Do Issues Matter? Law and Order in the 2002 French Presidential Election

Abstract

A large body of literature explains the growing electoral volatility in Western democracies by the decline of “cleavage voting” and the rise of “issue voting” Franklin et al., 1992. Citizens are supposed to become more autonomous and more critical of political elites because they are more educated, more exposed to information and more influenced by post-materialist values Nye et al., 1997; Norris, 1999. They would tend to vote less according to their party identification and their class or religious affiliations, but they would be more responsive to the political supply and the issues at stake. The last French presidential and parliamentary elections offer a good opportunity to explore such trends, with the help of the “2002 French Electoral Panel” survey data. Ten thousand interviews were conducted in three waves, on national samples representative of the French registered voters, before the first round of the presidential election, after the second presidential round and after the parliamentary second round.1