28 Europe The Economist January 29th 2022
ElectoralgeographyRoad-testing the French dream
O
nthefringesofgreaterParis,where
urban concrete meets farmed fields,
lies the suburb of SaintBricesousForêt.
Gently curved streets of twostorey houses,
each with a parking space and garage, cover
what were once apple and pear orchards.
The narrow high street has just one café,
and a “Cheesy Pizza” takeaway joint; but
there is a drivein Burger King on the out
skirts. This is what the mayor, Nicolas Le
leux, calls “the border of two universes”:
city and countryside. It captures the wor
ries and hopes of middle France, and ex
emplifies a crucial electoral battleground
for April’s presidential poll.
Shy of extremes, the suburb tilts to the
centreright. In 2017 SaintBricesousFo
rêt preferred the centreright presidential
candidate, François Fillon, in the first
round, but backed the centrist Emmanuel
Macron against the nationalist Marine Le
Pen in the second. In 2020 it replaced a
centreright mayor with Mr Leleux, a for
mer navy submariner who belongs to Mr
Macron’s party. Locals, in other words, may
be torn at the presidential poll this time be
tween a vote for Mr Macron, assuming he
runs for reelection, and his centreright
rival, Valérie Pécresse. A wellknown figure
locally, she is the president of the Ilede
France region, which encompasses the city
of Paris itself and SaintBricesousForêt,
17 kilometres (11 miles) away.
Less than three months before polling
day, however, talk is all about covid19. No
body spontaneously raises national politics. Daily newinfections are still high
across France, and shifting national rules
about testing have caused chaos in
schools. The mayor has opened a munici
pal testing centre to try to ease the stress.
Residents also worry about heating bills
and petty crime. The brutalist tower blocks
of Sarcelles, a rough banlieuenorth of Paris,
are not far away, and there are nagging con
cerns about “imported crime”. Yet fear of
immigration, which the two nationalist
candidates—Ms Le Pen and Eric Zem
mour—insist tops French concerns, seems
largely absent.
Not that everybody is happy with Mr
Macron. On a roundabout on the edge of
town, ringed by car parks serving a giant
hypermarket, Agnès, Josée Laure and Eve
lyne are standing defiantly in the cold,
their hoods up against the wintry drizzle.
Next to them lies a yellowpainted con
crete block, which reads “Gilets jaunesSt
Brice: we won’t give up”. It is a vestige of the
“yellow jackets” uprising, which emerged
across the country in 2018 against a rise in
the carbon tax on motor fuel. The protests
have subsided elsewhere. But this group is
still active. “We put up our banners every
Saturday,” says Agnès, a 48yearold
healthcare worker, “but we pack them up
after, and don’t leave any mess behind.”
Their current gripe is a new national
rule, introduced on January 24th, which
makes vaccination compulsory for access
to restaurants, cafés, longdistance trains
and other public places. Only one of thetrio says she is vaccinated; the others con
sider it an “infringement of our liberties”,
if not an attempt “to poison the popula
tion”. Above all, they are indignant at the
way Mr Macron has favoured the rich and
displayed “contempt” towards ordinary
people. As a spur to getting people jabbed,
he recently said he wanted to emmerder
(piss off ) the unvaccinated. As for Mrs Pé
cresse, “she’s just the carbon copy” of him.
April’s election seems set to be deter
mined on the right, as Mrs Pécresse, Ms Le
Pen and Mr Zemmour battle for a place in
the runoff against the president. Mr Mac
ron consistently tops firstround voting
intentions; the various candidates of the
left are trailing far behind. If so, disillu
sioned leftleaning voters such as those on
the SaintBrice roundabout may well end
up abstaining. Josée Laure is considering
this. Evelyne says she will vote for JeanLuc
Mélenchon, a perennial hardleft candi
date with a knack for the late surge.
What comes into sharpest relief in
SaintBrice is the collision between the
needs of daily life, notably the car, and the
desire for a greener future. A place of quiet
middleoftheroad aspiration, it evokes
what Mr Leleux calls the “French dream”.
“People have left the city to come here, not
to live in a tower block, but in a house with
a little garden, with neighbours, and a
place to barbecue.” Nearly 88% of house
holds own at least one car. His task, he ex
plains, is to reconcile that dream with the
need to reduce car usage. Few can afford an
electric vehicle. Mr Leleux is planning cy
cle lanes and building a bike shelter at the
railway station, on a direct line to Paris. Yet
on a cold day in January there are no cycles
to be seen on the streets.
The IledeFrance region, says Othman
Nasrou, one of Mrs Pécresse’s vicepresi
dents and in her campaign team, is “like a
small France”: it includes many cardepen
dent suburbs, so she is familiar with these
complexities. Mrs Pécresse has proposed
subsidies for households to buy electric
cars, and mocked those who deride car use
from the comfort of their nearby Parisian
metro station. Anne Hidalgo, mayor of Par
is and the Socialists’ presidential candi
date, is on just 3% in national polls.
Fashionable Parisian talk of the ideal
“15minute city” is all very well, says Mr Le
leux. The reality is that to buy a baguettein
under 15 minutes without a car is not possi
ble in much of suburbia. If anybody has
learned this, it ought to be Mr Macron, who
won a huge majority of the vote in big cities
in 2017, but later faced months of gilets
jaunesprotests. For now, insists the mayor,
locals credit the president nonetheless
with having been a “good captain” in diffi
cult times. In April, it is on the streets of
middle France, nottheparquetfloored sa
lons of Paris or itstenements, that such a
claim will be tested.nS AINT-BRICE-SOUS-FORÊT
France’s outer suburbs are a crucial presidential battleground