A strategic council was held on Tuesday June 7 at the headquarters of the Les Républicains party. A gathering of great chefs, first for “take a joint family photo”, summarizes one of them, as if to clarify that there was this need to send back in public the image of a camp still united. The main thing was elsewhere.
The meeting was an opportunity for the tenors of LR to exchange “(their) impressions and feedback from the field”, indicates one of them. Because they are all currently touring France to support aspiring members of parliament. “What comes out of itindicates one of them, it’s that the impression we have does not correspond to what we say at the national level”. Also, this election leaves the great elected LRs perplexed, who refuse to make any quantified prognosis on the number of seats expected. The right-wing strategists want to believe that they will resist much better than expected and that they can still save many of the hundred or so deputies they have today.
First reason for hope: return trips, with “rooms much better filled than at the end of the presidential election”, slips a former minister. Second reason: local polls commissioned by LR in some constituencies, which predict more seats than national polls. Third reason: the bad campaign of the majority. A senator wants to believe that “Macron candidates leave with lead soles. The president’s strategy of a campaign on chloroform only works in calm weather … except that they have chained the glitches”, rejoices the same. The controversy Damien Abad, that around the appointment of the Minister of Education Pap Ndiaye, or even the violence on the sidelines of the Champions League final suggest at LR that voters will turn away from the Macron vote.
Last reason for hope: abstention, which Les Républicains anticipate at more than 50%. “The configuration is that of a partial legislative”, analyzes a member of the strategic council. According to him, the springs of the ballot will be the same as during these exceptional elections, organized when a deputy is prevented from exercising his mandate and that it is necessary to summon the voters a little hastily. In general, these elections result in low participation and a typical electorate to be convinced: elders, merchants, heads of small businesses, craftsmen, self-employed. “Our electorate, more legitimist and more rural, moves more than the others”, is also reassured a great elected official. Verdict Sunday at 8 p.m.