Vote, popularity, unemployment and French presidential elections[Vote, popularité, chômage et élections présidentielles françaises]

The purpose of this article is to build models that explain and forecast the outcome of the second-round vote in the French presidential elections (in the case of a classical duel between moderate left and moderate right) in each department and at the national level. We compare two types of models: the first one influenced by a quarterly change in the national unemployment rate, taken into account, along with the popularity variable; and the second one when the vote is directly influenced by an annual change in the national unemployment rate. We also try to take into account the influence of the periods of cohabitation on the responsibility of the incumbent president (if he is running for re-election) with respect to the economic situation. We also highlight the influence of a partisan variable and a local department advantage variable on the second-round vote for the left in the French presidential elections. Its forecasts for the elections of the past (1981–2007, excluding 2002 and 1981–2012, excluding 2002) are satisfactory. We make ex ante forecasts for the second-round vote of the 2012 French presidential election.