RUFFIN. Legislation is approaching! François Ruffin, LFI deputy for the 1st constituency of the Somme, is a candidate for re-election. By addressing “peripheral France”, the former journalist launched a campaign very much focused on the Union of the Left.
The legislative elections next June are a major challenge for the political formations, in particular for those of the three “blocs” that today tend to structure French political life. Indeed, a tripartism was reinforced after the presidential election, with a distribution of forces between the social-liberal bloc represented by Emmanuel Macron, the “national” or “sovereignist” bloc of Marine Le Pen, and the bloc of the radical and “popular” left of Jean-Luc Mélenchon. At a time when an agreement is looming on the left, the fruit of the negotiations and negotiations underway since the day after the presidential election, the future deputies are announcing their candidacies in turn. This is the case of the reporter-deputy LFI François Ruffin, who launched a campaign at the end of April with the aim of winning again in the 1st constituency of the Somme, where he had been elected by more than 55% in 2017 in the 2nd round (against Nicolas Dumont, LREM candidate). Showing himself anxious to reach out to the “forgotten” of the “outskirts”, he focuses his campaign on hearing “compete” with the RN (en-FN) which continued its breakthrough in the Somme department in the two rounds of the presidential . What are his chances of re-entering the National Assembly?
Elected deputy for the 1st constituency of the Somme in 2017, the Insoumis François Ruffin is competing for his re-election for what is presented as the “third round” of next June, given LFI’s ambitions to prevent the elected president from having of a majority. On Saturday April 30, he chose the town of Flixecourt, in the Somme, to launch his campaign. He gathered 700 people in the room where he celebrated his victory in 2017, addressing “peripheral France” “yellow vests, roundabouts”, so as not to “leave it in the hands of the RN”. which began with a parade with a fanfare, with a giant karaoke animated by comedians Shirley and Dino, he said he wanted to “lead the battle in joy and hope”. However, he was realistic about his chances of winning: “I do not consider myself a winner at all, I am a challenger, there is work, a slope to climb up”, he explained on stage.
The former reporter is also known for his calls for a rally on the left, regularly launched since 2017. On March 29, he held a meeting for this union alongside Raquel Garrido and Manon Aubry, while on April 2, he was going to Evry, in another town in his department, Essonne, to nominate Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Convinced that we must bet on peripheral France, as he explained in an interview with Liberation the day after the first round: “When we look at the maps, we see that Mélenchon is strong in the big cities and the popular districts But much less in peripheral France,” he said. According to him, the crisis of the yellow vests has made “visible and audible” this France of the peripheries that LFI must today reconquer, to “turn their anger into hope”.
Known for his positions against the far right, he must now win popular support in a constituency where 44% of voters chose Marine Le Pen in the first round of the presidential election, even making her wait for 65.22% to the second. Even at the level of the department, it wins at 33%, ahead of Emmanuel Macron (27.79%) and Jean-Luc Mélenchon (17.51%). Flixecourt is a deindustrialised town and a traditional bastion of communism where the RN’s purchasing power measures have found resonance. François Ruffin said he wanted to “lead the battle in joy and hope” to try to get ahead of the extreme right next June: “We must not leave the people who have been crushed and humiliated during 40 years of globalization hands of the RN”. In the same way, during his interview for Liberation on April 13, he explained to what extent the results in this constituency represented an “issue” and a “challenge” for the legislative elections: “Does, by my way of be, through our actions, the left will win in Flixecourt? And if I manage to win back in my constituency, where Le Pen is in the lead at 30%, can this experience be valid for the country? I want to know. I want to try,” he said.
However, legislative elections are very different elections, with voters voting that does not necessarily obey the same logic (less useful votes, blocking votes or flag effects, for example). As such, if we take the results of 2017 in the Somme, we see that in the first round too, the FN (now RN) was in the lead with 30.37% of the vote, far ahead of Emmanuel Macron at 21.75% and Jean-Luc Mélenchon who had only 18.61% of the votes, still achieving a better score than the 17.51% this year. However, during the legislative elections, François Ruffin won by 55.97% in the second round in the 1st constituency against Nicolas Dumont, an LREM deputy, doubling the FN in the first round, to 24.32% against 15 94% for Franck de Lapersonne (candidate FN). On the FN side precisely, very few constituencies won, LREM having won almost everything in the Somme, winning 26.55% of the votes in the first round and 50.53% in the second.