Is it possible to get out of democracy in three thirds and to reconstruct a left-right divide centered on questions of redistribution and social inequality, in France and more generally on a European and international scale? This is the central issue in the current legislative elections.
Let us first recall the contours of democracy in three thirds, as it expressed itself during the first round of the presidential election. If we add the results of the various candidates from the left and ecological parties, we obtain 32 % of the votes for this block, which can be described as a social-plain or social-ecological. By bringing together the votes carried on Macron and Pécresse, we also obtain 32 % of the votes for the liberal or center right block. We arrive exactly at the same score of 32 % by adding the three candidates of the nationalist or extreme right (Le Pen, Zemmour, Dupont-Aignan). If we distribute between the three blocks the 3 % of the unclassifiable ruralist candidate (Lassalle), we reach three thirds almost perfectly equal.
This tripartition is partly explained by the specificities of the electoral and political history of the country, but its bases are more general. Note that democracy in three thirds does not mean the end of political cleavages based on social class and on divergent economic interests, quite the contrary. The Liberal Bloc carried out by far its best scores within socially the most favored voters, whatever the criterion selected (income, heritage, diploma), especially among the older ones. If this “bourgeois block” manages to bring together a third of the votes, it also owes a lot to the evolution of participation, which has become clearly stronger among the wealthiest and older than in the rest of the population during the last decades, which was not the case before.
de facto, this block synthesizes between the economic and heritage elites formerly voting for the center right and the qualified elites which had taken control of the left center since 1990 everywhere, as shown by the World Political Cleavages and Inequality database. With equal participation in all socio -demographic groups, this block would only barely bring together a quarter of the votes and could only claim to govern alone. Conversely, the left block would be largely in mind, because it makes its best scores within the popular classes, and especially among the youngest. The nationalist block would also progress but more slightly, because the profile of its popular vote is more balanced among the age groups.
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