Protest Vote - Voting For Fringe Candidates

Voting For Fringe Candidates

"Protest vote" also refers, in a more derogatory manner, to specific demographic categories, classifying populations according to the frequency and nature of their vote. Thus, in the US, middle-income families vote more often than the working class or marginalised populations. After the 2002 French presidential election, in which far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen arrived second behind conservative candidate Jacques Chirac, many analysts put the blame of the surprising result on working class, accused of engaging themselves in "protest vote", that is in support of fringe candidates belonging to the far-left or the far-right, or even to people who present themselves as alien to the political world (in France, environmentalist René Dumont in 1974, comedian Coluche in 1981 — but he withdrew his candidacy before the elections — environmentalist Pierre Rabhi who unsuccessfully tried to present himself in 2002, as well as TV showman Nicolas Hulot who almost stood for the election for 2007, before putting aside his idea, thus leaving electoral space for José Bové, a figure of the alterglobalization movement who recently decided to present himself as an independent candidate). This kind of protest vote, where the vote is taken into account but accused of being "useless", is often considered by political analysts to be either a form of populism or, worst, of poujadism. For example, French voters were encouraged by the establishment to make a "useful" vote in the 2007 presidential election, i.e., by voting either for Nicolas Sarkozy, candidate of the centre-right Union for a Popular Movement, or for Ségolène Royal, candidate of the centre-left Socialist Party, and not for other candidates considered unlikely to make the second turn of the elections.