The French Peasant and Communism

The French Communist Party emerged from the national elections of 1951 with a greater number of popular votes than any of its competitors. Since the preceding elections of November, 1946, it is true, the party has lost close to 500,000 voters, and its proportion of the total number of registered voters has declined from 21.6 to 20.1 per cent. Yet the Communist Party (CP) remains not only numerically, but also by virtue of its geographical distribution, the most important of the French parties. In none of the election districts did less than 5 per cent of the voters cast their ballot for the communist lists, while all other parties parade a considerable number of blank spots on the electoral map of France. In twenty-seven districts the CP can boast of a support larger than one-fourth of the total electorate, while the next strongest party, de Gaulle's RPF, is similarly represented in only eleven districts.A comparison of the present communist vote with that of 1946 shows that five years which affected deeply the political constellation of Europe and the world have not changed significantly the distribution of communist sympathies among the French electorate. The greatest concentration of votes for the CP is still to be found in the region situated between Paris and the Belgian border, reaching in the East to the départements of Ardennes, Marne, and Aube, in the West to those of Somme and Seine-Inférieure.