Clément Viktorovitch returns every week to the debates and political issues. Sunday September 24: the primaries, this method of designation to which we have successively lent all the qualities… and all the faults.
What are primaries called? A formidable tool for the conquest of power, or a machine for losing elections? This is the question that has regularly come to the forefront since the Socialist Party used this procedure to nominate its candidate for the 2012 presidential election.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon relaunched this debate, through a statement which caused a stir in the show Backseat, on the stage of the Fête de l’Humanité. “We will never go to the primaries for a reason proven by history, the primary destroys everyone who participates in it. All those who participated in the primaries never came out alive,” he explains in particular, on September 15. “Secondly, the primary always gives the bonus to the one who divides the least, who scares the least. And it ended in general disarray”, he adds. In summary, this in any case seems to be a bad start for possible Nupes primaries in 2027.
A system that favors the least divisive?
The whole problem with primaries is that you can see everything and its opposite. Jean-Luc Mélenchon tells us, for example, that they have the effect of giving the advantage to moderate and non-divisive candidates. Indeed, we can find examples that prove him right. In 2022, Yannick Jadot won against Sandrine Rousseau, who claimed to be more radical. The same year, Valérie Pécresse won over Eric Ciotti, who was openly more to the right. Or even, in 2012, François Hollande, who triumphed against Martine Aubry, although more to the left.
But we can find as many examples as counterexamples. In 2017, for example, Benoît Hamon and François Fillon were nominated by the primaries of the left and the right, precisely the most radical candidates. At the time, we had also heard many political leaders criticize the primaries for giving a premium to radicalism. The example of Donald Trump, in the United States, nominated by the Republican primaries, goes in the same direction. Objectively, it therefore seems difficult, today, to claim that the primaries would mechanically favor one position over another.
Sometimes a tool for cohesion
In his speech, Jean-Luc Mélenchon puts forward another idea, that which the primaries would “explode” those who participate. There are indeed precedents. Benoit Hamon saw his former primary school classmates betray him one after the other to join Emmanuel Macron, despite their commitment to supporting his candidacy. Or Yannick Jadot, for whom Sandrine Rousseau remained, until the end, more of an adversary than a support.
But here too, we can reverse the argument: for François Hollande, the primaries were a formidable tool of legitimization and cohesion, to the point that a large number of his former adversaries subsequently became his ministers. Even in the case of François Fillon, who is generally cited as the example of a candidacy which exploded in mid-air, we should not forget that it was Penelopegate and the costume affair which led to his fall. Before that, he was prancing in the polls, at the head of a united and mobilized party.
Only way for a single application
The primaries are therefore neither magical nor cursed. They are open to criticism. As political scientists Eric Treille and Rémi Lefebvre note, primaries tend to accentuate the hyperpersonalization of elections, the hysterization of debates, the weight of polls in political life, and the state of permanent campaigning.
But they also make it possible to introduce more transparency and democracy into the nomination of candidates for elections. They also have the effect of bringing, to the camps which organize them, a remarkable media spotlight. Above all, in the case of a political force fragmented into multiple parties, which is in fact the left today, the primaries are the best, if not the only way, to bring out a single candidacy.
A unique list, but for Europeans
If Jean-Luc Mélenchon is therefore hostile to this idea, perhaps we should see an element of strategy in it. He clearly wants to guarantee himself the assurance of being able to present a rebellious candidacy in the next presidential election.
Note that this does not prevent him, at the same time, from pleading for a single, left-wing list in the European elections. A vote historically unfavorable to his movement. Union is therefore yes, when it is for its benefit. In the meantime, in the absence of a single primary in which all components agree to compete and all participants accept the result, NUPES is heading for 2027 towards what it experienced in 2022: division.