The shortest electoral campaign in decades and the one that could bring the greatest changes to France began this Monday with a clear favorite in the polls: the National Regroupment (RN), an ultranationalist and eurosceptic party led by Marine Le Pen. The left, the center and the moderate right have two weeks to mobilize their voters in the face of the possibility of a prime minister and a far-right government.
The legislative elections of June 30 and July 7 are the result of President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to dissolve the National Assembly after losing resoundingly to the RN in the European elections on June 9. With his decision, Macron gave the parties a few days to form coalitions, close programs and designate candidates. Perhaps he expected chaos in the opposition, but the deadline ended on Sunday and the candidacies are closed and the parties are ready to act.
The polls on the first round, the most reliable at this point, are unanimous: the Lepenists will be the most voted, with ranges of 30% to 35%. The leftist alliance baptized as the New Popular Front, in reference to the anti-fascist bloc of the 1930s, moves between 25% and 29%. That the electoral advance operation may have gone badly for Macron is proven by the polls, which place his candidacy in third position, with a margin of between 17% and 20%.
For the second round, projections have circulated that give the RN – today the first opposition party, with 88 deputies – more than 200 seats. To reach the absolute majority, 289 are required, but in any case, and according to these projections, they would be the first group in the National Assembly. The unknown, based on these hypotheses, is whether the Lepenists could reach an absolute majority, or close to it, and claim the right to form a Government in cohabitation with President Macron and Jordan Bardella, Le Pen’s right-hand man, as the first Minister. Or if there would be an alternative majority: a republican front that would prevent the party with the most votes from coming to power.
But the projections in number of seats must be read with caution, due to the very nature of these elections, which are in reality 577 simultaneous elections, and two rounds, one in each electoral district. The two candidates with the most votes in the first round and those who exceed 12.5% of the total registered voters, including abstainers, qualify for the second round. This means that, with high turnout, there may be triangular runoffs in some districts. After the first round, in addition, there will be alliances between parties and candidates against the RN or in some cases against the radical left. There are too many variables to anticipate the final distribution of seats.
Macronist deputy Patrick Vignal represents a district in Montpellier and its surroundings where the National Regroupment won 35% of the vote in the European elections. He has an uphill battle and finds it difficult for his party to come first on the 30th, but he does not lose hope.
Join Morning Express to follow all the news and read without limits.
Subscribe
“I think,” says Vignal by phone, “that we will reach voting day side by side with this popular front that is a hodgepodge, a sum of people who hate each other.” This macronist and former socialist alludes to the fact that the New Popular Front brings together a heterogeneous coalition. Parties and people ranging from the anti-capitalist extreme left in favor of removing France from NATO, to former president François Hollande, a social democrat whose economic and international policy was not very different from that of Macron. The current president was his advisor before betraying him and running on his own in the 2017 presidential elections. Now Hollande is a candidate for the National Assembly for his usual district in the department of Corrèze.
Electoral alliances like the New Popular Front have practical utility. Instead of breaking up the vote between the parties that make up it (insumisos, ecologists, communists and socialists) and risk not qualifying any for the second round, they concentrate the vote on a single candidate. This way they guarantee passage to the second round and the options of fighting for the seat and preventing the extreme right from taking it.
Others, without forming formal alliances, have made similar decisions that reflect a mix of principles and self-interest. The Macronists, in a position of weakness, will not present candidates in 65 districts where they believe they have few options and where candidates from the moderate right of Los Republicanos (LR) or socialists who they believe are compatible with their ideas are presented. It is the way to strengthen them in the face of the thriving RN candidates. In exchange, there are districts where LR gives way to the Macronists.
To further complicate the equation, it turns out that today in France there are two LR brands. One, led by Éric Ciotti, who is legally his president, although his political bureau dismissed him last week due to his pacts with Le Pen. Ciotti presents 62 candidates and will support Le Pen’s candidates in the rest of the country. The other LR brand is that of the barons, deputies and senators, who present 400 candidates.
The greatest risk, on June 30, is for LR and for Ensemble (Together), the list that brings together the three Macronist parties: Renacimiento, Horizontes and MoDem. Deputy Vignal, like so many in the outgoing majority, is not at all happy with the president, because having dissolved the National Assembly without consulting them or notifying them, he sends them to elections in which they have a lot to lose. In the president’s ranks, the discomfort with the leader is deep.
“It was not elegant, he decided it alone,” says the Montpellier deputy, although he bites the bullet and affirms, alluding to the blockages in the chamber that made it difficult to continue governing: “In a way, it was not possible to continue like this.” What he is clear about, like others, is that Macron will not appear on the electoral posters, whose unpopularity makes him a problem for many candidates: “We need [el primer ministro] “Gabriel Attal campaigns, not the president… Even if it is a little unfair for the president.”
Follow all the international information onFacebook andxor inour weekly newsletter.
.
.
_