When it came time to recount her experience of the previous day, Claude Naas was overcome with emotion. She nevertheless grabbed the microphone in front of the sixty people gathered in a room in Saint-Dié-des-Vosges for the campaign launch of the candidate of the New Popular Front (NFP), Julie Xicola. Staring into space, this 53-year-old La France Insoumise (LFI) activist relived that door-to-door campaign at the end of the day in the social housing of a neighboring town that did not go as planned. “It discouraged meshe admits. I expected to see people who believed in us. But it was total disappointment. No matter how much we present ourselves with the best values, we find ourselves facing people who no longer believe in anything, or in any candidate. I was really shocked by some very aggressive reactions. »
Most of the voters met will vote for the National Rally (RN) on June 30 and July 7. “They weren’t necessarily bad or racist people, but just people excluded from the system, who felt abandoned. They see the RN as their ultimate savior, their last chance to get out of this”, analyzes Claude Naas. The activist, who arrived in the Vosges in 2007, nevertheless tried to open dialogue.
She also noticed the” collapse ” public services. Unemployed for health reasons, she experienced the “employment struggles” : she had illegally worked six fixed-term contracts with a previous employer “without the possibility of taking them to court, obviously”. But his testimony did not allow conversations to continue with individuals “so closed-minded”regrets the left-wing activist. “These are people we have definitely lost”she concluded in an aside after the meeting.
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In the 2e Vosges constituency, Saint-Dié and its twenty thousand inhabitants had until then served as the ultimate barrier to the arrival of the RN in power. The proof in the last legislative elections, in 2022: David Valence (Radical Right Party, related Renaissance) won the second round with 50.5% of the votes against the far-right candidate, Gaëtan Dussausaye, or by 342 votes. The former mayor of the city was even given the loser at the end of the afternoon before the results of the world capital of geography and his 1,500 ballots ahead of his direct opponent (63% against 37%) made him lose. save.
Feeling of decline
Two years later, the European elections demonstrated that the RN vote had increased further in the region. In the constituency, the far right was supported by 51% of voters. And Saint-Dié did not resist the wave: Jordan Bardella’s list collected 36% of the votes, that of Marion Maréchal 5.5%. “It’s simple, in the legislative elections, David Valence was in the lead in the fourteen polling stations in Saint-Dié. For the Europeans, it was Bardella in all the offices”summarizes Bruno Toussaint, mayor without label (formerly Radical Right Party) of the town.
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