What you believe is what you vote.

Tell me what’s your religion, I’ll tell you who will you vote for.  Even in a secular state like France, where laïcité is a part of Constitution and religion kept out of the public sphere and politics, voting intentions based on religion still exist.

Photo credit: Flickr/CC/phoenixdiaz

Catholics vote right

At 57.2%-of which 14% practicing- Catholics make up the majority of voters in France. The survey found that the outgoing president, Nicolas Sarkozy would expect to get 28% of the Catholic vote, while his rival, François Hollande would only get 25%.

Catholic voters are probably seduced by a moderate conservative right, which represents to them  a guarantee of family values, refusal of euthanasia and gay marriage. Furthermore, Nicolas Sarkozy doesn’t miss the opportunity to woo catholic voters, praising the „Christian heritage of France“. At the same time, the Catholics these days seem to be more willing to vote for National front.  Is Marine le Pen more popular than her father Jean-Marie le Pen? She surely made the National Front vote more sexy for Catholics, because the voting intentions expressed in the first round give her 13% of the Catholic vote.

Even though the Church doesn’t give any “guidelines” for voting, last October a collection of some speeches made by Cardinal André Vingt-Trois, the Archbishop of Paris and President was published. It his recent publication, Quelle société voulons-nous? (“What society do we want?”), he says no indication is given as to the vote, but he focuses on the defense of life and of the traditional family.

And let’s not forget about the Civitas movement, closely allied to the Society of  St Pius, that seeks to strengthen the traditional Catholic right and publishes regularly, on the website of the associations, articles against Francois Hollande, threat for a Catholic community.

Muslims vote  left

If  Francois Hollande can’t count on Catholics’ votes, he can surely be happy about the 85% of Muslim voters that would chose him as their candidate for the second election turn.

Traditionally on the left, the Muslim vote will definitely stay that way after the Sarkozy’s  laws  on burqua and the rightification of his politics, with its focus on immigration, radical Islam and Muslim mores.  The tensions rose especially after the tragic bloodshed in Toulouse and the Sarkozy’s ban of  some imams from entering France to the conference organized by the Union of French Islamic Organizations (UOIF).  Of course, Marine le Pen stays the enemy number 1 of Muslim voters because of her pronounced anti-immigration and often anti-Islam discourse.

Religious vote obviously does exist. But even if we count in the Protestants and Jewish voters (which, long close to socialist party tend to move to the right), the religious voters represent merely 30% of electorate. Not enough to decide on the final election result.