Data, Measures and Methods Patrimony and French presidential vote choice: Evidence from the 2012 election Éric Bélanger a, * , Richard Nadeau b , Mathieu Turgeon c , Michael S. Lewis-Beck d and Martial Foucault e a Department of Political Science, McGill University, 855 Shebrooke Street West, Quebec, Montreal, H3A 2T7, Canada. E-mail: eric.belanger3@mcgill.ca b Department of Political Science, University of Montreal, C.P. 6128, Succursale Centre-ville, Quebec, Montreal, H3C 3J7, Canada. E-mail: richard.nadeau@umontreal.ca c Instituto de Ciência Política, Universidade de Brasília, Campus Darcy Ribeiro, Asa Norte, Brasília (DF) CEP 70904-970, Brazil. E-mail: turgeon@unb.br d Department of Political Science, University of Iowa, Iowa, Iowa City, 52242, USA. E-mail: michael-lewis-beck@uiowa.edu e Sciences Po, 27 rue Saint-Guillaume, Paris, 75007, France. E-mail: martial.foucault@sciences-po.org *Corresponding author. A previous version of this article was presented at the 2013 annual meetings of the American Political Science Association, Chicago. Abstract Studies of French voting behavior have pioneered the inclusion of patri- mony in explanations of vote choice in presidential elections. Patrimony, as measured by the number of assets that an individual owns, has been found to matter to vote choice in recent French presidential elections. Can we say that its influence has continued with the latest 2012 presidential election, which took place in the context of the European eco- nomic crisis? We explore this question using TNS Sofres survey data. We find that patrimony continued to matter in 2012, that it clearly distinguished supporters of Nicolas Sarkozy from those of François Hollande, and that its effect on second-round vote choice was distinct from that of other socioeconomic determinants. These findings provide further support for the idea that capital income needs to be taken into account when assessing the relationship between individual wealth and voting behavior. French Politics (2014) 12, 59–68. doi:10.1057/fp.2014.3 Keywords: France; voting behavior; patrimony; 2012 presidential election © 2014 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1476-3419 French Politics Vol. 12, 1, 59–68 www.palgrave-journals.com/fp/