The difference between them is primarily generations, as Emmanuel Macron collected 70% of the votes over the age of 65 and 68% of the voters aged 18 to 24. These two groups share a common feature: neither has a significant active presence in the labor market. The pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and inflationary pressures may have helped Macron bring together the elderly, who were already worried about the threat to political stability posed by Marine Le Pen. Macron’s highly contested commitment to raise the retirement age by three years to 65 (which he later reduced to 64) has also strengthened his support for this older category. Those who had already retired, in the end, were pleased with a reform that promised to protect the pension system financially without costing them any personal sacrifice. Le Pen, on the other hand, launched a massive attack on the proposal, which strengthened its support for a large section of the active population, worrying about the prospect of having to wait many more years to receive a state pension. Among working-age citizens, Macron and Le Pen were in the polls. But the gap between these two different French nations that was formed during the vote count on April 24 is more than genealogical, it is sociological. Macron won 74% of the votes of the highest-ranking business and professional executives, while his opponent scored 58% of the working class voters from manual workers to those working in offices. At the level of the self-employed and middle classes, Macron also had the advantage, winning by 60% to 40%. This divide between rich and poor in France is partly related to income differences (76% of votes among those earning more than 2,500 euros a month were for Macron, compared with only 44% among those with less than 900 euro), but it is also a cultural divide. In France, as in the United Kingdom, an educational gap has become a crucial issue, as it is linked to occupational and income inequality, but also because it leads to differences in cultural perspectives. Educational levels tend to have a great influence on people’s attitudes towards society, the world around them, minorities and power. This phenomenon was translated into the ballot box in an almost cartoonish way in France. Thus, 78% of those with a higher degree voted for Macron, as did 63% of those with a basic university degree. It was a much narrower competition when it came to the votes of people who had no education or training beyond graduation: 53% voted for him, compared to 47% for Lepen. As for the French voters who left the school without a copy, Le Pen won with 56% of their votes. Sociologist Emmanuel Todd has correctly identified the phenomenon of educational stratification that causes “modification” or shift in electoral patterns. From the 1980s to the 1990s in France, the proportion of young people pursuing a degree and pursuing a higher education increased sharply. Eventually, this transition to a situation where bacterial owners and graduates make up the majority, resulted in a profound re-stratification of the entire population depending on the level of education, and not just the young. The cultural and social implications of this educational transformation are enormous. Although not having a diploma was the norm in France in the 1980s, people without a diploma are now a minority. In the same way, bacc possession in the 1980s was a valuable socio-cultural indicator, while today it is often the minimum required. People looking for work without a degree or basic diploma 40 years ago had access to a number of jobs. Opportunities have now shrunk, with these groups largely confined to unskilled roles or professions. They are the least paid and the least valued. It is almost as if this enormous effort to raise the average level of education had conspired to allow the Le Pen movement to take advantage of the discontent and sense of cultural and social exclusion among those who have failed to climb the ladder. To this socio-cultural intensity can be added a regional gap. Macron easily won the capital with 85% of Parisians voting, but also had a large majority in the major French cities: 81% in Nantes, 80% in Lyon and Bordeaux, 77.7% in Strasbourg and even 77.5 % in Toulouse. Le Pen, meanwhile, prevailed in “peripheral” France, in other words in small towns, rural municipalities and declining former heavy industrial zones. If this sociological and cultural description bears a striking resemblance to the electoral landscape that emerged during the 2016 US presidential election or during Brexit, it is because the same tectonic changes are affecting everywhere. Globalization, synonymous with post-industrial decline, the accumulation of wealth and graduates in large cities, but also the increase in migration flows, combined with an educational revolution, have profoundly restructured Western societies. The old political divide of the left / right no longer serves a socio-economic landscape that will continue to confront the winners and losers of the new order. In the French presidential contest, the two “tribes” of the country found their respective heroes.
