RL

First of all, it was an open primary, for all voters not just party members. This is the second time this had happened. It was in the context of extraordinarily poor polls for [PS president] François Hollande. The left of the Socialist Party managed to impose the primary on him and, seeing he would likely lose it, he decided not to stand. In June of last year, he thought he could succeed but, by November, the polls were so bad he decided not to stand. It was a huge surprise. It opens the game.

This primary was one of defeat. Everyone knew that the candidate who won the primary would not be the next president. The Socialist base was divided: half of it believed Hollande had done a good job and accepted the liberal politics he supported. Now, of course, the vote for Emanuel Macron. But then they supported Manuel Valls, who it seemed would be the candidate. But he was very unpopular with partisans of the Left.

So, with the open primary, many of these outside the party — communist, Mélenchon voters, ecologists, socialists against Hollande — turned out to defeat Valls. Some even announced to the pollsters that they wouldn’t vote for the Socialist candidate in any circumstance.

But there was also the success of Benoît Hamon. And I think that came about because left voters wanted to feel like they were voting for something rather than simply against things all the time. They accepted a utopian program because there has been so much despair over the last five years. They used the primary to support a “futur désirable” (“desirable future”), which is Hamon’s slogan. His program was quite ecological, much moreso for example than the program of Arnaud Montebourg, which was more classically leftist.

But this has caused problems, too. One of his centerpieces was the universal income, which is a very new measure in France. The French public more broadly was not used to hearing about this kind of policy. From an ideological point of view Hamon was very ambitious, and the transition was rapid. It was very difficult because Hamon managed to win the primary but the selectorate of the primary was not the same as electorate. So what made for his success at the primary is now a handicap for the election.