The salience of the pandemic in the French party system and the RN's response

The first step tackles the question of when, whether, and to what extent the RN engaged in public debates on COVID-19, a public health issue on which the party had little previous experience. To measure the salience of the pandemic and its emergence on the public agenda, I use a count of the word COVID-19 in the Facebook posts published by the RN and compare it to that of five other major parties in France. Figure 2 illustrates the salience of this topic by week (monthly and daily trends are available in Figures A and B, in the Online Appendix).

Figure 2. Salience of COVID-19 Facebook Posts in France, by Party

Source: Project ‘What Do the People Want? Analyzing Online Populist Challenges to Europe and the US’.

Note: The figure shows the number of Facebook posts mentioning COVID-19, by week.

The figure shows that all major political parties in France, including the RN, have engaged in public debates on COVID-19 on Facebook, albeit with important differences. To begin with, the RN responded to COVID-19 outbreak slightly later – approximately three weeks – than the governing REM, and the two mainstream parties that alternated in government before 2017: the Socialist Party (Parti Socialiste, PS) and the Republicans (Les Républicains, LR). Still, the RN's response came earlier than the those from other opposition parties – Unbowed France (La France Insoumise, FI) and Europe Ecology the Greens (Europe Ecologie Les Verts. EELV). In fact, the RN starts addressing this issue mainly at the same time as the approval of the first lockdown measures in early March 2020. It is important to point out here that Marine Le Pen, unlike other radical right politicians such as Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro, never minimized the danger of COVID-19 (Wondreys and Mudde Reference Wondreys and Mudde2022). On the contrary, she recognized the risks of the pandemic as she was personally affected by the virus in mid-March, and she self-quarantined despite being asymptomatic when she came into contact with a colleague who was found positive for COVID-19. Furthermore, at the aggregate level, the highest salience is found for the governing party REM, followed by the PS and LR. The salience is considerably lower for the RN, but pretty much in line with that of the other opposition parties.

The over-time trend in salience thus confirms, as expected, that the RN was not quick in responding to the COVID-19 outbreak, but ultimately picked up an issue outside its usual policy interests. It also appears to have done so only once the debates left the party with no other choice, as almost all media space in France was dedicated to coverage of the pandemic (Bayet et al. Reference Bayet, Hervé and Doukhan2020). In this respect, the mechanism at stake reflects the one identified by previous studies on focusing events, suggesting that unexpected and relatively sudden happenings tend to catalyse public debates on a limited set of issues and redirect the attention of all parties in the system, including radical ones (Green-Pedersen Reference Green-Pedersen2019).

To continue the investigation of the RN's attention profile, I identify the main policy areas that political parties link to COVID-19 in public debates. This is done by focusing on the share of Facebook posts that explicitly mention COVID-19 and look at the main policy issues emphasized therein. This allows us to detect whether, and to what extent, parties highlight issues where the electorate is on their side – that is, where they enjoy ‘issue ownership’ (Petrocik Reference Petrocik1996). For populist parties like the RN, these should be the ones that resonate most with their ideology: immigration and security. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Figure 3 shows that, for all parties, COVID-19 is mainly a matter of public health. While questions related to the management of the public health system have a long history in France, the outbreak of the pandemic placed at the core of public debates the difficult conditions of the country's health workers (Benoît and Hay Reference Benoît and Hay2022). Still, the issue-attention profile of the RN shows some important specificities compared to that of the other parties. Unlike mainstream parties, which emphasize the macroeconomic dimension of the pandemic, the RN links COVID-19 primarily to issues such as defence/security (40% of the time) and immigration (10%), which instead play a marginal role for all other parties (less than 5%).

Figure 3. Salience of COVID-19 Facebook Posts in France, by Party and Policy Area

Source: Project ‘What do the People Want? Analyzing Online Populist Challenges to Europe and the US’.

