Presidential 2022. Why there were 10,000 fewer registrants than in 2017 in Toulouse
By Guillaume Laurent
Published on
268,849 voters registered on the electoral lists before the second round of the Presidential election in 2017, and “only” 258,806 for the same ballot in 2022… Comment Toulousemost attractive city in France for years, has it been able to lose 10,000 voters in the space of five years, while at the same time it has gained several tens of thousands of inhabitants?
More than 22,000 voters removed from the lists in 2018
“It is the result of a major cleaning operation electoral rolls conducted in 2018,” explains Sasha Briand, deputy mayor in charge of elections, Toulouse news. ” At the end of this operation, the municipality had proceeded to the deregistration of more than 15,000 voters (15,699 voters, exactly, editor’s note), it was necessary to add around 7,000 voters deregistered at the same time by INSEE, as is the case each year on average”. The National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (Insee) is in fact responsible for removing from the electoral lists “people who have moved from the municipality, and reported their move”. Which is far from always the case!
22,000 “ghost” voters deleted and “very, very few returns”
In 2018, these are therefore 22,000 “ghost” voters who have disappeared from electoral radars in Toulouse. 22,000 people, among whom the deputy claims to have “had very very few returns”, apart from “a few cases wrongly written off”, which have been reinstated.
The municipality had to update its lists, with a view to the establishment at the national level of the single electoral register at 1uh January 2019, managed by INSEE, according to the electoral law reform of August 2016. “From now on, INSEE makes registrations directly on the electoral rolls of municipalities, with maintenance operations,” adds Sacha Briand.
“We had in Toulouse, before this operation to make the electoral list more reliable, a large volume of non-active voters. Many people who had not changed their address, whose electoral cards had returned to us several times consecutive, and of which no trace had been found in the files of La Poste for any trip, nor in the files of the parents of pupils…”
15,000 more registered before the Presidential in Toulouse
Since that date, many other voters have been removed, mainly for removals. And if there has obviously been thousands of new registrations since then, this has not compensated for this vast “reliability operation”.
For the Presidential, “there is often a significant influx of registrations”, advances Sacha Briand, and many voters have rushed in recent months to appear on the electoral lists of Toulouse: the elected official reports 15,000 more registered between the end of 2021 and 2022.
Are there fewer people registered than in other big cities?
The fact that there are only 258,000 registered voters in a city of almost 500,000 inhabitants (493,465 at the last census, to be exact), is not surprising for a large city, since not only does Toulouse have a lot children and foreign nationals, but also and above all students (more than 120,000!).
The figures for the Pink City are more or less comparable to other large cities in France: for example, there are 127,360 registered people for 234,475 inhabitants in Lille. And 292,802 registered for 522,969 inhabitants in Lyon. In Montpellier, on the other hand, the ratio is tighter: there are 162,748 registered for 295,542 inhabitants. Ditto in Bordeaux, with 161,569 registered for 260,958 inhabitants.
“5,000 voters who move every year” in Toulouse
The electoral rolls are in perpetual motion, no doubt in the city which gains the most inhabitants each year in France more than elsewhere! Because if Toulouse displays a galloping demographyit is also “a city that moves a lot in terms of arrivals and departures”.
“We have, in Toulouse, an annual turnover rate of residents of 2 to 3%. It is considerable. Basically, there are 5,000 voters who move every year, and who do not always stay in the town… “
“Mechanically, it increases participation”
Finally, updating the electoral lists also has a democratic interest. While this “reliability operation” does not necessarily have an influence on the outcome of the vote, since these voters do not participate, the drop in the number of registered voters has an influence on other indicators: “Mechanically, it increases participation in face value,” admits Sacha Briand. In the second round of the Presidential election, unlike France, where it fell by three points at the national level in five years (from 74.56% to 71.99%), participation increased by the same amount in the Pink City, from 67.4% to 70.51%.
A domino effect on the Legislative?
A data that could have an impact on electoral representativeness : for the Legislativefor example, the candidate must have obtained in the first round a number of votes equal to 12.5% of registered. If abstention is strong, this threshold of 12.5% greatly reduces the possibility of quadrangular, or even triangular… This is how in 2017, there were only duels in Haute-Garonne… will this equation change next June?
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