Marine Le Pen’s National Rally movement won 18.68% of the vote on Sunday June 12 in the first round of the French legislative elections and more than a million additional votes compared to the 2017 legislative elections. history that allows you to glimpse a record number of deputies to the National Assembly.
“We are here, we are good here, we are in a strong dynamic since 2017.” Marine Le Pen had a smile on Monday, June 13, the day after the first round of the general elections, during her visit to Rouvroy, in her fief Pas-de-Calais, in the north of the country.
Obtaining 18.68% of the vote on Sunday night, his party can expect the election of “dozens of deputies” to the National Assembly. But, above all, Agrupación Nacional (AN) has made considerable progress in five years. He obtained 1,258,172 votes more than in the first round of the 2017 legislative elections, which represents an increase of 5.48 points.
“We are the only ones who are actually in a strong dynamic since 2017, because between 2017 and today the left and the extreme left are in decline or stagnation; the Republic on the March (Macron’s party) is in strong decline; LR (The Republicans ) are playing to survive and the National Association is making strong progress”, considered the outgoing deputy from Pas-de-Calais, who, with 53.96% of the votes but with insufficient participation, has failed in her re-election from the first lap and must go to second this Sunday, June 19.
“It is a historic result for the extreme right as a whole as this bloc gets more than 5 million votes,” underlines sociologist Ugo Palheta, professor at the University of Lille and author of the book ‘The Possibility of Fascism’. “Never had (the extreme right) been present, in the last 40 years, in so many second rounds. The National Association can do better than in 1986, when there was proportionality.”
At that time, the extreme right was led by Jean-Marie Le Pen and his party, the National Front, had obtained 35 deputies in the 1986 legislative elections, thanks in particular to the introduction of departmental proportionality.
36 years later and without proportionality, the daughter of the founder of the extreme right-wing party could do better. The National Association will present, on Sunday, June 19, more than 200 candidates in the second round.
An ever deeper electoral anchor
However, the legislative campaign carried out by Marine Le Pen was not very offensive, even timid. He went on vacation after his defeat in the presidential elections against Emmanuel Macron and offered for his media return two weeks later, forecasts considered demobilizing.
“I believe that the logic of the institutions wants the President of the Republic to have a majority. All those who tell something else tell fables,” he declared on May 10 on the French channel TF1, pointing to Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Then, most of the time he was content with a minimal campaign on the ground, carried out essentially in his Pas-de-Calais fiefdom.
“In order to campaign for the legislative elections, frameworks are needed throughout the territory and the National Group lacked it. But its good results in the first round show, despite everything, a very solid political and electoral anchor in several territories, with a capacity of scoring very high, even when their candidates don’t stay on track,” says Ugo Palheta, referring to the misadventures of several candidates for the National Association who have stammered their answers in debates organized by local television channels.
The National Group thus obtained very good results in the north of France, in the south-east and in the east: 12 qualified candidates for the second round of 12 in Pas-de-Calais, 8 candidates out of 8 in the Var, 5 candidates out of 6 in Gard, 5 out of 5 in L’Aisne and 8 candidates out of 9 in Moselle. In the set of these five departments there are already 26 first places out of a possible 40.
Meanwhile, the division of the extreme right did not harm Marine Le Pen, who won again and by a distance over Éric Zemmour, already knocked out in the first round of the presidential election. None of the candidates presented by Zemmour’s Reconquista party qualified in the second round of the legislative elections.
At a press conference in Paris on Monday, June 13, the interim president of the National Association, Jordan Bardella, pointed out that the Reconquista party, which obtained 4.24% of the votes nationwide, did not prevent AN from qualifying “in winable constituencies” and called on his voters “to realize that the path we are building (…) is going to take us to power”. Marine Le Pen has also “wished” that the voters of Éric Zemmour’s party vote for Le Pen’s party next Sunday.
On the other hand, Marine Le Pen’s party has done a good deal financially. By obtaining 4,248,626 votes on Sunday, he will be able to count on at least 6.9 million euros of public money each year, since each vote won entitles him to 1.64 euros per year. A welcome manna for a party indebted in more than 20 million euros.
Results clouded by Nupes dynamics
“However, the results of AN are disappointing compared to what I could have foreseen two months ago”, explains Ugo Palheta. “We are far from the more than 8 million votes obtained in the first round of the presidency. Marine Le Pen did not was able to find the answer to the dynamics of Nupes (the new left-wing platform called the New Popular, Ecological and Social Union) and will have to compose in the National Assembly with a very important left-wing bloc that, a priori, will play the role of first opposition to the government.”
On the other hand, left junction has blocked the AN pathway in numerous constituencies. In the first constituency of Hérault, for example, the AN candidate, France Jamet, was eliminated despite a score of 20.58%, while the Nupes candidate, Julien Colet, led with 26.94% of the votes. votes. In 2017, Julien Colet himself, then a member of the La Francia Insumisa party, finished third, behind France Jamet.
Will Le Pen return to her place, asserting herself as the number one opponent of Emmanuel Macron? This will depend, first of all, on the political longevity of Nupes, but also on the strategy of the President of the Republic for his second five-year term.
“Emmanuel Macron, favored since 2017 in this face-to-face with the extreme right, could now point to the left,” says Ugo Palheta.
For her part, the head of AN describes Nupes as “opposition in cardboard-paste” (a French expression to say that it is not very solid) and turns its back on the two coalitions that came out on top on Sunday, June 12, in the first round of the legislature.
“Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Emmanuel Macron defend an indigenist Republic. In the National Assembly, the AN deputies will defend the Republic, the French Constitution, secularism, the unity of the people against communitarianism,” he tweeted on Monday afternoon, thus betting on the fundamental identities of his party to mobilize his electorate. with a view to the second round.
*Adapted from its original French version
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