Voting and unemployment in French national elections

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to study and to compare the influence of local unemployment on the vote in French elections for the European Parliament, in French legislative elections and in French presidential elections. The results of our paper showed that if we study the vote in the second round of French presidential elections over the 1988–2007 period (without 2002), the influence of the annual change in the local unemployment on the vote for the Left is much greater than for the vote for the Left in the first round of legislative elections (1986–2007), and French elections for the European Parliament (1984–2009). For French presidential elections, we build two variables taking into account the responsibility of the incumbent President for the economic situation after a cohabitation period. We make estimates for the second-round vote of French presidential elections (without the 2002 French presidential election or with an estimated vote for this election). We show that over the 1988–2007 and 1988–2012 periods (without 2002), it is not necessary to take into account the influence of cohabitation periods on the responsibility of the government in relation to the economic situation.