The French voted a little more numerous on Sunday than a week ago for the second round of the legislative elections, the outcome of which will determine President Emmanuel Macron’s room for maneuver for the next five years against a left in battle order.
Abstention promised to be massive but with a slight increase in the second round, to 18.99% at noon French time, compared to the first round of June 12, when more than half of the 48 million voters had shunned the urns.
The polling stations will close at 6 p.m. with the exception of large cities where the deadline runs until 8 p.m., the time of publication of the first estimates. If the ballot is very tight, the precise distribution of the 577 seats in the National Assembly could not be known until late at night.
The latest polls authorized on Friday suggest that the coalition of the liberal centrist president, re-elected on April 24, should obtain a relative majority, but not necessarily the absolute majority of 289 deputies essential to carry out the announced reforms.
A relative majority would force him to constantly seek the support of other political groups to approve bills.
In the first round, the outgoing majority arrived neck and neck around 26% of the vote with the left alliance of tribune Jean-Luc Mélenchon who managed to bring together socialists, ecologists, communists and his own radical left movement .
For the united left – a first for decades – the challenge is to impose cohabitation on the head of state, but the hypothesis seems unlikely, for lack of a reserve of votes. However, it is already almost guaranteed to constitute the main opposition bloc in the Assembly, a role hitherto assumed by the right.
Political recomposition in three blocks
In the home stretch, Emmanuel Macron, who traveled to kyiv for the first time on Thursday, dramatized the issue, saying that the war in Ukraine affected the daily life of the French and insisting on the “need for a France really which can speak with a clear and distinct voice”.
He also brandished the scarecrow of the “extreme”, whose victory would, according to him, sow “disorder” in France, accusing them of wanting to leave the European Union (EU).
This election completes a long electoral cycle which will have confirmed a vast political recomposition of France around three blocs to the detriment of the traditional parties of right and left, which began with the election of Mr. Macron in 2017.
In a polling station in Lyon (center) Wagner Théaud, a 39-year-old web developer accompanied by his son, “forgot to vote” in the first round because he “did not follow the campaign”.
In the Parisian suburbs, Nassim Djilali, a 32-year-old consultant, says he has not voted in a national election since 2012. “I only vote in municipal elections, because the mayor does concrete things in the city”, explains he.
The French will have gone to the polls in total no less than four times in two years, in a context of successive crises, from the Covid-19 pandemic to the war in Ukraine to the rise in inflation and threats to the economy.
The other issue in the ballot is the progress of the far right behind Marine Le Pen, presidential finalist against Mr. Macron in 2017 and 2022.
His party, the National Rally (RN), hopes to reach the bar of 15 deputies to form a group in the National Assembly, for the second time in the history of the party, after the legislative elections of 1986.
As for the classic right, which is counting on around sixty deputies, it could paradoxically find itself in the position of arbiter in the future Assembly.
Among the first results from overseas, where the second round began on Saturday, the new Secretary of State for the Sea Justine Benin was beaten in Guadeloupe by the left-wing candidate.
In accordance with an unwritten rule but already applied in 2017 by Emmanuel Macron, Ms. Benin will have, barely named, to leave the government.
This could also be the case for several other ministers, including Clément Beaune (Europe) Amélie de Montchalin (Ecological Transition) or Stanislas Guerini (Public Service), leader of the presidential party, engaged in close duels against the left in the Paris region.