The two men have radically different strategies. Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s decision may surprise. In the presidential election, he came first in Marseille and he had a good chance of being re-elected in his constituency, the 4th in Bouches-du-Rhône. And he asks the French to “elect” him at Matignon, that’s his formula. Getting elected without being a candidate yourself is complicated.
It is true that under the Fifth Republic, seven Prime Ministers were not deputies, including the current Jean Castex. But the three cohabitation heads of government had been elected to the Palais-Bourbon: Jacques Chirac, Edouard Balladur, then Lionel Jospin. Basically, for Jean-Luc Mélenchon, it’s double or nothing. Either the left wins the elections and he lands in Matignon, it’s in the agreement signed by the whole left. Either she loses, her succession opens, and he passes the torch to the Assembly.
After his failure in the presidential election, with 7% of the vote, Éric Zemmour finds himself isolated, with a Marine Le Pen determined to eliminate him. After harassing her throughout the presidential campaign, he reached out to her. In vain. Discouragement wins its troops. Reconquest will have the greatest difficulty in having elected officials. To try to survive this “night of small knives” on the far right, and to continue his political current, he had to set an example. He chose the fourth constituency of the Var, that of Saint-Tropez. On April 10, he scored one of his best scores in the country, nearly 15% of the vote, but he was far ahead of Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron.
Marine Le Pen will try, for her part, to win a second term as deputy in Hénin-Beaumont, and she wants to obtain a group, i.e. at least 15 elected. It did not have one during the previous legislature and the far right did not exist at the Palais-Bourbon. Conversely, the 17 members of the Insoumis group have often stood out.
But the risk for everyone, and first and foremost for the majority, is that during the coming five-year term, due to massive abstention, the civic crisis and Parliament’s loss of legitimacy, the he opposition first made itself heard in the streets, without necessarily finding a political outlet.