why the seat projections published between the two rounds were so far from the final result

A hemicycle different from the one drawn by the polls. The New Popular Front (NFP) emerged victorious from the second round of the legislative elections on Sunday, July 7, winning 180 seats in the National Assembly, according to the Ministry of the Interior. The presidential camp managed to save the day with 163 elected deputies, while the National Rally (RN) and its allies, given as the big favorites in the election, ultimately only obtained 143 seats, coming in 3rd position.

Before the first round, polling institutes predicted a wave of navy blue in the National Assembly. An Ipsos-Talan projection for France Télévisions, Radio France, France 24, RFI and LCP dated June 30 credited the RN and its allies with 230 to 280 seats. The RN’s weight in the chamber was then significantly reduced in the estimates. The last estimate before the second round, published Friday, only imagined between 175 and 205 RN deputies. But despite this readjustment, it is far from the final result.

Sunday night, “It was a complete surprise. I’m not going to tell you that we had planned it.”acknowledged the director of the Elabe institute, Bernard Sananès, on Monday, speaking to RMC. On June 30, the pollster had estimated an absolute majority for the RN as probable, giving it between 255 and 295 seats, before lowering this interval to 200-230 five days later.

The reason for this misunderstanding? “THE Republican front played more than we thought, more than we had in the models and in the declarations” of those polled, justified Bernard Sananès. The Elabe institute had indeed predicted, in its poll of July 5, that 62% of NFP voters would vote for Ensemble in the second round in the event of a duel between an RN candidate and a competitor from the presidential camp. They were finally 72% to postpone their vote in favor of a representative of Macronie, according to a study by Ipsos-Talan, or 10 points more than expected.

The same goes for NFP-RN duels: the Elabe poll predicted that 32% of Ensemble voters would give their vote to the candidate of the left union, while 43% of them did so when it was an LFI candidate, and 54% when the candidate carried the PS, EELV or PCF label. “The left’s comeback is not impossible because it benefits from the Republican front. There is uncertainty about the order of arrival”predicted Frédéric Dabi, general director of the Ifop polling institute, in “C à vous” on Friday. The number of seats obtained by the NFP is also in the upper range of the institute’s latest estimates.

According to Hugo Touzet, a sociologist specializing in polls, the unprecedented nature of this election has complicated the exercise of projections in the chamber. “These legislative elections were called after a dissolution, announced the day after an election in which the RN was dynamic and the left separated, the campaign time was very short… We could not refer to a previous election”he explains to franceinfo.

During the campaign, “We have seen in a very short time a ‘re-demonization’ of the National Rally.The media have noted racist remarks, excesses, and signs of incompetence from RN candidates. But there has also been a massive mobilization of civil society against the extreme right.”analyzes Hugo Touzet.

“These unprecedented and very rapid political dynamics were not captured in the projections.”

Hugo Touzet, survey specialist

to franceinfo

Without knowing whether this cost them their place in the National Assembly, several RN candidates singled out for racist or conspiratorial remarks during the campaign were beaten in the second round, such as Françoise Billaud in Côtes-d’Armor or Annie Bell in Mayenne.

Very early in the campaign, the Polling Commission had also recalled in a press release that the seat projections had to be taken with a pinch of salt, due to the voting method specific to legislative elections. “Such an exercise does not have the same methodological frameworks as surveys and remains dependent on a large number of parameters, often specific to each of the 577 constituencies”.

In other words: national voting intentions are not reflected in the same way within each constituency. Since there is not one, but 577 elections, “Even with a representative sample, political dynamics are difficult to capture in seat projectionsbelieves Hugo Touzet. Especially in constituencies where the election was decided by a few hundred votes.” For example, in Sarthe, Marie-Caroline Le Pen (RN), sister of Marine Le Pen, was beaten by the candidate Elise Le Boucher (NFP), who obtained… 225 more votes.