After the resounding failure of the Republicans and the Socialist Party in the first round of the presidential election, the question of the disappearance of the traditional left-right divide is coming back to the fore.
Traditionally France places its political parties on a line from left to right. But in recent years, new movements have emerged which define themselves as transpartisan, that is to say not belonging to the left-right divide. This is particularly the case of the animalist party or the Republic on the move. In 2017, Emmanuel Macron presented himself as a candidate belonging neither to the left nor to the right, a position he still holds in 2022.
However, for Emmanuel Négrier, doctor of political science and director of research at the CNRS, this divide is not destined to disappear despite a change in the way of thinking about political issues. “We are witnessing a pluralization of divisions in French society. Territorial divisions for example, which are poorly taken into account, and we have seen with the yellow vests how not to take them into account is perhaps to go into the wall, ”he explains.
Another growing divide is that of values, “young people, for example, have a much more benevolent relationship to cultural diversity than older categories of populations” or even greater sensitivity “to environmental issues”. “In other words, there are indeed differentiations in public opinion which do not necessarily refer to a right-left divide”, confirms Doctor Négrier.
A split that has a future
However, if this pluralization is gradually appearing in society, the left-right divide remains important for the French since it is also synonymous with a way of apprehending society. Thus, Emmanuel Négrier recalls that one of the poles “is more attracted by freedom to the detriment of equality”, it is often affiliated with the right, while the other pole more often attributed to the left “is more attracted by valuing equality to the detriment sometimes of certain forms of individual freedoms”.
Thus, for the specialist, the left-right divide is not destined to disappear immediately. “There still remains beyond the pluralization of cleavage, a fairly clear meaning to this polarization of the left and the right”, he explains, before adding, “I am not at all convinced that this benchmark between left and right is completely outdated for people”.
Thus, if the left-right divide evolves with new visions of society, it remains an important landmark for voters of all generations.