Laurent Wauquiez is once again running for a deputy seat in the 1st constituency of Haute-Loire. After the first round, can he be elected this Sunday?
The three-way race is turning into a duel in the 1st constituency of Haute-Loire. LR candidate in the 2024 legislative elections, Laurent Wauquiez obtained 36.80% of the vote and qualified for the second round, narrowly ahead of Alexandre Heuzey (National Rally), who himself obtained 34.18% of the vote. Celline Gacon, candidate of the New Popular Front who qualified for the second round with 18.66% of the vote, announced that she was withdrawing from the race to block the National Rally, as the coalition of the left and Jean-Luc Mélenchon had announced after the results were announced on Sunday, June 30. If the NFP candidate did not publicly call for a vote for Laurent Wauquiez, we can imagine that her voters will fall back on the LR candidate to prevent the RN candidate from being elected. We will have to wait until the results are known, this Sunday, July 7 at 8 p.m., to be sure.
Laurent Wauquiez has already been elected as a member of parliament in this constituency: first in 2004 and then in 2012. From that date, he sat in the Palais Bourbon until June 20, 2017. However, during the last legislative elections in 2022, he chose to be the substitute for Isabelle Valentin, LR candidate, who had been elected in the 1st constituency. The one who currently works as president of the Auvergne Rhône-Alpes region is trying to obtain a place in the National Assembly, and therefore potentially leave his current position for a seat in the Palais Bourbon if he is elected on July 7. However, he will have to study the possible transfers of votes to the left to gauge the potential of a second round election in a week.
But what will happen in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes if the person who currently presides over the community wins? If he is elected deputy on July 7, Laurent Wauquiez will have to leave his position as boss of “AURA”. However, the question of his succession would not yet be raised, as Renaud Pfeffer, vice-president responsible for security in the region, informed the Figaro, which ensures that “the subject will not be discussed before the end of the second round of legislative elections”. It must be said that Laurent Wauquiez took those around him a little by surprise, he who has not been a deputy since 2017, and has not presented himself as an incumbent candidate for the Assembly since.
In his territory, it was the National Rally that came out on top with 39.61% of the votes in the European elections of June 9, which gave rise to these early legislative elections. However, Laurent Wauquiez did not follow the line of the president of the Republican party Eric Ciotti, who chose to ally himself with the National Rally for this election, contrary to the opinion of several personalities on the right.