FORUM FORUM Anthony Edo, Jonathan Öztunc and PREVIOUS RESEARCH districts. Adding the share of electorate aged 45 and be ascribed to a presidential candidate). If votes for all Panu Poutvaara over boosts this figure to 85.7%. Adding population different presidential candidates are aggregated, they Previous research has already linked immigration and shares of EU15, EU accession and non-EU immigrants yield the number of valid votes. Immigration and Extreme extremist voting, as well as studied the mechanisms as additional explanatory variables does not change Since we are interested in the determinants of 1 Voting: Evidence from France behind opposition towards immigration. Otto and much, as the share accounted for is then 86%. To a large votes for far-left and far-right candidates, we identify Steinhardt (2014) find that larger immigrant shares extent, this can be expected to reflect endogenous presidential candidates that were classified as either increased support for the far-right in Hamburg, using migration responses. Migrants are more likely to far-left or far-right by the media in recent presidential data on city districts with fixed-effects. Halla et al. migrate to areas that are doing well economically, and elections. Jean Marie Le Pen, Marine Le Pen, Nicolas (2017) study the case of Austria and show that increas- where people are more likely to support European Dupont-Aignan, Philippe de Villiers and Bruno Mégret ing immigrant shares lead to higher vote shares for the Union membership, and have positive attitudes are included in the set of far-right presidential candi- INTRODUCTION far-right party. Card et al. (2012) use European Social towards immigration and globalisation more generally. dates. The set of far-left candidates consists of Jean- Survey (ESS) data to study the relative importance of In the present paper, we account for this potential iden- Luc Mélenchon, Nathalie Arthaud, Olivier Besancenot, In recent decades, immigration has become one of the labour market and cultural concerns in driving opposi- tification issue – i.e. the fact that migrants may prefer Philippe Poutou, Marie-George Buffet, Robert Georges most divisive issues in many Western countries. Oppos- tion to immigration. They conclude that compositional to settle in areas where the propensity to support far- August Hue, Pierre Juquin, André Francois Lajoinie, ing immigration has been a central pillar of the plat- amenities related to the utility that natives derive from right parties is low. Pierre Boussel, George Marchais and Arlette Laguiller. forms of extremist parties in many Western countries, their neighbourhoods, schools and workplaces are an Hainmueller and Hangartner (2013) studied dis- Finally, we aggregate the number of votes for all far- in the Leave campaign against British membership in important reason for negative attitudes towards crimination against immigrants in Switzerland, where right (far-left) presidential candidates to obtain an the European Union, and in Donald Trump’s electoral immigration. some municipalities used to decide on naturalisation aggregated number of votes for far-right (far-left) par- Anthony Edo campaign. Opposition to immigration and globalisa- When it comes to the psychological determinants of immigrants by referenda on individual applicants. ties in a presidential election. In order to calculate vote CEPII. tion were also central in Marine Le Pen’s campaign in of anti-immigration attitudes, Poutvaara and Stein- They find that the country of origin is a more important shares, we divide the aggregated votes by the total the French presidential election in 2017. The Front hardt (2015) show that bitter people who feel that they determinant of being naturalised than any other appli- number of votes cast (invalid and valid votes). National’s Marine Le Pen made it to the second round have not gotten what they deserve in life worry more cant characteristic, including and won 34% of votes. This was almost twice the 18% about immigration. Their analysis uses German language skills, education, vote share that her father Jean-Marie Le Pen won in Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) data and holds both in and socioeconomic status. Figure 2 2002, the only previous presidential election in which cross sections and a panel approach, when changes in The applicants from ex-Yugo- Development of Unemployment Rate over Time Front National made it to the second round. The Front bitterness are used to explain changes in worries about slavia and Turkey are rejected National’s platform is anti-EU, anti-immigration and immigration. The link between bitterness and worries considerably more often than % anti-globalisation. about immigration holds among different skill catego- applicants with similar age, 10 Jonathan Öztunc In this article, we summarise our ongoing research ries, men and women, those living in former West and education and labour market 8 Master’s student at with Yvonne Giesing on extreme voting in France. Given former East Germany, and young and old. Furthermore, status from northern and west- Barcelona Graduate School of Economics. the central role that France plays in the European the link cannot be explained away by labour market ern Europe. 