They are neck and neck. Together ! and the New People’s Ecological and Social Union (Nupes) won just over 25% of the vote lgold of the first round of the legislative elections, Sunday June 12. A result so close that the identity of the camp came out on top was still debated on Monday, the leaders of the left alliance contesting the count of the Ministry of the Interior. The projections of the number of seats that the various parties could obtain at the end of the second round, however, leave little doubt about the face of the future National Assembly: they give a substantial lead to the alliance around Emmanuel Macron, even if it risks not reaching an absolute majority.
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Together ! could get between 255 to 295 of the 577 seats in the hemicycle, saccording to the estimate of Ipsos-Sopra Steria, Sunday evening, for France Télévisions, Radio France, France Médias Monde and parliamentary channels. The left-wing coalition would have a contingent of between 150 and 190 deputies. How can such a discrepancy between the number of votes and the number of seats be explained?
Because the election is not played on a national scale
The gap between the number of votes cast throughout the territory and the projections in seats is mainly due to the voting system. Legislative elections are played in 577 different constituencies, not nationwide. In CIn each of them, the voters choose their deputy in a two-round majority uninominal system. To obtain the majority of seats in the National Assembly, a party or a coalition must therefore win in as many constituencies as possible.
There is therefore no proportionality between the score of a party or a political bloc at the national level and the number of constituencies it can win. If its electors are unequally distributed over the territory, this voting method creates a distortion between its weight in the electorate and its representation in the National Assembly. It is to eliminate this discrepancy that certain political parties plead for the election of deputies by proportional representation. This is the case of the Nupes, but also of the National Rally, which projections predict between 20 and 45 seats while it won 18.7% of the vote.
Because the Nupes electorate is more concentrated in certain territories
To win seats in the legislative elections, it is more effective to obtain balanced results in as many constituencies as possible than to have very high scores in some constituencies and very low scores in others. VShe operation tends to disadvantage the left, whose voters live mainly in urban areas and outlying suburbs. “The left has a very concentrated electorate in the big cities”explained to franceinfo Bruno Jeanbart, vice-president of the OpinionWay polling institute, a few weeks before the elections.
Thus, in Paris and Seine-Saint-Denis, four Nupes candidates were elected in the first round on Sunday. All succeeded in obtaining more than 50% of the votes cast and a number of votes at least equal to 25% of the number of registered voters in their constituency. Un only candidate from the presidential majority achieved the same performance: Yannick Favennec, in Mayenne.
However, Emmanuel Macron’s electorate is more homogeneous across the country. Together ! thus managed to qualify for the second round in more constituencies than Nupes: 417 against 380according to figures from the Ministry of the Interior.
Because Together! is favored by its centrist positioning
To tilt the assembly to the left, “Nupes should win 80% of their second rounds”analysis with AFP Simon Persico, specialist on the left and researcher at Sciences Po Grenoble. However, the left alliance is not the favorite in many of these duels because of a disadvantage on the reserves of votes, which will potentially be redistributed according to the voting instructions. Positioned at the center of the political spectrum, the coalition Together! is in a strong position from this point of view.
Supporters of Emmanuel Macron can, for example, hope that some of the voters who chose LR in the first round will turn to them in the second. “When the Together! candidates face a left-wing candidate, they will benefit from rather favorable reports from right-wing voters, in particular Republican voters, who obtain scores that are not negligible”observes Mathieu Gallard, research director at the Ipsos-Sopra Steria polling institute, interviewed by franceinfo.
To win a maximum of seats against the presidential majority, Nupes is betting on increased participation in the second round, while abstention reached a historic record (52.49%) on Sunday. “The reserve of votes is among voters who had voted Jean-Luc Mélenchon for the presidency” but who did not move this time, observe for franceinfo Manuel Cervera-Marzal, sociologist at the EHESS and specialist in the electorate of La France insoumise.