ABSTRACT
Introduction The idea that a religious vote exists in France has a long pedigree. Historians have shown that Catholicism has been in conflict with the Republic since the French Revolution and throughout the nineteenth century (Rémond 1963; Cholvy 1991). Religious and political choice thus overlapped very closely. Good Catholics voted for the right and non-Catholics (or Catholics who had turned away from their Church) for the left. The left-right cleavage overlapped widely with the debate about the ‘two Frances’: on the one hand, Catholic France, and on the other hand, anti-religious France. Right-wing voters were in favour of a return to monarchy or a conservative Republic which would recognise the Church’s power. To be left-wing meant both to be in favour of secularism and to argue for less clerical power.
