Cherished myths die hard. Therefore, the poll that showed Marine Le Pen as the favored personality amongst working class voters in France, garnering 36% of working class votes far in advance of her nearest rivals, aroused consternation amongst the punditocracy. "Marine seduces the workers" and "workers wake up" they cried, as if the handwriting was not already just on the wall but glaring from billboards and flashing neon signs.
Le Monde had an op-ed warning the workers that Le Pen would bring back Vichy-France with its family, fatherland and labor triad and would ditch the Euro for a worthless Franc consigning the workers to shanty towns.
This kind of warning is simply not going to work.
The working class is the party that is in closest contact with the immigrant problem. People just off the plane to not flock to posh neighborhoods where property values act as a regulator deterring immigrants. It is in the former ceintures rouges --red belts of working class populations surrounding the cities--that the immigrants settle and live cheek by jowl with the working class.
It is the working class that is most dependent on state welfare benefits. When immigration produces a strain on such services, the indigent population is the one most adversely affected by delays in getting medical attention or referrals to public housing.
With the decline in traditional industries in Europe and the austerity politics practiced there today, the result is massive unemployment coupled with the decline of the social cushion. It is natural for the working class to view the immigrants as competitors for jobs and benefits.
In Italy, at the last regional elections, the anti-immigrant Northern League pocketed many working class neighborhoods that had formerly been the preserve of the left. In the British parliamentary elections, the National Front posed the greatest challenge in working class neighborhoods such as Barking.
Trade union leaders in France, while unhappy with the polls, blamed Le Pen's score on broken promises by coalitions of the right and left and claimed that they were prepared to show the workers why they should not place their confidence in Le Pen by reasoned analyses.