LR. Today the leading opposition group, the right believes it can keep weight in the National Assembly. LR does not set a target for the number of deputies elected to the legislative elections but hopes to keep its hundred seats occupied as best as possible.
[Mis à jour le 8 juin 2022 à 15h34] “We are going to create a surprise”. This was announced by the boss of the Republicans, Christian Jacob, at the end of the strategic council of June 7, 2022. The traditional right accused the blow of the presidential election and the score of Valérie Pécresse below 5% and got back in the saddle for the legislative elections on 12th and 19th June. The President of the Republicans does not set a target for the number of seats to be obtained in the National Assembly but it goes without saying that the party hopes to maintain its weight in the hemicycle and limit losses. First opposition group to the presidential majority from 2017 to 2022 with a hundred deputies, the LR party could be robbed of its place and be relegated to the rank of the third largest group according to the results of the polls. According to the trends of the various polling institutes, LR would only come fourth in voting intentions but could obtain around forty seats in the Assembly.
The configuration of the legislative elections is very special because if the deputies are nationally elected, they are elected in local elections. The Republicans have logically decided to bet everything on their local presence, among the most important, to keep their seats. Playing the local card is also a way of avoiding the subject of the presidential election and the catastrophic result of the party. Rather discreet on a national scale, the candidates are concentrating their efforts in the field campaigns to seduce and convince an electorate which is crumbling and redirected towards Emmanuel Macron and the far right in April. This discretion is not unrelated to the absence of notorious figures among the LR candidates for the legislative elections, the behemoths like Christian Jacob have decided not to renew their mandate as deputy. Will the strategy pay off on election days?
What strategy for the Republicans in the legislative elections?
How to campaign after the national disaster and the absence of a strong figure capable of embodying the party line and giving a saving impetus? In the constituencies, the candidates for their re-election only seem to want to bet on their action as parliamentarians for five years and to campaign in their own name, even if it means not mentioning the party. Far from the NUPES, LREM, RN or even Reconquest posters! on which Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Emmanuel Macron, Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour are proudly exhibited in large format (sometimes even at the expense of the candidate), on the LR side, sobriety is in order: it is the candidate who takes precedence, if sometimes displaying alongside a prominent constituency mayor supporting him.
It is a quiet, sluggish campaign for Republicans in the midst of turmoil, who cherish despite everything the hope of keeping some of their bastions thanks to the local notoriety of their candidates. The party also wants to convince itself that, on the strength of its results in the municipal elections (despite the loss of large cities) of 2020, regional and departmental (election from which it emerged victorious) of 2021, its local anchorage will be a lifesaver. Christian Jacob, president of LR, assured the Point that “when it comes to entrusting the keys to the management of a community, voters prefer to turn to people they feel close to, personalities they can trust and who benefit from a certain experience This is why I have confidence in our result in the legislative elections.” Unless the Pécresse fiasco almost definitively bury the party, in a political landscape where it no longer seems to have its place between the extremes, both left and right, and Macronist liberalism.
Who are the LR candidates in the legislative elections?
The right will be present in almost all the constituencies for the legislative elections. More precisely, 543 candidates were invested in an attempt to integrate the National Assembly in the name of the union of the right and the center: 457 by LR, 59 by the UDI, 26 by the New Center and one by Freedoms and territories. If Christian Jacob, the president of LR, will not seek a new seat as a deputy, several figures of the party aspire to a parliamentary mandate: Eric Ciotti, Michèle Tabarot, Annie Genevard, Philippe Juvin, Aurélien Pradié, Francis Szpiner, Guilhem Carayon, Guillaume Larrivé , Charles Consigny or even Thibaut de Montbrial for LR, when Charles Prats, Philippe Laurent or Agnès Thill will wear the colors of the UDI.
What result for LR in the polls for the legislative elections?
According to polls carried out on voting intentions in the legislative elections, Les Républicains should not be on the podium on the evening of the first round. The party is indeed given only around 10% of the votes cast at the national level. As for the seats won at the end of the second round, there should only be between forty and sixty, at most, against 101 currently.
What result for LR in the legislative elections?
In view of the current political context, previous results and poll estimates, what score can Les Républicains claim? Difficult to rely on a particular figure. Absent from power for ten years, defeated in the last national election, the right-wing party had nevertheless managed to hold its own in previous local elections. 1st party of the Regional (37.63%) and the Departmental (65 presidencies of departments won) in 2021, it had nevertheless experienced a decline in the large cities during the Municipal elections of 2020, while becoming more established in the municipalities medium sized. But during the Presidential, except in Wallis and Futuna, LR did not exceed 15% of the votes cast in any constituency. Harbinger of a new rout?