How did Le Pen campaign? Where did Le Pen collect most of his votes from?
IN FACT, WE saw an invisible Front National, in terms of placards and so on. The campaign it conducted was not very aggressive. In a quite clever way, Le Pen claimed that signatories necessary for standing in the presidential elections had gone missing. He used that to gain media attention. It is quite clear that the signatories were not missing at all. Then he put social demands on the top of his programme and that was enough to make him a challenger to the two main candidates. Jospin and Chirac did not deal with the real social issues, such as jobs and so on. Le Pen collected most of his votes in rural areas and in deprived working-class areas, the banlieues, etc, for two different reasons. In the countryside it is because he was able to catch the votes of the small farmers who have been ruined by the European agricultural policy. He put forward concrete demands for them. In the run-down urban areas, it is mainly some workers and unemployed. For these two categories there are also ot
