The real reason Marine Le Pen lost but Donald Trump won

The easiest conclusion to draw when comparing the results of the U.S. presidential election to those in France’s recent election is that Donald Trump is more popular than Marine Le Pen. He won 46% of the vote and she won 34%.

That may be true, but it’s actually hard to know. Assessing a politician’s popularity based on vote totals is tricky in the U.S. because barely half of the country participates in its elections. Polls also only typically focus on likely voters, meaning that we don’t have much of a sense of what a huge swath of this country thinks about issues.

The last few elections have actually been quite good in terms of turnout. Turnout was roughly 55% in both 2016 and 2012 and hit 58% in 2008, when Barack Obama’s campaign inspired a large youth turnout. Turnout actually dipped below 50% in 1996, when Clinton blew out Dole to win re-election.

France, however, has seen its voter turnout plummet. In fact, it’s so low that commentators frequently cite it as evidence that President Emmanuel Macron doesn’t have much of a mandate. Others bemoan the shamefully low turnout as evidence that France has slipped into a debilitating civic ennui.

In France, that shamefully low figure is 74.6%. A full 20 percentage points higher than in the land of the free.

There’s no easy answer for why the French vote more. It’s nice to know, at least, that they they appreciate the national institutions that we went through hell to save for them twice in the last century.

Disgust and disillusion with politics is the dominant political ideology in France and yet people still make their voices heard at the ballot box. In fact, there is a large contingent who turn out to vote blanc –– submit a blank ballot to register their opposition to all candidates. I’ve not always been impressed with the reasoning of vote blanc types I’ve talked to, but I nevertheless appreciated that they exercised abstention with more agency than those who simply don’t bother voting.

Is it easier to vote in France? Well, in some ways. Their elections are held on Sundays. Luckily, the French have also legally or culturally extinguished the things that might distract an American from voting on Sunday (work, shopping, Church).

On the bright side, young people are also automatically registered as voters when they turn 18. There is not a large population that lacks the right to vote due to a criminal conviction.

However, France also does not allow early voting or mail-in voting. French citizens living abroad must go to a consulate or embassy to cast their ballot. You can, however, have somebody cast your ballot for you! French voters have to show a photo ID at the polls.

It’s well-established that high turnout elections benefit Democrats. While non-voters are plentiful in every demographic group, they are disproportionately low-income, young and non-white. It’s hard to say what our politics would look like if three-quarters of us voted, but it’s safe to say they would look significantly different.