After the July election, the new sociological composition of the National Assembly appears to be very similar to that of the previous legislature.
A man of nearly 50, re-elected and a civil service executive: this is the typical profile of the new deputy. On Thursday, July 18, the eleven parliamentary groups submitted to the general secretariat of the presidency of the National Assembly a political declaration signed by their members and associates. These documents, which mark the opening of the new legislature, define the final composition of the lower house.
Published on the National Assembly website this Friday, they allowed franceinfo to draw a portrait of the representatives of French women and men, who must sit in the chamber until the next legislative elections, scheduled for 2029.
Nearly three quarters of those elected were already deputies
“The sociological composition of the new National Assembly differs very little from that of the previous legislature. And for good reason, 73% of the deputies were re-elected.”explains Martial Foucault, university professor at Sciences Po Paris and former director of Cevipof. This is the highest re-election rate of the Fifth Republic. “It was therefore difficult to expect a profound renewal of the lower house,” he adds. In the 2022 legislative elections, the re-election rate of outgoing deputies was 47%.
Of the 577 deputies, 76 were elected in the first round, including 68 incumbents. This is fifteen times more than in 2022, when there were only five: Alexis Corbière, Danièle Obono, Sophia Chikirou and Sarah Legrain, elected under the LFI label and Yannick Favennec-Bécot, candidate of the presidential camp. This gap is notably a consequence of the sharp increase in participation, which helped the candidates to meet one of the two criteria for winning in the first round: collecting the votes of at least a quarter of the registered voters in their constituency.
Their average age is 49 years and 7 months.
The average age of new deputies is around fifty: 49 years and 7 months, according to the National Assembly website. This figure is up compared to previous years. In 2017 and 2022, the average age was 48 years and 10 months. “Given the number of outgoing members re-elected, this ageing is hardly surprising and confirms that the newly elected members are on average 2 years younger than the outgoing members”underlines Martial Foucault.
The youngest member of the hemicycle is the RN deputy for the Ardennes Flavien Termet, aged 22. Born on 29 January 2002, the new deputy is close to the absolute record. Only Louis Boyard (LFI) and Tematai Le Gayic (Tavini Huiraatira) were younger when they were elected in 2022, at 21.
On the other side of the age pyramid, the oldest member of the chamber remains José Gonzalez, 81 years old. A member of the RN since 1977, the elected representative from Bouches-du-Rhône already held this status during the previous legislature, his first. It was he who chaired the inaugural session on Thursday, and who spoke for a keynote speech, as provided for in the Assembly’s internal regulations.
In detail, La France insoumise holds the record for youth with an average age of 42 years. Just behind, we find Eric Ciotti’s micro-party, A droite, whose average age is 45 and a half years among its 16 deputies, followed by the Ecologiste et social group, with an average of 47 and a half years. Conversely, the two groups with the highest average age are Liot, (almost 58 years), and Les Démocrates (55 and a half years).
More than a third are women, a share that is slightly declining
The new National Assembly is composed of 208 women (36%) and 369 men (64%), a decrease compared to the previous legislature (37.3%). This decrease is part of a general downward trend since 2017. The decline in parity can be attributed, in part, to the limited time available to parties to present candidates in these early legislative elections.
“We observe a trend according to which the more the deputies are located on the right of the political spectrum, the smaller the proportion of women is”also advances Martial Foucault. Eric Ciotti’s group has 25% women, while Les Républicains has 29.8%. As for the RN, it has 33.3% female deputies in its ranks. Conversely, the groups that best respect parity are the Ecologist and Social group with 18 women (47.4%) and 20 men as well as Ensemble pour la République (41.4%).
A majority belong to the CSP+
The National Assembly is mainly composed of 60% elected representatives belonging to the category of executives and higher intellectual professions, according to the INSEE classification. However, executives represent only 21.6% of the French employed population, according to the same institute. “The lower house is far from the concept of mirror representation of its social body since the represented and the representatives do not share cultural, social and geographical traits”estimates Martial Foucault. Workers are thus practically absent from the hemicycle, with less than 1% of deputies, while they constitute 19.1% of the population, according to INSEE. For the political scientist“only a draw could allow us to get closer to the real face of the population.”
In the National Rally, 58.7% of deputies are CSP+. On the Ensemble side, executives and higher intellectual professions represent 66.7% of deputies. This rate rises to 76.3% for the Ecologist and Social group and 78.8% for the Socialists. Although the CSP+ rate remains high for La France insoumise-NFP (58.3%), it is the group with the most diversity in its ranks. Indeed, there are 13.9% employees, 15.3% intermediate professions and 4.2% workers. It is the only group, with the RN (2.4%), which has elected deputies from the working class.