Less than two months after the presidential election, the French elect their deputies on Sundays June 12 and 19. Crucial legislative elections for Emmanuel Macron who will try to save his majority, he who has, at the end of his term, 323 deputies between LREM and the MoDem. But the left, united in Nupes, intends to impose cohabitation, Jean-Luc Mélenchon calling on the French to “appoint him Prime Minister” by giving the majority to the coalition. As 577 deputies make up the National Assembly, 289 elected members are needed to have an absolute majority.
MEPs are grouped by political group according to their sensitivity. But over the course of the mandate, the positions of some have evolved and the landscape of the hemicycle has changed slightly in five years. Three groups were notably created during the legislature: Ecology, Democracy and Solidarity, founded in 2020 by 17 deputies largely from LREM and quickly disappeared for lack of sufficient staff; Agir ensemble, an offshoot of the Agir party created by Minister Franck Riester; and finally the Libertés et Territoires group, which brings together various elected representatives from the center right and center left. With only eight deputies, the RN could not have a political group – there must be at least 15. They therefore sat among the non-registered.
This is one of the weaknesses of the Nupes. In the presidential election, the candidates of the parties forming the left alliance today, placed at the top of the voting intentions by several polls, are carried by constituencies where they have outperformed – in town and in the overseas territories – with cumulative scores approaching or even exceeding 50% of the votes.
Conversely, LREM could benefit from Emmanuel Macron’s more homogeneous scores in the first round of the presidential election, and above all from a more favorable vote transfer in the constituencies where the majority candidate would remain in the second round. As for the RN, it made its best scores in the North, on the Côte d’Azur and in Mayotte.
The 577 current constituencies are the result of a redistricting undertaken by Nicolas Sarkozy, and implemented for the first time during the legislative elections of 2012. In addition to the eleven zones created to represent French people living abroad, the division is supposed to guarantee between constituencies to ensure that each MP represents an equal number of citizens. On average, there are 84,094 registered voters in each territory. This does not prevent some disparities. Thus, the deputy of Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon is elected on the basis of 5,045 registered only, when that of the third constituency of Vendée is elected in a territory which has more than 134,000 registered.
The alliance of left-wing parties has generated numerous dissidences from candidates, notably from the PS, refusing this agreement with La France insoumise and Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Thus, in Sarthe and Occitanie, the socialists Stéphane Le Foll (mayor of Le Mans) and Carole Delga (president of the Occitanie region) lead the resistance against Nupes by placing their candidates on their territories. The presidential majority is not left out, with a few dozen dissidents, including some outgoing candidates who have not been granted the nomination for 2022.
Traditionally higher than in the presidential election, abstention in the 2022 legislative elections could reach record highs. The latest Ifop poll for Cevipof, published on Wednesday June 8, estimates that 54% of voters do not plan to go to the polls for the first round, Sunday June 12. In 2017, abstention was already 51.3% in the first round, and jumped to 57.36% in the second round.
