Three months before the presidential election, Jean-Luc Mélenchon (LFI), Eric Zemmour (Reconquest!) And Marine Le Pen (RN) have difficulty in gathering the 500 sponsorships required to claim the Elysée. The Minister of the Interior, Gerald Darmanin, refuses to change the rule and, according to an exclusive CSA poll for CNEWS, 55% of French people agree with him.
To the question “Should we change the rule which requires presidential candidates to deposit at least 500 signatures of mayors, regional advisers or even parliamentarians in order to be able to stand?”, More than one in two respondents therefore answered “no”, 44% “yes” and 1% “do not speak”.
By studying the results of the survey in detail, however, we can notice that the “yes” prevails among men, at 52%. This, even though for women, the predominance of “no” is even more marked than within the total sample, with 62% of responses against the modification of the rule of 500 sponsorships.
On the other hand, the age of the people questioned does not seem to be decisive in deciding the question since the “no” prevails in all age groups, with a ratio similar to that of the total sample. The same observation applies to the different socio-professional categories.
The “winter chestnut tree”
The political color of the respondents is more revealing. Unsurprisingly, the supporters of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour, who protested against the rule of 500 sponsorships, line up behind their candidates. It’s within the Reconquest party! that the victory of the “yes” is the most overwhelming, at 92% against 67% at the National Rally. On the left, the “no” is in the majority everywhere, except on the side of the radical branch (37%) and rebellious France (40%).
In the ranks of LREM we align ourselves with the government’s position by posting a plebiscite for the rule of 500 signatures (76%), while on the right, the frank opposition of the extreme (76% in favor of a modification) switches the total results to the “yes” side. Note that, without the extremes, the “no” wins on the right.
Anyway, faced with protests from Eric Zemmour, Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Marine Le Pen, Gérald Darmanin was inflexible, qualifying this debate as “winter chestnut”. The Minister of the Interior, in charge of the elections, believes that it is within “the reach of any candidate” to collect 500 signatures and refuses to change “the rules of the game a few days before the match”.
CSA survey conducted online on January 11 and 12, on a representative sample of 1,000 people aged 18 and over.