Le troisième tour? The effects of the change to concurrent presidential and legislative elections on party campaigning and perception in France

Abstract

The 2002 presidential and National Assembly elections were the first after constitutional changes ensured the presidential election would immediately precede the legislative election. Using both qualitative and quantitative evidence, I argue that before the institutional reforms, debates in legislative elections had three characteristics: a focus on substantive policy issues, framing cohabitation as a shift in which party controlled the power to set the policy agenda and few incursions into the legislative election by the President. After the changes, debates in legislative elections were devoid of policy issues, framed cohabitation as a weakening of the President’s power to set the agenda and featured more incursions by the President into the campaign. This caused voters to identify the parties more in terms of those parties’ presidential candidates.