Cleavage Voting and Issue Voting in France

European political parties are constructed on the basis of religious and professional cleavages, with the leftist parties taking up the cause of the rights of workers, and the parties on the right representing the interests of the middle and upper classes. France is no exception to this rule. The pioneering work of Michelat and Simon (1977) has brought to light two "heavy" variables of electoral sociology: social class and religion. [First lines