Legislative elections in France | An amorphous campaign with an uncertain outcome

Discreet. Sluggish. Soporific. Non-existent. Adjectives abound to describe the legislative campaign in France.

Jean-Christophe Laurence
The Press

Despite Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s efforts to animate the debate with his left-wing coalition, the lack of interest can be measured even in the media, which only deal with the subject after Ukraine, purchasing power, the crises in emergencies or miscellaneous events.

Unsurprisingly, the polls predict a very low turnout for this election, the first round of which is scheduled for this Sunday, and the second a week later.

If the trend continues, we could even reach a record rate of 55% abstention, 4 points more than in 2017, unheard of for national elections.

What is this disengagement due to?

For structural reasons, first.

Because they take place in the wake of the presidential election (six weeks later this year), legislative elections are generally decided in advance: it is always the president’s party that wins. This “formality” means that the electorate mobilizes less from the outset.

For strategic reasons, then.

For Olivier Ihl, professor of politics at the University of Grenoble, it is clear that Emmanuel Macron and his new government alliance (Together) have deliberately neutralized the debate for electoral purposes.

“It’s not a coincidence, it’s intentional,” explains the political scientist. The power in place is counting on an invisible, amorphous campaign, because that encourages abstention. However, this abstention should benefit him because it generally affects people who are dissatisfied: students, workers, people on the far right, who are not his electorate. »

Finally, for “pandemic” reasons.

We have not yet finished measuring the impacts of COVID-19 on our lives, but for political scientist Thomas Guénolé, there is no doubt that the health crisis has put the priorities back in order for a large part of the population.

“With this house arrest for several months, we all asked ourselves questions about ourselves and where we are at in our lives, observes the political scientist. Coming out of this, there are things that seem less important to us than before, and professional political life is one of them. Let’s say we prefer to cultivate our garden…”

The NUPES, despite everything

There is still a little action in this campaign without relief, and we owe it to the leader of the radical left party La France insoumise, Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

Boosted by his surprising third place in the presidential election, this veteran of French politics has pulled off a masterstroke by forcing the creation of a left-wing coalition over which he reigns as king and master.

The NUPES (New Popular Ecological and Social Union) brings together not only its political formation, but also the Socialists, the Greens and the Communists, three parties severely damaged in the presidential election, which take advantage of this alliance to exist, at the cost of compromises which do not were not unanimous.

Mélenchon, 70, is betting that this common front will awaken a left-wing electorate eager for unity and will win an absolute majority in the National Assembly (289 seats out of 577). He believes that this cohabitation would force Emmanuel Macron to appoint him prime minister. A scenario that the latter openly rejected this week, arguing that no political party “can impose a name on the president”.

The problem for Macron is that his choice, whatever it is, would then have to be submitted to an Assembly dominated by… Mélenchon’s NUPES.

It is still necessary that Mélenchon wins his bet, which is far from being done.

Despite a clear dynamic giving it a slight advantage in the first round, the polls for the moment only give between 175 and 215 seats for NUPES, against 260 to 300 for Macronie at the end of the second round. With this score, the left-wing coalition would however impose itself as an official opposition force, far ahead of Les Républicains (30 to 50 seats) and the National Rally (20 to 30 seats).

“What is interesting with this campaign is that, although it is sluggish, it is uncertain,” emphasizes Jean Petaux. The political scientist estimates that the NUPES has “3 out of 10 chances of winning”, a “limited hypothesis, but not zero”. For this, NUPES would have to come out on top in the first round in a “significant number of constituencies and with a considerable gap compared to Together”.

Faced with this sudden threat, Emmanuel Macron gave a boost in the media this week. Aiming at Mélenchon and Marine Le Pen, the president notably castigated the “extreme” who “propose to add crisis to crisis by returning to the major historical choices of [la] Nation” and asked the French to grant him “a strong and clear majority” in the legislative elections.

To be continued.