At the desk, Jean-Luc Mélenchon does not hide his satisfaction. The long weeks of negotiation between La France insoumise and the other left-wing parties to set up union candidacies for the legislative elections will not have been in vain. This Sunday, June 12, the voters placed Nupes in the lead in the first round, neck and neck with the Macronist camp, at nearly 26%. “At the end of the first round, the presidential party is beaten and defeated,” trumpeted the one who finished third in the presidential election. Behind him, Julien Bayou, boss of EELV, Corinne Narassiguin, number two of the PS, and Ian Brossat, spokesperson for the PCF, have a smile from ear to ear. “What we’re doing is historic!” »

And what does it matter if the projections of the pollsters do not give Nupes the majority in the Assembly for the second round. In the middle of the handful of activists who came to the election evening organized in the 10th arrondissement of Paris, Jean-Luc Mélenchon sweeps the polls out of hand. “It’s the percentages that count. The projections are to calm the bourgeois! »

“Today, the debate is extremely clear: it’s them or us”, launches Ian Brossat, planting the duel with the presidential majority. Able to maintain itself in the majority of the 577 constituencies, the Nupes asserts itself as the first opposition force against Emmanuel Macron. And could well, failing to obtain a majority in the hemicycle, prevent the president from having an absolute majority – 289 deputies.

In several constituencies, the candidates of the Nupes arrive in front of ministers, who play their place in the government, as against Amélie de Montchalin or Clément Beaune. Not to mention the tidal wave in Paris where several candidates are hovering around 50%… And where one of the symbols of socialist dissidence, Lamia El Aaraje, is largely beaten by the candidate Nupes Danielle Simonnet. “This is proof that this strategy was the right one”, welcomes Corinne Narassiguin, like a snub to the PS elephants who had strongly protested against the Nupes, to the point of maintaining dissenting candidacies.

A few concerns remain before the second round. The Nupes does not really have a reserve of votes, when the candidates of Ensemble will be able to recover votes on their right or on their left according to the local context. The presidential majority refused to give a national voting instruction in the constituencies where it would be eliminated and where the Nupes would face the RN in the second round, advocating on a case-by-case basis. Marine Le Pen calls for “not to choose”. “People who express their dissatisfaction in the first round, I don’t see them voting Macron in the second,” slips Ian Brossat, imagining, half-worded, RN voters rallying Nupes on Sunday June 19.

The other fight in the second round will be that of abstention, this first round of the legislative elections having reached a record under the Fifth Republic. Jean-Luc Mélenchon is counting on tonight’s momentum to keep left-wing voters mobilized until next Sunday. Whoever sees himself as Prime Minister calls on the French to “surge with [their] ballots to open wide the doors of the future”. At the desk, Julien Bayou drives the point home. “We beat the predictions, the challenge now is to beat the projections. »