The relief was palpable at the headquarters of the Republicans with the influx of new members in recent days. 85,000 members are now up to date with their subscription to Les Républicains, reveals Tuesday, November 8 franceinfo. They will vote on December 3 and 4 to decide between the three candidates who are running for the presidency of the right-wing party.
>> Éric Ciotti, Aurélien Pradié, Bruno Retailleau: we present to you the three candidates for the presidency of LR
To vote, you had to join before November 3. This figure of 85,000 members may slightly be rectified when the files are officially updated, but it is a figure that gives a trend. In June the party had 48,500 members, which means that the prospect of being able to choose the new party president prompted more than 35,000 supporters to take or resume their cards.
According to our information, the counters have panicked in the last hours. In the last three days, some 5,000 people have taken their membership card from LR. Some candidates had made reminder campaigns by SMS with links so that former activists could rejoin more easily. With 85,000 members, however, we remain far from the good old days of LR. When the party was created in 2015, LR had 210,000 members. Nicolas Sarkozy’s UMP counted 370,000.
The staffs of the three candidates necessarily scrutinize these figures with great caution. Of the 35,000 new cards, 5,000 come from Alpes-Maritimes, Eric Ciotti’s stronghold, which remains the most powerful federation, but 85% of the cards were taken from other regions. “A month ago I would have said that Ciotti was going to win but the dynamic is good for Retailleau”, told franceinfo an executive of LR. In the senator’s camp, many want to believe that the Vendée wind is about to blow to the right.
Candidates have one month left to campaign. There will be a joint photo on November 9 at the tomb of General de Gaulle in Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises (Haute-Marne), a televised debate on November 21 and a hearing before the party’s “Parliament” on the 26. And from Tuesday morning, serious things will begin with the first meeting of the campaign managers of the three candidates and already demands. Behind the scenes, the Retailleau camp claims not to have had access to the same files of members as the other two candidates, themselves members of the management of LR. Some have even counted the retweets of the last few days on the Les Républicains account. There would have been a little more for Pradié and Ciotti than for Retailleau. What do the 85,000 LR members think? We will discover it on December 3 and 4.