Four years ago, the name Sandra Delannoy was only known in Avesnois through the artisanal roasting company of the same name, launched in 2007. Delannoy coffees, recognizable by their yellow packaging, were then sold on the markets by this trader, who opened her first shop in the city center of Maubeuge (North) in 2019. But since June 29, another news story has pushed the fifty-year-old to the front page of the local press: candidate of the National Rally (RN) for the 3rd constituency of the North, this political novice was elected MP in the first round, winning 50.8% of the vote against the outgoing MP Benjamin Saint-Huile (Liot).
First a member of the UDI, then of the Republicans, before finally turning to Marine Le Pen’s party, Sandra Delannoy is one of these “ordinary women” recently committed to the RN, who have managed to seduce an electorate tired of traditional political figures. It was only in 2021 that the Northerner became concretely involved with the far-right party, placed number 2 on the list of spokesperson Sébastien Chenu for the regional elections.
“He came knocking on my door on a Saturday, I had just come home from work, it’s surprising,” she told our colleagues of The voice of the North July 4th. Republican Xavier Bertrand will finally be elected head of the region; but for three years, Sandra Delannoy learned her trade as an opposition councilor. In 2022, she ran for the first time in the legislative elections, but failed against Benjamin Saint-Huile, collecting 31% of the votes. Two years later, the “RN mayonnaise” has taken hold, and voters in small and medium-sized towns put her in the lead in the elections: in this month of June 2024, she mobilized 15,000 more votes than in the first round of the 2022 legislative elections.
The one who confided in 2019 has The voice of the North having “had a difficult time” and “struggled so much” that she ate “pasta with bouillon cubes” ended up winning over voters ready to do anything to save their ends of the month, promising anyone who would listen that her party “is no longer the one it used to be”. “All the work of de-demonization carried out by the RN for years is bearing fruit”, regrets Benjamin Saint-Huile to L’Express. For the outgoing MP, Sandra Delannoy thus corresponds “perfectly to the casting” acclaimed by the RN in certain territories: a candidate “little known in politics, who does not claim a hard National Front history, with a smooth and smiling profile, giving the feeling of being ‘like everyone else’ and participating in this idea of the anti-system candidate”.
“Some voters were fooled by this renewed image of the party. Even if, objectively, they mostly voted for the Bardella label,” he believes. In fact, the candidate did not organize a meeting during these two weeks of campaigning, and her face only appears in very small print, at the bottom left of a campaign poster largely occupied by the faces of “Marine and Jordan”. During an interview on local radio FM Channelgiven on June 30, Sandra Delannoy even admits having won thanks to the campaign “produced by Jordan Bardella”.
“Unknown to the battalion in the constituency”
In this week between the two rounds, the new MP from the North did not wish to answer L’Express’ questions about her career, “preferring to communicate next week”. She is not the only one. In the 4th constituency of Moselle, the RN candidate Océane Simon did not respond to our numerous requests either. Her political career is dazzling: at 26, the young woman won over 42.7% of voters in the territory, when her RN predecessor Michel Rambour only obtained a score of 21.2% in the first round of the legislative elections two years ago.
Like Sandra Delannoy, this Moselle woman represents a new generation of the party, comfortable with social networks, recently engaged in politics and from civil society. Departmental youth leader of the RN in Moselle, once invested alongside the deputy of Saint-Avold Alexandre Loubet, Océane Simon is also a mathematics teacher, volunteer in an animal rescue association and five-time French kickboxing champion.
On July 28, she assured the Republican Lorraine “wanting to be a grassroots MP” – on X (ex-Twitter), the candidate indeed puts herself on stage at markets, flea markets, at the local music festival or perched on a tractor, thus defending rurality or “French agriculture”. But the RN’s obsessions are never far away: a few posts later, she retweets Jordan Bardella’s “double border” proposal, or a message denouncing the “migratory submersion”, illustrated by boats full of refugees.
“Here, the trivialization of the RN has worked: voters, who feel that their economic situation is only getting worse, now see the party as a credible and desirable alternative. They see this type of candidate, who is nevertheless unknown in the constituency, and say to themselves ‘why not?'”, explains Alain Marty, mayor (LR) of Sarrebourg since 1989. However, the man knows his constituents very well. According to him, it was indeed Jordan Bardella that they thought of in the voting booth. “The RN could have invested absolutely anyone in place of Ms. Simon, the scores would have been the same”, he believes.
