democracy and of pragmatism. The
dream of a pacified democracy, where a socialist party devoid of its
obsolete ideologies and a moderate right open to social progress
seemed attainable, was achieved. The intellectuals had licked
ethnocentrism. But the consensus between
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and
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was not even echoed in the electorate. The weakening of ideology in–
side the parties left a large void for a certain primitive but strong
ideology, on a part of the electorate that could express its disen–
chantment or its indignation. The dream of the pacified democracy
was shattered - to the great benefit of the Candidate- President of the
Republic.
Where do Le Pen's voters come from? First we must realize
that he has managed to stabilize his electorate: 90% of those who
voted for him in 1986 again voted for him in 1988 - proof that this
was not a sudden change of heart. Among them, 49 % came from the
right ; 33% had not voted before, either because they were too
young, or because they had abstained; 18 % declared that they had
voted left.
If
one examines their social origins, one notes that Le
