Polling and Democratic Representation: The Commissioning of Polls by the French Presidents Sarkozy and Macron

Résumé :

When do French presidents commission opinion polls? And what does this tell us about the way representation works? While it is widely acknowledged that governments are increasingly dependent on public opinion polling, research on how governments mobilize this resource remains relatively scarce, and most of the existing literature focuses on the American case. After reviewing the role of political polling in representative democracies in general and in France in particular, this chapter provides descriptive insights into the commissioning of polls by two French presidents. Drawing on both secondary sources and a unique dataset which gathers questionnaires and memos of polls commissioned by the Presidents Sarkozy (2007–2012) and Macron (2017–2022) we distinguish two different types of questions: survey questions related to the popularity and image of the head of state and survey questions more broadly related to the policymaking process. Regarding the latter, they encompass two different types of questions: questions triggered by contextual factors, especially social movements and external events; and questions triggered by political initiatives, mostly those of the president and members of the government. Our results thus show that governmental polling feeds both promissory and anticipatory types of representation.