The RN will therefore not have an absolute majority by far, which was quite predictable given the game of withdrawals, but it has the largest political group in the National Assembly, reinforcing its position as the main opponent. However, what is objectively a defeat for Jordan Bardella’s party can be interpreted as a further step in a democratic conquest of power that seems inevitable and is based on an effect that has been well known to political scientists for decades, which is that of the “ratchet effect”.
Opinion surveys since the 1980s on the FN vote, then the RN, show that when a voter has voted RN once, they very rarely change their minds in subsequent elections. Voters for the far-right party are in fact the least volatile and the most certain of their choices. For the 2024 legislative elections, for example, the certainty rate of voting for the RN candidate was between 88 and 92% depending on the polling institute, that for the candidate of the union of the left was between 80 and 84%, far ahead of the certainty of voting for a centrist candidate, which was around 70%. Even further behind, there was an index of between 50 and 55% certainty of voting for a right-wing candidate.
These figures for the RN have been constant, election after election, for thirty years. The National Rally voter never hesitates in his choice, which he crystallizes very early.
RN MPs outperformed
The other important element in the RN vote is the priming effect. That is to say that once an RN candidate is elected, he always benefits from a particular benevolence on the part of his electorate. The RN very rarely loses elected officials once it has won an election. We can understand this at the local level where the mayor can activate many levers to create an electoral clientele and benefit from a bonus for the incumbent, but this is also the case for deputies, as we saw during the legislative elections.
The RN deputies, most of whom have not been particularly brilliant on the national level since they were in opposition for the last two years, have all outperformed in their constituencies compared to the already significant increase in the party’s candidates on the national level. More than thirty were elected in the first round without any real difficulty.
This effect is explained by mobilizing a certain number of cognitive biases and in particular the fact that the resident finding himself with an RN deputy does not notice any change, positive or negative, in his constituency since the deputy has no local management power. Voters who had hesitated in 2022 therefore conclude that the misfortunes promised by the RN opponents in the event of the election of a deputy from this party have not taken place. By breaking the taboo, we see that nothing has happened and the RN vote now appears without any particular risk, which convinces the hesitant.
This is how we end up with particularly significant increases in the scores of outgoing RN deputies (Philippe Ballard, re-elected deputy of Oise, seemed for example genuinely surprised by his score of 53.20% when he had only achieved 34.92% in 2022). At the same time, RN candidates not elected in 2022 often progress much less. There is an RN “incumbent bonus” when the incumbent in question has only been there for two years and has sat in the opposition without having any particular local roots.
Sanitary cordon in reverse
We therefore find ourselves with a reverse cordon sanitaire that obeys a mechanism of social psychology locking down the territories with RN elected officials without the latter having much to do. The analysts of the nationalist party are undoubtedly aware of this reality and will be able, during the next three years before the next national election, to concentrate their forces on the few constituencies where their candidates narrowly lost without needing to concentrate excessively on defending those that will have been won.
This is why the cordon sanitaire strategy, long deployed by the rest of the political class, risks turning against those who created it: if it is difficult for someone who has never voted RN to do so, it seems even more difficult for someone who has already voted RN to turn to another political offer.
*Arnaud Lacheret is a professor at Skema Business School. He has published in particular The integrated And Women are the future of the Gulf published by Bord de l’eau.
.