The impact of economic and political factors on popularity for France (1981- 2017)

Abstract

In this article, we study a popularity function for the popularity of the French political parties (1981Q2-2017Q1). At first, we suppose that voters have a retrospective behaviour according to reward-punishment model in a closed economy. We show that the unemployment rate has a significant influence on the popularity of the French political parties. We find unfavourable results for the partisan hypothesis. We also show that the economic openness has an influence on popularity. We also find a partly expected result for the asymmetry hypothesis: punishment without reward. For the political variables, we show the significant influence of the honeymoon effect, the second order elections (regional or European), and the congresses of the Socialist party.