a bitter disappointment for Xavier Bertrand, eliminated in the first round of the congress

Surprise poster for the second round of the nomination of the candidate Les Républicains in the 2022 presidential elections: Éric Ciotti will face Valérie Pécresse. Poll favorite Xavier Bertrand has been eliminated. “Cruel disillusion this evening for Xavier Bertrand, who we saw earlier at his groggy HQ, eyes red after the defeat. He misses the second round for less than 3,000 votes only”, indicates the journalist Julien Nény, in duplex Thursday, December 2 from the headquarters of the party Les Républicains.

It is the end of the presidential ambition of the president of the regional council of Hauts-de-France, “which he had nevertheless constructed methodically for 13 years, to bet everything on this deadline of 2022”, reports the journalist. According to Julien Nény’s analysis, this defeat is also the failure of a strategy: “first his departure from LR in 2017, then his bet to start alone, without competition, to establish himself as the natural candidate of his camp”, he lists. “All that, in the end, weighed more heavily than the polls which were nevertheless favorable to him”, concludes the journalist. Xavier Bertrand confirmed Thursday, December 2 to give up his national political future.