Abstract
BackgroundIt has been suggested that poor health has influenced vote for Brexit and the US presidential election. No such research has been published regarding the 2017 French presidential election.MethodsWe performed a cross-sectional analysis using a comprehensive set of socioeconomic and health indicators, to be compared with voting outcome at the first round of the 2017 French presidential election. The 95 French departments were selected as the unit of analysis. Data were obtained from publicly available sources. The linear model was used for both univariate and multivariate analysis to investigate the relation between voting patterns and predictors. Sensitivity analyses were done using the elastic-net regularisation.ResultsEmmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen arrived ahead. When projected on the first factorial plane (~ 60% of the total inertia), Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen tended to be in opposite directions regarding both socioeconomic and health factors. In the respective multivariate analyses of the two candidates, both socio-economic and health variables were significantly associated with voting patterns, with wealthier and healthier departments more likely to vote for Emmanuel Macron, and opposite departments more likely to vote for Marine Le Pen. Mortality (p = 0.03), severe chronic conditions (p = 0.014), and diabetes mellitus (p < 0.0001) were among the strongest predictors of voting pattern for Marine Le Pen. Sensitivity analyses did not substantially change those findings.ConclusionsWe found that areas associated with poorer health status were significantly more likely to vote for the far-right candidate at the French presidential election, even after adjustment on socioeconomic criteria.
Highlights
Two great democracies have recently encountered outcomes that were considered as unexpected and that have been interpreted as reflecting a rejection of established political parties
Coefficients are coefficients of linear regression. * Linear regressions were weighted by department population $ While significant in the univariate analysis, not included in the multivariate due to collinearity with unemployment. In this analysis of the first round of the 2017 French presidential election, we showed that, even after adjustment on wealth and social confounders, most health-related indicators were strongly associated with voting patterns both for Emmanuel Macron, the “nor right-nor left wing” candidate, and Marine Le Pen, the far-right candidate
It comes with no surprise that social and economic indicators were evenly distributed among both candidates, with departments associated with greater wealth more likely to vote for Emmanuel Macron
Summary
Two great democracies have recently encountered outcomes that were considered as unexpected and that have been interpreted as reflecting a rejection of established political parties. Zeitoun et al BMC Public Health (2019) 19:1468 have not succeeded yet [7] Even though those elements cannot be considered as definitive evidence, they strongly suggest that health and healthcare topics have been important factors of citizen choices in the UK and US votes. This would be consistent with prior peer-reviewed work showing that health may influence attitude toward democracy and turnout to elections [8, 9]. It has been suggested that poor health has influenced vote for Brexit and the US presidential election. No such research has been published regarding the 2017 French presidential election
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