Emanuel Macron and his ministers have thrown all their forces into battle in recent days: the French presidential majority is threatened in the National Assembly. The French could already sanction, or limit the room for maneuver of the president they have just re-elected.
Voters return to the polls on Sunday June 12 and 19 for legislative elections often considered as a third round of the presidential election. On April 24, Emmanuel Macron won by 58.5% of the vote against the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen.
Together against Nupes
Today, the coalition of formations that support Emmanuel Macron (LREM, Modem, Horizons and Agir) is called Ensemble. Its main adversary is called Nupes (New Popular, Ecological and Social Union). This unprecedented alliance brings together left-wing parties (rebellious, socialists, ecologists and communists).
The latest polls show the two camps practically tied for the first round on June 12, in a range of 26-28% of the vote. An Elabe survey published Friday for BFMTV and Express places Ensemble at 27% and Nupes at 26.5%. An Ipsos-Sopra poll broadcast Thursday by Radio France and France Télévisions attributed 28% of voting intentions to Nupes and 27% to Ensemble.
Nervousness in the presidential camp
This uncertainty explains the nervousness who seized the presidential camp, who thought his absolute majority in the Assembly assured. This is no longer the case, even if the seat projections are difficult to achieve, due to the two-round single-member voting system.
This system favors well-established parties throughout France and penalizes small parties. In the absence of a candidate having obtained more than 50% of the votes, the second round opposes the two candidates who arrived first, and those who obtained at least 12.5%, which most often gives rise to duels. The vote transfers between the two rounds are perilous to estimate.
Objective: the cap of 289 seats
Pollsters who venture to sketch the appearance of the next assembly believe that Together should always be the first group in parliament. But with a range ranging from 260 to 300 elected, the group is not certain to keep its absolute majority (set at 289 elected out of the 577 seats in the Assembly). Without this absolute majority, the presidential group could no longer get its projects voted on without calling on outside support.
To avoid this scenario, the Head of State has embarked on the campaign. Emmanuel Macron played the card of dramatization, evoking for example the questioning of the role of France within NATO by “the extremes”, at the time “where I speak with Russia which massacres civilians in Ukraine”. He has asked voters to give him a majority”loud and clear” to enable him to implement his presidential project.
need allies
If it does not reach the milestone of 289 seats, the Ensemble group will then have to turn to the opposition, left or right, to obtain a majority, structural or on a case-by-case basis.
On the right, Les Républicains, currently the leading opposition party, could lose half of their elected officials (from 100 today to less than 55), after the fiasco of their presidential candidate Valérie Pécresse. Paradoxically, this electoral failure could tomorrow allow them to play the parliamentary support that the presidential group will need, and to negotiate their support dearly.
On the left, the leader of the Insoumis Jean-Luc Mélenchon has established himself as the strong man de la Nupes and main opponent of the president. He hammered home his ambition to impose on Emmanuel Macron a cohabitation and to become prime minister himself. An absolute majority seems out of reach for Nupes, according to opinion polls.
“A winning strategy”
But Nupes, which brings together left-wing parties for the first time in 25 years, is the phenomenon that has focused attention throughout the campaign. “Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s strategy, which consisted of bringing together the four major left-wing parties within a unified coalition and investing a candidate from this Nupes in each of the constituencies, is a winning strategy. Opposite, the campaign of Rassemblement National was almost absent. And that of the presidential majority is limited in its impact”analyzes Pierre Mattiot, director of Sciences-Po Lille.
The National Rally of Marine Le Pen is ten points behind the first two groups, around 20% of the voting intentions. It would nevertheless multiply its current number of seats several times, while the RN had only obtained eight representatives in 2017.
Cabinet reshuffle
Fourteen ministers from the current government are running for the legislative elections, including the new Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne. It is the first time that she submits to the votes of the voters, in a constituency of Calvados a priori favorable to the outgoing majority. The ministers who will not be elected will have to leave the government, which will lead to a more or less significant reshuffle depending on the results of June 19.
At the end of an electoral campaign which did not arouse passions, we expect a high rate of abstention.