A Cluster 17 poll for “Le Point”, unveiled this Tuesday, February 14, reveals strong political disparities in the celebration of the “feast of love”.
By Alice Pairo-Vasseur
© ANNA MARGUERITAT / Hans Lucas / Hans Lucas via AFP
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“Has been”, Valentine’s Day? Perhaps a little… This is the question posed, this Tuesday, February 14, by a survey carried out by the Cluster 17 institute for Point, which reveals that the holiday is no longer celebrated by more than 39% of French people (as a couple, married or PACS), and only 15% of them each year.
By observing the results in detail, strong disparities appear according to political proximity: if 51% of Marine Le Pen voters (as a couple) say they are used to celebrating Valentine’s Day, they are only 27 % among Yannick Jadot voters (and 32% among Roussel and Mélenchon voters)… Quite clearly, left-wing sympathizers are much less numerous than those on the right to declare celebrating this holiday, marked by ideological disparities and sociological. Valentine’s Day “has become, in the sociological sense of the term, a popular holiday”, comments Stéphane Fournier, analyst for Cluster 17. The “clusters” (these coherent political families formed by the Institute) which show come mainly from “middle and popular class, residing in peripheral France and with conservative ideological sensitivity, even identity”.
“Cultural Secession”
“We can detect a form of ‘snobbery’ vis-à-vis a party that brings together the working classes of rural and peri-urban areas”, he notes, as well. With, at the other end of the spectrum, “a significant part of the left which, having entered into a form of “cultural secession”, shows its distance from popular cultural practices (like its use of television) and its discrepancy with some of the “ordinary” people”, further analyzes Stéphane Fournier.
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A “counter-trend”, which did not escape Jean-Claude Kaufmann, sociologist at the CNRS and author of Valentine’s Day, my love (The links that liberate, 2017): “This clear rejection of urban, graduate, trendy and progressive environments, where this party is ignored or diverted, I have observed it for ten years”, relates this specialist. Who describes an opposition nourished by the “conventional, routine and commercial aspect” of the party and is “growing”.
A rejection that is based on an “absolute misinterpretation”, wishes to underline the specialist. If the celebration is today “predominantly commercial”, it remains “very recent”, Valentine’s Day, “appeared two thousand years ago, has a tumultuous history, he recalls. It was then characterized by the insubordination of the youth, who fought against the moral order, the conventions and for the freedoms of love! “Other times, other customs…