Emilie Crenner, the Ensemble candidate for the constituency, who only won 8% of the vote, agrees. “Océane Simon is unknown in the constituency, but she gives voters a friendly, softened image, trivializes her party on social media… While in essence, she only repeats Bardella’s program, without going into the details of local issues!”, she attacks.
For Christèle Lagier, lecturer in political science at the University of Avignon and specialist in the RN electorate, the profile of these candidates “in opposition to the most educated, richest and most Parisian political elites” can help to seduce a certain category of voters. “It’s a way of bringing back many people who are very far from politics, on totally peripheral criteria: youth, beauty, mastery of social networks, etc.,” she lists. But according to the specialist, this strategy is also double-edged. “On the one hand, the RN is banking on young profiles, from civil society, supposedly ‘close’ to voters. But on the other hand, these candidates who rise to responsibility very quickly can also be distinguished by their incompetence or lack of experience.”
“I was on RSA, I’m a single mother”
Many unknown RN candidates, without any real political experience and despite a very weak presence on the ground, have swept the board in certain constituencies. In the 2nd of Charente-Maritime, Karen Bertholom did not really need to campaign to motivate her voters. With no political background, no public meeting or remarkable presence on social networks, and after a few leaflets in local markets, this 44-year-old single mother, a salesperson in supermarkets, collected 34.4% of the vote – a jump of almost 15 points compared to the score of her RN predecessor in 2022.
In the 2nd district of Loiret, RN candidate Elisabeth Babin was even elected without campaigning. Without any time on the ground or participation in debates organized by local media, the thirty-year-old relied on the name of Jordan Bardella alone to obtain 32.91% of the vote. A resident of the neighboring department of Eure-et-Loir and an unsuccessful candidate in the 4th district of Martinique in 2017 (where she obtained 1.7% of the vote), then in Loiret in 2022 (19.2% of the vote), the candidate presented herself in 2019 on her Facebook account as “a woman, a wife, a lover, a mother and a housewife”, expressed her support for the yellow vests from November 2018, appeared at events with Marine Le Pen or alongside her partner Aleksandar Nikolic, leader of the National Rally in Centre-Val de Loire. Without presenting any more program, she increased the RN’s score by almost 14 points in two years in the territory.
Other candidates, sometimes more identified in their constituency and politicized for a long time, also rely on their proximity to voters. In the 5th constituency of Hérault, the outgoing MP Stéphanie Galzy confided to our colleagues at Free Midi in May 2022: “The challenge today is that voters can elect someone who looks like them to the National Assembly, who knows how difficult it is to make ends meet.”
“I also know the anger of the French because I was on RSA, I went with the yellow vests and I am a single mother. All these things not taken into consideration enough, I think I am legitimate to carry them, and tell voters ‘I understand you'”, she added then, hammering home her desire to “defend the voice of the weakest”. The strategy proved to be successful: after being elected as a deputy for the first time in 2022, this former bank advisor, a member of the RN since 2014, came out on top in her constituency on June 30, with 48.9% of the vote in the first round.
“Identification process”
For sociologist Félicien Faury, author of the book Ordinary Voters: An Investigation into the Normalization of the Far Right (Le Seuil, 2024), highlighting the profiles of single mothers, from civil society, who have been on the RSA or the yellow vest movement, “like a certain fraction of the RN’s female electorate”, can induce a “certain identification process that encourages voting”. “But the gender, age or origin of a candidate are not enough on their own to get someone elected: this must be accompanied by targeted speeches in relation to a given situation, hence the importance of communicating on a lived experience for example, which can work very well”, he explains. While 32% of women voted for the RN in 2024, compared to 17% in 2022, the sociologist insists on what he calls “the Marine Le Pen effect”, which “undoubtedly involves a feminization of the party and a less virile communication strategy, less opposed to women’s rights”.
The precariousness of jobs in the care sector – mostly occupied by women – and the deterioration of public services, particularly in the areas of health and education, are other avenues studied by the sociologist to explain the massive vote of women for the RN. “There are many concerns on the part of female voters on these issues, largely taken up by the RN, in addition to the classic themes of security and immigration”, recalls the researcher, who believes that this work of normalization could have a real impact on this second round of the legislative elections. “This could in particular make it possible to convince certain voters from the right or the center, reassured by the respectable character of the personalities presented by the RN in their constituency”, he argues.
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