In January, all of the most popular political publications linked to the pension reform come from the Rassemblement National or the Nupes.
To try to convince the French of the merits of the pension reform, the government will hardly be able to count on Facebook. In a few weeks, the opponents of the reform – La France insoumise and Rassemblement national in the lead – have literally preempted the debate on the platform, according to figures collected by Tech&Co thanks to the Crowdtangle statistics tool, belonging to Facebook.
Tech&Co analyzed all Facebook videos containing the terms “retirement” or “retirements” posted during the month of January 2023, to isolate those posted by political accounts. Of the fifty most popular sequences, all have been published by elected officials from Nupes (32) or RN (18).
LFI and RN: almost a grand slam
At the National Rally, success is mainly based on videos posted online by the accounts of Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella. Their sequences evoking the subject cumulate between them more than 2.7 million views in the month of January. Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, one of Facebook’s political stars, manages to exceed one million videos viewed on the subject.
On the opposition to the pension reform, Marine Le Pen is at the origin video the most watched in January: put online on January 10, it has accumulated nearly 800,000 views. It shows an intervention by Marine Le Pen at the National Assembly, questioning Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne.
“Madam Prime Minister, do you sincerely think that it is good for the country to propose a pension reform with a view to shifting the retirement age, to which 70% of French people are opposed”, questions the elected representative of the RN .
On the left, Ruffin dethrones Mélenchon
On the left, only one video has not been published by an elected representative of rebellious France. This is a sequence shared by the socialist Boris Vallaud, accumulating some 220,000 views to date.
The success is based, among other things, on the account of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, but above all on a swarm of deputies massively sharing videos on the subject. Among them: Clémentine Autain, Antoine Léaument, Clémence Guette, Louis Boyard and Alma Dufour.
But it is above all the deputy – still LFI – François Ruffin who wins the day, with more than 2 million videos viewed relating to the pension reform in January. Almost three times more than Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a record in the French political class on this theme.
François Ruffin is also the author of two of the five most popular sequences. The first of them, posted on January 11, has 740,000 views. Entitled “This is Macron’s hidden agenda”, she shows an intervention by the LFI elected official at the National Assembly.
“Yesterday, Judge Borne pronounced the sentence: two more years, two years firm, for the forklift drivers and the maintenance workers”, declares there in particular François Ruffin.
The second sequence (370,000 views) shows the deputy sharing the day of Serge, 61, press peddler and former forklift driver. She comes behind a sequence by Jordan Bardella (490,000 views), published on January 24, consisting of excerpts from a debate on pensions between the elected RN and Gérald Darmanin during the 2022 presidential campaign.
A breakthrough for the deputy of the Somme
Also thanks to Crowdtangle, Tech&Co has analyzed the evolution of the most popular political accounts on the subject of pensions since September, this time integrating all the videos published.
Here again, François Ruffin achieved an impressive breakthrough with nearly 5 million videos viewed in January. A success driven by the fight against pension reform, which therefore represents around 40% of its audience. Behind him, Nicolas Dupont-Aignan can count on his other recurring themes, including criticism of aid to Ukraine or the subject of vaccination, to reach 4 million videos viewed.
Marine Le Pen like Jordan Bardella just exceeded 2 million videos viewed on Facebook in January 2023, with a share of videos related to pension reform which in both cases exceeded 50%. The ratio is even higher at Jean-Luc Mélenchon, so videos on the theme of retirement account for 75% of the audience.
Despite these numerical successes, there is nothing to say that the various political figures are not reaping the fruits of this popularity at the polls. During the 2022 presidential election, Eric Zemmour and Nicolas Dupont-Aignan were among the most influential political figures on the platform, but only received 7% and 2% of the vote.