These findings suggest that the RN tried to differentiate its attention profile from that of other parties, linking the pandemic to issues on which it had built a reputation over the years. In a similar fashion, the French Green party EELV associates COVID-19 with environmental issues, confirming that an issue-ownership logic may be at work when parties with a niche status are confronted with unexpected events and issues that are relatively new to them. To investigate the positions of the RN in further detail, the next section turns to the qualitative content analysis of the diagnostic and prognostic frames associated with the RN's response to the pandemic.

Interpreting the pandemic: diagnostic and prognostic frames linking COVID-19 to radical right ideology and ‘expert populism’

The qualitative reading of the content of the Facebook posts enables a reconstruction of the main diagnostic and prognostic frames put forward by the RN, which I interpret by integrating data from press releases by Marine Le Pen during the months of the pandemic.

To begin with, I identify three main diagnostic frames which mirror the party's core ideological tenets: nativism, authoritarianism and populism. Nativism features prominently in the discourse of the RN about the origins of the pandemic and the causes of its spread. As cases of contagion increased, Marine Le Pen immediately pointed to migrants as the main players responsible for the arrival of the virus in France. Her first official statement took place on social media, where she pointed out that French people's health would be threatened by an influx of outsiders, notably from China (and then Italy), and urged the government to halt flights from these countries.Footnote ¹⁰ In the following weeks, the party tried to downplay its nativist outlook to contrast the trending hashtag #jenesuispasunvirus (I am not a virus), which denounced mounting racism against people of Chinese origins in France. This led the RN to avoid targeting specific minorities, referring instead to illegal migrants in general, as well as refugees, as potential health threats. Other diagnostic frames were more directly inspired by the party's authoritarian ideological tenets, and thus interpreted the pandemic as the result of permissive border controls (in addition to a lax immigration policy). On multiple occasions, Marine Le Pen urged French president Emmanuel Macron to close all internal and external borders in the Schengen area, claiming that: ‘The virus doesn't have a passport, but people who carry the virus do’ (Calvi and Douet Reference Calvi and Douet2020).

In addition, some diagnostic frames by the RN mirrored its populist understanding of society and blamed the spread of the virus on the French elites and EU representatives. At the national level, the RN contraposed the health of the French ordinary people to the behaviour of the urban elites in Paris, thus tapping into the crucial centre–periphery cleavage of French politics that the Yellow Vests (Gilets Jaunes) mobilizations had brought to the core of public debates in the months preceding the COVID-19 outbreak (Algan et al. Reference Algan2018; Cointet et al. Reference Cointet2021). Accordingly, Marine Le Pen pointed to the inability of domestic political representatives to counter the spread of the virus, accused the government of being unclear in its prevention instructions, and attacked the president for informing citizens too little, and too late (Terrel Reference Terrel2021). At the EU level, the RN blamed the cosmopolitan elites in Brussels (Audureau Reference Audureau2020), with Marine Le Pen declaring that the pandemic had proven ‘the strength of the ideology, religion of non-borderism [sansfrontièrisme] of the leaders of the EU’ (Berretta Reference Berretta2020). This echoes the results of previous studies suggesting that the Euroscepticism of the RN is embedded in a broader framework opposing ‘patriots’ to so-called ‘globalists’ (mondialistes) (Lorimer Reference Lorimer2020a, Reference Lorimer2020b). In this respect, a distinctive set of diagnostic frames by the RN reproduced the narratives about ‘globalist elites’, supranational organizations and pharmaceutical companies having orchestrated the diffusion of the virus. Notably, at the onset of the pandemic, Marine Le Pen voiced concerns about the origins of the virus and did not exclude the possibility that it could have originated in a biolab. She declared that it was ‘a question of common sense’ (Pelletier Reference Pelletier2020) that people wondered about this possibility, even if she did not have an opinion on this. This public statement came just after the publication of a survey showing that 40% of RN supporters endorsed the theory of a laboratory accident. Similar arguments were subsequently toned down in the discourse of the party.