6 Union, together with Germany, understanding French competition, as it holds among civil servants who have politics is important in its own right. Furthermore, permanent contracts and are not affected by labour DATA 4 French politics is an ideal setting to test the role of market competition as a result. immigration and economic concerns in the rise of far- Nikolka and Poutvaara (2016) analysed voting in We investigate the determi- 2 left and far-right voting more generally. The Front the Brexit referendum in 326 local authority districts in nants of voting outcomes for National has run, and won more than 10% of votes in all England. They show that the share of the electorate the first round of the presiden- 0 French presidential elections since 1988. Far-left candi- with some tertiary education alone can explain 80% of tial elections that occurred in 1988 1995 2002 2007 2012 dates have also won over 10% of votes in all presiden- variation in the Leave vote share across local authority 1988, 1995, 2002, 2007, 2012 and Source: French census data; French National Institute for Statistics and tial elections since 1988, apart 2017. The data on voting out- Economic Studies (INSEE). © ifo Institute Panu Poutvaara from in 2007. Ours is the first comes are available for around ifo Institute, Ludwig- paper that separately analyses Figure 1 36,000 French municipalities. Figure 3 Maximilians-University Munich, CESifo, CReAM the effects of immigration on They record the aggregated and IZA. voting in terms of political sup- Vote Share for Far-Left and Far-Right Candidates in France number of registered voters, Development of the Immigration Share over Time port for the far-left and far-right. Far-left parties abstentions, cast votes, valid % Far-right parties % Importantly, our analysis con- 30 and invalid votes and the votes 10 trols for various economic and for each presidential candidate 25 demographic factors that could in each municipality. Regis- 8 also explain extreme voting, tered voters refer to all people 20 and accounts for the fact that who are eligible to cast a vote 6 immigrants may prefer to reside 15 at the ballot box. Registered in areas where the propensity voters are split into abstentions 4 to vote for extreme parties dif- 10 (people who refrain from vot- fers from other places. ing) and cast votes (people who 2 5 1 This article is based on the research paper fill out a ballot paper at the bal- “Immigration and Electoral Support for the Far 0 lot box). Cast votes are split into 0 Left and the Far Right” by A. Edo, Y. Giesing, J. Öztunc and P. Poutvaara, presented in the 1988 1995 2002 2007 2012 2017 invalid votes (blank and errone- 1988 1995 2002 2007 2012 OECD-CEPII conference “Immigration in OECD ous votes on the ballot paper) Countries” in Paris in December 2017, and avai- Source: Presidential election data (2017) made available by the French government. Source: French census data; French National Institute for Statistics and lable as ifo Working Paper No. 244, 2017. Dt o ote re for te er 1 come from te cetre e oe ociopolitiue © ifo Institute and valid votes (votes that can Economic Studies (INSEE). © ifo Institute 28 ifo DICE Report 4 / 2017 December Volume 15 ifo DICE Report 4 / 2017 December Volume 15 29 FORUM FORUM In order to show that our results are not sensitive DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS ON FAR-RIGHT AND far-left candidates. The increase in the vote share for for omitted variables that could affect immigration and to the geographical unit of analysis used in the empiri- FAR-LEFT VOTING these candidates was particularly concentrated in the political outcomes within an area. In particular, we cal section, we aggregate the data on votes at three north western and eastern French region (ranging include the share of unemployment in the population different regional levels: the canton, department and Figure 1 shows how the first-round vote share of far- between about three and five percentage points). and control for the age, education and employment region level. While there are around 2,000 cantons, right and far-left candidates has changed between 1988 structure of each area. there are 96 departments and 22 regions. Using larger and 2017. Both vote shares have increased dramatically EMPIRICAL METHOD: SPATIAL CORRELATION However, it is still possible that immigrants settle geographical areas allows us to show that our results since 2007, following the financial crisis, the Eurozone APPROACH in places with a small share of votes for anti-immigra- are not contaminated by the fact that French citizens crisis and, most recently, the refugee crisis. Figures 2 tion parties.