Legislative: the tone rises between the Nupes and the macronie

June 14, 2022

After having tied the game in the first round of the legislative elections, the Melenchonist alliance (Nupes) and the presidential coalition begin a week of duel on Monday, the stake of which is Emmanuel Macron’s ability to retain an absolute majority in the National Assembly. .

“Contrary to what Mr. Mélenchon says, who has a problem with reality, we are the political force which has the most candidates in the second round”, launched Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne from Calvados on Monday morning, qualifying the Rogue leader from “First Liar”.

The macronie, united under the label Ensemble!, beat the LFI-EELV-PS-PCF alliance by just over 21,000 votes, out of 23.3 million voters in the first round (25.75% of the votes , against 25.66% for Nupes), according to the Ministry of the Interior.

But this difference is contested by Nupes, which claims first place and accuses Beauvau of “tampering”, arguing in particular that the ministry “reclassifies Nupes candidates to various left”. “We can’t have banana republic mores,” fumed Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

If the presidential camp keeps the advantage in the projections of the 577 seats of deputies, the suspense is total to know if Emmanuel Macron will manage, two months after his re-election, to keep an absolute majority of 289 seats allowing him to pass his reforms, starting with pensions.

The various institutes give the Macron camp in a range of 255 to 295 seats, when the left gathered under the Nupes banner is estimated between 150 and 210 seats.

For all, the week which opens must serve to ward off a record abstention which reached 52.49% of registered voters, exceeding the previous one in 2017 (51.3%).

“It’s a warning”, notes political scientist Pascal Perrineau to AFP TV, according to whom “there is no desire for Emmanuel Macron to have almost full powers, but there is no desire nor that the Nupes left is in a dominant position”.

Increased participation is, in theory, the only reserve Nupes can benefit from after uniting the left-wing parties in the first round. Conversely, Together! can benefit, still in theory, from the contribution of some of the LR voters in the first round.

“It’s all the irony of political history: today my political family is not doing well, and for all that we may need the Republicans”, thus noted the mayor of Meaux, Jean-François Copé on France 2. The Republicans, who met their strategic committee Monday at 2:00 p.m., limited the damage by totaling with the UDI 11.3% of the votes, even if they will lose their status as the first opposition group in the Assembly.

Hope is thus tenuous for the left to impose cohabitation on Emmanuel Macron, even if Jean-Luc Mélenchon said on Monday “quite confident”: “Matignon is not moving away but is getting closer”, a-t- he rocks.

“Beware of the trompe-l’oeil effect”, warns AFP, however, the boss of Ifop, Frédéric Dabi, who recalls that “we have exactly the same score for the left (that there five years old), except that in 2017, the left had left completely disunited in each constituency, whereas there, the Nupes made it possible to create a dynamic”.

On the executive side, all eyes are on the fate of the 15 members of the government involved.

The game promises to be tight for Amélie de Montchalin (Ecological Transition), left behind in Essonne, or Clément Beaune (Europe), on an unfavorable ballot in Paris.

The outgoing majority, after trial and error which bristled the left on Sunday evening, clearly called on Monday morning not to grant any voice to the RN in the sixty constituencies where Lepenist and Melenchonist candidates will compete in the second round.

“In these specific cases, RN-Nupes, let’s be very clear: not a single voice for the National Rally,” government spokeswoman Olivia Grégoire told RTL.

“But if we are dealing with a candidate (from Nupes) who does not respect our republican values, who insults our police officers, who asks to no longer support Ukraine, who wants to leave Europe, we do not call to vote for him”, also specified Ms. Borne, on the move Monday morning, at her home in Calvados.

As expected, the candidates of the National Rally (18.68%) failed to capitalize on the dynamics of Marine Le Pen and her approximately 41.45% of votes collected in the second round of the presidential election.

Confined to eight elected in 2017, the contingent of RN deputies should however be much larger next Sunday, and still count in its ranks Ms. Le Pen, well ahead in her constituency of Pas-de-Calais (53.96%, but not elected in the first round, for lack of sufficient participation).

She criticized the Nupes, a “cardboard opposition”, which is “in full maneuver with En Marche since the presidential election”, and whose leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon is according to her already “retired”. And reached out to the voters of Eric Zemmour, beaten on Sunday like all the other figures of his Reconquest party.