Moving to the prognostic frames of the pandemic, the qualitative analysis suggests that they are not solely rooted in the party's populist worldview, which the RN mobilized to criticize government policies and to suggest possible ways out from the crisis. Three crucial prognostic frames stand out: one concerning the use of masks to counter the spread of the virus, another the implementation of lockdown measures, and the last on the vaccine rollout. On the one hand, and unlike many other RRPPs in Europe and beyond, the RN had very coherent stances in favour of compulsory mask wearing. On various occasions, Marine Le Pen asked the so-called ‘no-masks’ to respect the instructions, because ‘in the absence of other measures, of vaccine, wearing masks is one of the only ways that can prevent an increase in contamination’ (Ouest France 2020a). At least in the first months, this was mainly due to the party's willingness to oppose the French government's rules, which did not enforce mask wearing until July 2020. In April, the RN criticized the spokesperson of the executive who claimed that there was ‘no scientific consensus’ about the usefulness of mask wearing in open spaces (Franceinfo 2020); it accused the government of spreading inconsistent information (de Boissieu Reference de Boissieu2020), and blamed it for the decision to outsource mask production outside France which led to the shortage in the supply of face masks in the country (Mermilliod Reference Mermilliod2020). On the other hand, the RN was very inconsistent about lockdown and vaccine policies (Sulzer Reference Sulzer2020). On multiple occasions, Marine Le Pen claimed that the lockdown measures in France were a failure and a waste of resources that could be invested to ‘give masks to everyone, or set up tests and tracking cases’ (Ouest France 2020b). Sometimes, the measures were considered too harsh (for example, when it came to places of worship, small shops and bars), whereas other times they were criticized for not being harsh enough (such as those applied to high schools and lyceums) (Ouest France 2020b). Yet again, the party also asked for ‘localized’ measures of full lockdown, to be applied in specific neighbourhoods, cities or regions (Fortunato et al. Reference Fortunato2021). At the same time, Marine Le Pen also declared that she would not download the government-sponsored app to trace infections (StopCovid, then TousAntiCovid), arguing that the system would infringe individual freedom (Le Point 2020a). Similarly, the RN maintained an ambiguous position on the vaccine. While the RN did not endorse blatant vaccine scepticism (Le Figaro 2020), it endorsed a sort of radical libertarianism, positing that French citizens should have the right to decide whether to get the vaccine and should be free to choose which one (Le Figaro 2020). Notably, the party leader voiced open distrust of the AstraZeneca vaccine, after it came under suspicion of causing rare but serious blood clots. In April 2021, however, Marine Le Pen declared that she would take the AstraZeneca vaccine if it was offered (Sotto Reference Sotto2021). Furthermore, she argued that the fact that some French people refused to be vaccinated with AstraZeneca was due to the major logistical failure of the French government, which left to the EU the responsibility to handle health policy, a field outside the competencies of the Union (Franceinfo 2021).

In addition to the responses to government action, a distinctive set of prognostic frames by the RN developed a form of ‘expert populism’, combining the logics of scientific expertise with a Manichean view contraposing the science of the people and that of the elites. By seizing non-radical dissenting opinions in the scientific community, the RN sought to present itself as a party just like the others; by taking side with scientists excluded by the National Scientific Council (NSC) appointed by the government to advise on the management of the crisis, the party preserved its anti-establishment trademark.

