Stanley did not vote in the first round of the presidential election on 10 April, and he said he would not vote in the second round on 24 April either. The 27-year-old from Bobigny, north of Paris, stands by his decision. As a young father who had just finished his studies, he was interested in politics. But he had been “disappointed” by the left since the five-year term of socialist president François Hollande – presented by many as having hammered the last nail into the left’s coffin. In Seine-Saint-Denis, the département north of Paris, abstention was up by three points in the first round, rising above 30% – the highest rate in mainland France.
Asked why he would not turn out to vote on Sunday, Stanley summed up a sombre track-record for the incumbent president, Emmanuel Macron. “The rich have got even richer, and the poor even poorer,” he said. Since the Covid pandemic, between 5 and 7 million people – 10% of the population – have had to ask for help at a food bank, according to figures from the charity Secours Catholique.
Stanley was particularly critical of the handling of the Covid crisis, which affected his mother, a hospital cleaner. “She has never missed a day’s work,” he said. “Macron promised a bonus of €1,000 (£836), yet she hasn’t seen a single cent more.”
Despite abstaining, Stanley was engaged in life on his housing estate. He had set up a neighbourhood association with other young people. But he said he just did not believe politicians could change their lives. “It’s us associations that can bring about that change. Here, people are fighting against dilapidated housing, rats and cockroaches. Those aren’t the kind of problems in politicians’ programmes,” he said.
Under the afternoon sunshine on the town’s esplanade, a handful of teenagers got ready to begin a football match. In the entrances to apartment buildings, the name on everyone’s lips was Jean-Luc Mélenchon, [the leftwing candidate who was narrowly eliminated in the first round, leaving Macron to face the far-right Marine Le Pen]. Farid, 19, who did not want to give his real name, who lives with his mother, said he had lost interest in politics. “But I heard about Mélenchon on social networks,” he said. “Everyone was appealing to vote for him to keep out Marine Le Pen.”
In Bobigny, where 23,366 people were registered to vote, the first-round result was similar to the 37 other towns of Seine-Saint-Denis: Mélenchon, running for the left’s Popular Union, came first with more than 60% of the vote, far ahead of Macron who took 17%.
Julien Talpin, a politics specialist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, said this was a factor in explaining the abstention rate. “The argument that ‘there’s no point’ [in voting] is the idea that politics no longer has a hold on daily life and the problems of people who live on estates. It’s a feeling of resignation fed by decades of unkept promises.”
There was also resignation in Colombes, in an area north-west of Paris where detached houses, new buildings and 1930s housing estates rub together. Malek has lived on one housing estate since he arrived in France from Algeria. He said: “In my neighbourhood, poor people have been pushed out to be replaced by more well-to-do residents. No one is mobilising.”
The town was divided, reflected in the first-round scores where Mélenchon came first with 36% of the votes, followed by Macron on 31% and an abstention rate of 23%. Malek’s neighbour, Leïla, who did not want her real name published, is a young mother of two, living with her mother in the flat where she grew up, and was a fervent “abstentionist”.
“I never vote,” she said. “Whether Macron or Le Pen gets in, it won’t change anything about my life. Whoever it is, I’ll still have to get up in the morning and go to work.”
After Macron’s five years in power seen as particularly hard for the working class, who were badly hit by the Covid crisis, Malek and other young people from the working-class banlieue were worried about a backlash “protest vote for Le Pen”. They had printed thousands of leaflets to mobilise people against Le Pen, who has never been this close to power.
Despite being convinced of the need to block the far right, Malek could not bring himself to explicitly call for a Macron vote. “It hurts too much,” he said. “We’re at this point because of him.”
Leïla had just woken up when Malek knocked at her door with a leaflet. She did not believe in Le Pen’s programme, an anti-immigration platform that would prioritise French people over foreigners for housing, jobs, benefit and health, and ban the Muslim headscarf in all public places, including the street.
“We immigrants keep France running,” Leïla said. “Do you think she’ll send us back? It’s impossible.” But she ended on a doubt about abstention. “When I saw that my cousin who wears the headscarf is going out to vote for the first time, I said to myself, ‘Maybe it is important.’ My mother wears a headscarf too …”
There was also legislation passed during Macron’s presidency known as the law against Islamist separatism – which facilitates the closure of places of worship and Muslim associations – which accentuated a climate of stigmatisation. For five years, media front pages have fed on controversies around the Muslim headscarf and so called “islamo-leftism”.
In a poll published by the La Croix newspaper, 70% of Muslim voters voted for Mélenchon, head of the France Unbowed party, in the first round. Talpin said: “It’s an important issue because Muslims have the feeling they are permanently at the centre of a public debate which is happening without them. [Mélenchon] was one of the only candidates to take a position on the subject.”
At Châtelet, in the heart of Paris, Mariam, 20, Ream, 21 and Taymour, 30, three young Muslims, were sitting together. Taymour, founder of the group, Muslim Students of France, described Macron’s politics as “state Islamophobia” and said “it’s not just a diversionary tactic, to talk of other things. When it happens every day, it’s a system.” For Taymour, abstaining is a political act.
Ream, 21, an IT student wearing a Muslim headscarf and heart-shaped sunglasses, said she refused to carry the responsibility of a choice of candidate in the second round. She had voted Mélenchon in the first round to stop the others. “I hope she gets through,” she said [of Le Pen]. “I want things to burst and for people to wake up!” she added. Mariam and Taymour did not share her view.
“If Marine Le Pen gets through, I won’t be safe any more,” said Mariam, a drama student and waitress who has worn a headscarf for a year. “I’ll really feel in danger. People who want to attack us will feel they’ve got the state on their side.” She described Macron as a “nightmare”, but said the risk of a ban of the headscarf in public places and the fear of fascism arriving had pushed her to vote Macron.
“Abstaining or returning a blank ballot is the same as voting Le Pen. I don’t want to be responsible for what might happen to my community.”
• This article was produced in collaboration with Bondy Blog
