Nearly half of the seats in the upper house were renewed on Sunday, without the balance of power being upset.
No upheaval in the Senate. The senatorial elections of Sunday September 24, which made it possible to renew 170 of the 348 seats in the hemicycle, did not result in a major political recomposition in the upper house: the right of Gérard Larcher and Bruno Retailleau remains in the majority for at least least three years, while the Socialist Party remains the second group at the Luxembourg Palace.
The Senate “will continue to be this essential counter-power to democracy”, estimated Gérard Larcher, the president of the institution, who was re-elected in Yvelines. “In a political context marked by the absence of a majority within the National Assembly, more than ever the Senate embodies this pole of stability, this point of balance of the Republic in the face of the deep crisis our country is going through”, he said in a press release. Franceinfo looks back at the main lessons of this election.
>> MAP. 2023 senatorial elections: discover the results department by department throughout the evening
A Senate generally dominated by the right
Before being affiliated with a group, a senator represents a political nuance, from the left to the extreme right. If we take into account these nuances, attributed by the Ministry of the Interior, the right dominated Sunday’s vote, winning 77 seats out of the 170 up for grabs, ahead of the left and the presidential camp. In the hemicycle, the right will remain in the majority with some 200 seats out of 348.
Leavers largely renewed
There were 119 of them to represent themselves among the 170 outgoing senators. The vast majority were re-elected. In total, 80% of the candidates for re-election retain their seats at the Luxembourg Palace. On the right, 51 of the 63 senator-candidates were re-elected. In the center, 13 outgoing out of 18 remain in the Senate. And on the left, only four candidates for re-election were defeated out of the 32 who were in the running, according to a count carried out on Sunday evening, without the results of Guadeloupe and Martinique. See the detailed list of results in the table below.
The Les Républicains group remains the leading group in the Senate
There was no real suspense: The Republicans, who had 145 senators before Sunday, remain by far the leading group in the Senate. According to the group’s first estimates, contacted by franceinfo, it would be made up of 142 to 145 senators.
The President of the Senate, Gérard Larcher, was unsurprisingly re-elected for a sixth term in Yvelines and should logically retain his functions at the head of the institution, during a vote scheduled for October 2. The Senate “will continue to be this essential counter-power to democracy”, he reacted. The results of the senatorial elections “comfort[nt] the senatorial majority of the right and the center and testifies[nt] of its territorial rootsestimated Gérard Larcher, re-elected for a sixth term.
The left is getting closer to 100 seats
The Socialist Party remains the second largest group in the Senate (currently 64 senators). The boss of the socialist senators, Patrick Kanner, had signed an agreement with the communists and environmentalists in order to consolidate the left-wing forces. “There were 91 of us, we hope to pass the symbolic bar of 100 seats”, slipped, a few days ago, to franceinfo Patrick Kanner. The PS group stabilizes at 64 seats, the communists gain two (17 seats against 15 previously), the ecologists three (15 against 12). Among the notable arrivals, the former environmentalist presidential candidate, Yannick Jadot, and the communist Ian Brossat.
This alliance between socialists, ecologists and communists did not please rebellious France, dismissed for lack of sufficient local coverage to fill the ranks of the Senate. The Insoumis, who had presented candidates in all departments, obtained no seats.
The presidential camp in difficulty, a beaten secretary of state
The Macronists were already not numerous in the Senate with only 24 elected officials. The group chaired by François Patriat, close to the President of the Republic, will not expand. On the contrary, it even loses seats. “There will be at least twenty of us”, delivers to franceinfo the president of the group, François Patriat. The only Parisian Renaissance senator, Julien Bargeton, was defeated. A defeat which marks, once again, the lack of local establishment of the presidential camp, which pays here for the defeats in previous local elections. “If the electoral arithmetic, after local elections with disappointing results, was not favorable to us, we are pleased that the presidential majority was able to maintain its base and convince beyond the major voters who were its supporters”reacted Renaissance.
Among the defeated Macronist senators, the Secretary of State for Citizenship: Sonia Backès. The only minister in the running in the senatorial elections, the latter was beaten in New Caledonia by the independentist Robert Xowie. Could this defeat lead Sonia Backès to leave the government, a rule hitherto applied by the President of the Republic for his ministers in the legislative elections? Matignon did not respond to franceinfo. The result is in any case judged “extremely auspicious” by LFI leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, refusing to see only a “local phenomenon”.
In the presidential majority, not everyone looks gloomy. Horizons, the party of Edouard Philippe, has thus swelled the ranks of the Senate group Independents, Freedoms and Territories, notably thanks to its municipal victories in Reims and Angers in 2020.
The RN grabs a handful of senators
Absent from the hemicycle since the departure of Stéphane Ravier for Reconquête, the National Rally had moderate ambitions for these senatorial elections. He was counting in particular on the departments of Pas-de-Calais, Nord and Moselle to grab a few seats.
This is done with the election of three candidates: Joshua Hochart in the North, Christopher Szczurek in Pas-de-Calais and Aymeric Durox in Seine-et-Marne. Not enough, however, to constitute an autonomous political group, the threshold being set at 10 senators.