Specifically, the prognostic frame strategy of the RN took advantage of existing disagreement within the scientific community, which in the French context set the NSC, based in Paris and closely associated with the government, in opposition to the Marseille-based virologist Didier Roault, whom the RN associated with the people. Expert populism informed the scepticism of the RN towards official health recommendations, notably by the NSC (La Provence 2020). In doing so, rather than contrasting scientific knowledge tout court or blatantly endorsing so-called fake news as other populist leaders did, the RN leadership systematically used figures, polls and epidemiologic data produced by well-known scientists outside the NSC to criticize the policies set out by the executive. According to Marine Le Pen, President Emmanuel Macron had in fact infantilized the French (Ouest France 2020c), hiding the real figures about the pandemic to justify inadequate policy solutions. Indeed, Marine Le Pen advocated for data-driven vaccination policies (Ouest France 2020d) and attacked the government for ‘incorrectly counting the number of deaths’ (Mella Reference Mella2020). This framing strategy also characterized the position taken by Marine Le Pen concerning the controversial proposal to use a common antimalarial drug (chloroquine) to cure coronavirus, which was advanced by maverick virologist Didier Raoult among much media clamour. While Marine Le Pen did not openly endorse this proposal, she used this controversy strategically to attack the government. At first, she asked the government to allow physicians to ‘prescribe chloroquine for “mild” coronavirus symptoms’ (Michelon Reference Michelon2020) and subsequently insisted that if the government was hiding the fact that chloroquine was effective against COVID-19 ‘we have here the elements of a real major health scandal’ (Le Point 2020b).

The popularity of the RN during the pandemic

In sum, the qualitative analysis reveals that the RN followed an ambivalent strategy to address the pandemic. While the party responded late to the COVID-19 outbreak and tried to bend the coronavirus emergency to its radical worldviews, it also sought to present itself as a credible and competent actor by combining expert knowledge and populist logics. To investigate the extent to which this strategy was successful, I look at the consequences of the crisis on the popularity of the party. If data on the electoral support for the RN are still limited, I can in fact flesh out some more general trends based on the results of the municipal elections that took place in March and June 2020, and opinion surveys run throughout the whole year. The results show that the RN did not capitalize on the health crisis, as already noted before (Baloge and Hubé Reference Baloge, Hubé, Bobba and Hubé2021), but the pandemic confirmed the popularity that Marine Le Pen had acquired over the last years. In fact, the RN maintained a relatively stable support base throughout the pandemic, and its leader was confirmed as one of the best-evaluated political figures in the country.

The 2020 municipal elections confirmed the stability of the RN support base. Elections took place in approximately 35,000 communes, including Paris, amidst mounting fears of infection.Footnote ¹¹ Perhaps unsurprisingly, the elections registered a record number of abstentions, with more than 50% of the voters deserting the ballots (an increase of about 20 points on the previous elections of 2014). Despite the low turnout, the RN registered a slight improvement compared to the previous elections: if in 2014 the party had elected around 1,550 councillors across the country, winning 12 cities with more than 1,000 inhabitants (notably Béziers; see Evans and Ivaldi Reference Evans and Ivaldi2020), in 2020 it managed to retain eight of these cities, winning in another six and in the larger city of Perpignan. A similarly nuanced trend emerges from the more granular data on the popularity of Marine Le Pen, as measured by IPSOS opinion data on positive attitudes towards political personalities in France. Throughout the year, the RN leader remained the third most popular political figure in France, after President Macron and the prime minister – that is, the most popular politician not in office.

Table 1 summarizes the results from IPSOS, dividing French politicians by party affiliation and by their government status, showing that the RN gained some support during the crisis, albeit modestly (4% between February 2020 and April 2021), while Marine Le Pen remained highly popular. At the onset of the crisis, 28% of the French citizens interviewed in this poll expressed a positive assessment of Marine Le Pen, a figure that remained stable until the beginning of the second pandemic wave in autumn 2021, when the popularity of the RN leader increased slightly. The table shows, instead, a considerable support for President Macron and the prime ministers (REM), which would confirm that coronavirus triggered a ‘rally-around-the-flag’ effect. From February to September the REM leaders went from around 30% to 40% positive opinion in the polls. Most other opposition parties either experienced small losses (EELV) or remained stable (PS and FI).

Table 1. Positive Attitudes towards Political Personalities in France, by Party Affiliation and Government Status (%)

Note: ^aData not available for the secretary of the party, Julien Bayou.