Reference to ‘the People’ by Populist French Presidential Candidates

The next speaker in this ECREA 2018 session is Alexandre Borrell, whose focus is on references to ‘the people’ in political rhetoric in the past two French presidential elections. Are such references used similarly by candidates from different political camps, or do left- and right-wing candidates use them differently? The study used official posters, statements, and TV ads from the campaigns to analyse this.

Reference to the people is common for the campaigns of the far-right Front National under both Jean-Marie and Marine Le Pen, as well as for the populist candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon of Front de Gauche. Not a single candidate used the used ‘populist’ as a qualifier, but ‘people’ was common, and its use increased from 2012 and 2017 – especially for Le Pen and Mélenchon. This is true for speeches as well as posters.

For the two populist candidates, the project further examined the use of ‘people’ in speeches was further analysed through correspondence analysis. This identified four different meanings of ‘people’: simply as a synonym for population, as a valued symbolic identity, as a sovereign body from a constitutional perspective, and as a historical driving force.

These uses are well integrated into the narrative structures of populism, but differently articulated in relation to the two candidates’ diverging ideological themes. Uses have grown more populist from 2012 to 2017. TV ads further served to make the link between the candidate and the people explicit.

Such changes must also be read against the electoral background in each election, and here also especially Le Pen’s ability to win through to the second round of the election.