Swing to far Right reveals change in Catholic attitudes

The dramatic swing to the far Right in the first round of France’s regional elections, where the anti-immigrant National Front (FN) came first in six of the 13 metropolitan regions, shows an important shift in Catholic voting, according to the respected Ifop opinion polling institute.

“The Catholic dyke is crumbling,” said the Catholic weekly Pèlerin, which published the survey. Until recently, a smaller percentage of Catholics – especially regular churchgoers – supported the Front than the average among French voters. This was in line with church opposition to the FN’s anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic views.

Self-identified Catholics – both practising and not – voted 32 per cent for the once-shunned party of Marine Le Pen, compared to 24 per cent of voters with no religion, the survey said.

“The shift was mostly in the trad­itional conservative electorate, made up of older practising Catholics,” said Jérôme Fourquet of Ifop. In many regions, the conservative republicans of former President Nicolas Sarkozy failed to profit from the unpopularity of the socialist national Government despite veering towards the far Right to compete with the FN.

The Front’s strong showing in the 6 December first round means it has good chances of winning tomorrow’s run-off round in two or three regions.

Forty per cent of Catholics surveyed said they voted for the Front to protest against socialist President François Hollande, compared to 29 per cent of voters with no faith.

By contrast, more prosperous areas in western France that are traditionally Catholic did not swing as much to the far Right.

FN strategy on religion varied, with party leader Marine Le Pen in the north and her deputy Florian Phillipot in the east stressing laïcité – the secularist policy that some Muslims find discriminatory – while in the south-east Le Pen’s niece Marion Maréchal-Le Pen wooed Catholics by lauding France’s Christian roots. The bishops’ conference kept to its practice of not directly intervening in political issues.