In a short ironic text published this week in Opinion, the deputy editor of the daily, Olivier Auguste, imagined a Council of Ministers chaired by the candidate of the radical left Jean-Luc Mélenchon. There would be a “Minister of Degrowth” and another “responsible for the Cancellation of the debt and in charge of the Taxation of the rich”. Yet another would have the title of minister of “Alienation at work, responsible for the 32-hour week and retirement at age 60.” Obviously, there would be a Minister of “National Re-education, responsible for the elimination of gendered behavior in nursery school”.
However, 48 hours before the first round of the French legislative elections, humor is no longer appropriate. The union of the left led by the leader of La France insoumise, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, would it be able to win a majority as some polls seem to indicate? This is the question that everyone is asking and which even forced the president, Emmanuel Macron, until then silent, to enter the campaign a few days before the election.
Even if only 21% of French people believe it is possible that in just over a week, Jean-Luc Mélenchon will become prime minister, the progression of his vote risks at the very least fragmenting the presidential majority, observers believe. The most recent Opinion Way poll shows that with 25% of the voting intentions, the left-wing parties grouped in the New Popular, Ecological and Social Union (NUPES) are hot on the heels of the presidential majority renamed Renaissance, which receives 28%. The Ipsos-Sopra Steria poll conducted a few days earlier even gave NUPES a percentage point lead over the presidential party.
What majority?
In number of seats, however, the left is only credited with 160 to 200 elected officials. Not enough to govern, but enough to narrowly deprive the president of an absolute majority (289 elected). The right-wing parties (Rassemblement national, Les Républicains, Reconquête) may well total 35% of the vote, as they present themselves in scattered order, they were practically absent from this campaign. Only certainty: the abstention promises to be phenomenal. Barely 46% of voters are preparing to vote. A new record after that of 2017 (48.7%).
It must be said that with the exception of the president in recent days, Jean-Luc Mélenchon is practically the only one to have really campaigned. A campaign started on the hats of wheels from the evening of the second round of the presidential election under the provocative slogan “Mélenchon prime minister”. A campaign which went from controversy to controversy, so much so that, contrary to the rules of the French audiovisual sector, the NUPES occupied in May more than half of the speaking time devoted to this election on the radio and the television.
While the new government led by the very unobtrusive Elisabeth Borne seemed stricken with apathy, the leader of the Insoumis has continued to spark controversy. The latest was triggered by the death last Saturday of a young woman shot dead in Paris by police who allegedly felt their life was threatened by a driver refusing to stop. Accustomed to inflammatory statements against the police, Mélenchon immediately wrote on Twitter : “The police kill and the factional group Alliance justifies the shootings and the death for “refusal to comply”. Shame is when? The outcry was assured.
Macron comes out of the woods
How to explain the sudden popularity of the one who did not cross the bar of the second round in the presidential election? Certainly, the skill of the tribune to bring together for the first time in history under the aegis of the radical left the greens and the socialists has a lot to do with it. But, according to editorial writer Cécile Cornudet, it’s not just that. The voter practices more and more what is called a “strategic vote” intended to affirm “that he does not want Emmanuel Macron to have ‘full powers'”, she writes in the daily. The echoes. With the result that the polls give the president only a small majority.
Usually, the winner of the presidential election receives a bonus in the legislative election. That doesn’t seem to be the case this time around. This is “a totally new fact”, says political scientist Jérôme Jaffré in Le Figaro. Especially since “the reflex ‘all new, all beautiful’ or ‘you have to give it a chance’ does not come into play this time around”.
By brandishing the Mélenchon scarecrow, are the macronists playing at scaring themselves? Four days before the election, the president was forced out of his silence to curb a program which proposes a sharp increase in the minimum wage, the return to retirement at 60 and the creation of numerous civil servant positions.
“A program of economic ruin for the country, at more than 330 billion euros unfunded”, declared the Minister Delegate for Public Accounts, Gabriel Attal. Arguments to which Jean-Luc Mélenchon replies a little quickly by arguing that the 250 billion in new expenditure would create such growth that the State would pocket 17 billion euros more each year. For the Minister for Energy Transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, it is inconceivable that “someone who has not been able to be in the second round [de la présidentielle] and who is not a legislative candidate” can become Prime Minister.
The absent right
While the left monopolizes the microphones, the right, however majority in the country, seems to absent subscribers. At the start of the campaign, the candidate of the National Rally (RN), Marine Le Pen, even seemed to throw in the towel by granting the president a majority in the Assembly. In the face of recent polls, she is claiming 100 to 150 deputies, while surveys, like the latest from Ipsos-Sopra Steria, grant him only 20 to 55. Deputies who are also likely to come mainly from the north of France, where the president has mainly campaigned. In the south, the chances of the RN seem reduced because of competition from the new Reconquest party, led by Éric Zemmour. Candidate in the Var, the former journalist is one of the very few Reconquest candidates to have a chance of being elected. His election would be considered a personal victory. As for the Republicans, they are reduced to hoping that the president will obtain only a relative majority and will thus be obliged to reach out to them.
The strong abstention risks limiting, in the second round, the number of triangular and quadrangular. To access it, it is necessary to obtain 12.5% of the subscribers. The fewer voters the higher the bar. “The bet to obtain a presidential majority, even a composite one, will undoubtedly win”, writes the editorialist of the Figaro Nicolas Baverez. But, he adds, “the price to pay will be very high. While France is in great difficulty, it will have multiplied the controversies without ever discussing the challenges it must face.
Like 56% of French people who say they are not very interested in this election, the president himself was largely absent. What made Alexis Brézet say on Radio Classique that if Emmanuel Macron “talks about method all the time, it’s because he still doesn’t know what to do. [de ce second mandat] “. Perhaps we will know more by the second round, which will be held on June 19.