French connections
A recipe for success in snap elections
Sarah Durieux
A Feminist activist, Sarah Durieux has led numerous social movements, including the victorious campaign to enshrine the right to an abortion in the French Constitution, as well as civil society efforts during and between French parliamentary elections in 2022 and 2024. She also founded and led the mobilization platform Change.org France.
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Snap elections aren’t a ‘thing’ in France. Most of our political parties assume they have time to plan ahead when it comes to winning votes (time they often fail to use wisely) and civil society actors usually stay away from active political organizing. So to suddenly find ourselves with three weeks to win against the far right, who were polling at 32% after the European election, was a completely new experience for political and civil society forces.
It took us thirty minutes to set up a call with 50 of the best campaigners in France from a range of different civil society organizations. And another hour to create a Whatsapp community called No RN (Rassemblement National) à Matignon (the prime minister’s residence) to organize the organizers.
Within a few hours, we had most of the pieces in place to run the most successful and engaging electoral campaign for progressives in years.
How did we do it?
When Macron made his announcement, we were all exhausted from demonstrating again and again against his pension reforms, the security law, and near constant attacks on our freedoms and social protections. Unintentionally, Macron re-energized the movement – it turns out the best thing you can give campaigners is an urgent deadline, a simple call to action, and a theory of change to win.
Three ingredients for success
One: an urgent deadline
We had three weeks to unite the political left, then two more to ensure that no candidates from the extreme right were elected. Time was our most precious resource. Some people worked day and night on the campaign – taking leaves of absence from work – but we also made it possible for people to invest an hour, or just a minute. Our campaign was built on offering different levels of engagement for everyone who wanted to get involved.
Two: a simple call to action – VOTE!
With elections, the call to action is always sharp and clear – but this time round we incorporated additional narrative elements for specific audiences. For the grumpy left, wary of other members of the coalition, it was Vote NFP, because we’re better off together than divided against hate. For undecided, center-left, and center-right voters, it was Vote NFP for a better, healthier, and fairer life. And for abstainers, it was Don’t let other people decide your future.
Across the board, the main driver was still Stop the far right – and while it was effective, it’s not a message I think we can rely on indefinitely.
Three: a theory of change
Our basic message was clear: if we allow the right to win a majority in parliament, they will vote for laws that change our lives. In the second round of voting, however, there was a danger that extreme right candidates would be elected if anti-RN votes were split between the NFP and Macron’s candidates, so we shifted our strategy to encourage candidates who’d arrived third to drop out and started asking people to support a Républican front. The strategy was extremely successful – which is why many of us feel so betrayed by Macron’s decision to name a right-wing prime minister and a government which relies on the support of the far right to stay in power.
Decentralized organizing - the secret spice in our recipe for success
Over the last few years, progressive organizations in France have worked hard to build relationships based on trust, resulting in a civil society ecosystem united in its determination to resist attacks on our social rights and freedoms.
Initiatives such as La rencontre des Justices (designed to encourage climate, anti-racist, feminist and civil rights campaigners to work together ahead of the 2022 presidential election) and La Primaire Populaire (a large civil society-led campaign which promoted the idea of a necessary coalition of the political left) made it easier for progressive parties to unite around a common program and a shared strategy. Collaborative actions – such as climate campaigners dancing on union trucks, or feminist and antiracist organizations marching together for economic justice – helped people affiliated with different civil society organizations feel part of a single movement, in which everyone remained free to engage in the election campaign with their own words, visuals, and tactics.
Within our campaigner Whatsapp community, we shared narrative guides, poll analyses, and recommendations – and encouraged people from different organizations to interpret them according to their own priorities, communicate them in their own style, and distribute them across their preferred channels.
We also decentralized door-to-door canvassing. Instead of interviewing or instructing volunteers, we listed actions people could take on a Notion page and shared leaflets and posters they could print. We offered resources, support (and trust) rather than centralized control.
After the first round of voting, data analysts created maps of priority districts (where it was possible that extreme right groups could win) and shared them with supporters. We used social media to organize Convoys of Victory so that people – many of whom had never participated in an election campaign before – could canvas these priority districts. We invited social media influencers to join our convoys. We decentralized phone banking. Three of the organizations in our Whatsapp community put together the largest phone banking call in French history. Volunteers were trained on zoom, then put to work on the phones, then debriefed together in zoom sessions which quickly became a testament to the motivational power of collective action.
In short, we were able to activate an enormous base of supporters thanks to a combination of stronger ties built over years between progressive organizations and the effective use of digital organizing methods and tools. As a result, the NFP won the largest number of votes in Macron’s snap election. The recipe works, in other words – and the more we share it, the better our chances become of winning an absolute majority at the next election!