Far-right politicians in Europe and the Americas have amassed support vowing to check the disruptions of globalization, promising strict borders and inward-looking economic and security policies.
In France, voters have another reason to consider the hard right: Many see no alternative.
That’s the conclusion of a new study of French voters conducted by Deborah Mattinson and Claire Ainsley, two prominent British political strategists. Mattinson and Ainsley, both affiliated with the center-left Progressive Policy Institute, have conducted focus groups with persuadable voters across Europe, the United States and Australia. For long-established political parties, the picture is bleak.
The collapse of the center and the rise of extremes is a global trend, confirmed in scores of elections and PPI’s international focus groups. Even in that bilious context, France stands out as a land of political desolation — a country where voters are so despairing and the center and left so depleted that Marine Le Pen, criminal conviction and all, may well be the next president.
“One of the things that came really clearly from these focus groups is that National Rally are on track to win because they are sort of the only show in town,” Mattinson told me, referring to Le Pen’s party.
The Mattinson-Ainsley research, which they shared with POLITICO Magazine, is arresting reading for anyone contending with the far right’s appeal to working-class communities, or hoping to resurrect a coalition nearer the center.
