Élections municipales françaises dans un contexte de pandémie mondiale : un niveau d’abstention élevé dans l’agglomération mancelle

Abstract

This article questions the organization of the French municipal elections of 2020. We put into perspective legislative norms and the relationship to the norm by returning to the positioning of political leaders faced with the diffusion of Covid-19 during the election period. We highlight the discrepancies produced between technocratic theory and electoral practice at the electoral office. In a little-explored scientific field in Le Mans, Allonnes, Coulaines, Arnage we return to the practice of abstentionism by voters in the Le Mans Urban Community. In this regard, the multivariate analysis of the databases of the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) and the Ministry of the Interior highlight the electoral geography of the CUM at the municipal and sub-municipal levels. We thus report an explosion in the abstention rate. This fact corroborates the initial hypothesis of a weak mobilization of the population at the end of this first round, benefiting certain candidates on the local electoral scene. The lexical analysis of a corpus of statements by political leaders, the participant observation on the grounds of the Mancelle conurbation, gives an account of the cumulative effect of fear linked to government announcements having a strong impact on mobilisation. This monographic work, which combines spatial analysis and social geography, thus contributes to the field of electoral geography in a comparative perspective. The results of this contribution confirm recent trends observed in other fields.

Keywords

• municipal election
• abstention
• covid-19
• France
• urban community of Le Mans
• spatial and lexical analysis