LR. The legislative elections promise to be delicate for Les Républicains. So far the first opposition party, it will be for the party of the Republican right to save a maximum of seats of deputies. From there to making an alliance with the future majority?
[Mis à jour le 10 juin 2022 à 13h29] After the stinging defeat of their presidential candidate Valérie Pécresse, are the Republicans going to face a new debacle? Losing momentum, the right-wing republican party should, in all likelihood, lose its status as the first opposition party that it has retained since 2012. The latest poll, published this Friday, June 10, 2022, by the Elabe Institute for BFM-TV, credits LR with 11% of voting intentions in the first round of the legislative elections. At the end of the second round, this survey indicates that the party could send only 40 to 60 deputies to the National Assembly, far from the 100 currently in place in the hemicycle. If this score is confirmed at the polls, it would be the lowest in the party’s history. The boss of the Republicans, Christian Jacob, has not set a target for these legislative elections. Keeping hope, the president of the LR assured to be able to “create the surprise” at the end of the last strategic council of the party, Tuesday, June 7. To limit the costs, the candidates are betting on their traditional right-wing and republican program, but also on their local roots.
Because Les Républicains officially refuse any alliance, mentioned by certain elected officials, with Together, the coalition led by Emmanuel Macron. Pierre-Henri Dumont, secretary general of the LR, repeated it at the microphone of France Inter, Friday, June 10: “it is out of the question that we govern with Emmanuel Macron.” Rather, he is counting on a large enough number of deputies to be able to count during the next five-year term: “what is certain is that we will have to have a maximum of deputies to defend our proposals in the National Assembly.” The Republican leader thus intends to put pressure on the President of the Republic and his probable majority in the Assembly: “either they take our amendments, our bills, and in this case we can vote on certain things with them to ensure the safety and health of the French, or it is not the case, and we will vote against the texts.”
What is the Republican program in the legislative elections?
The objective is simple: to influence national policy and impose the voice of LR against the presidential majority. In their legislative programthe Republicans put forward five priorities – purchasing power, security, health, freedom and quality of life – and a new credo: “spend less to tax less”, a response to the famous “work more to earn more ” that Emmanuel Macron has made his own.
For each theme deemed to be a priority, the party proposes a series of measures which it opposes to the balance sheet of the Head of State after his first five-year term. Regarding purchasing power, the main concern of voters at a time when inflation is visibly increasing, LR suggests applying measures to fuel prices by lowering the amount of taxes but also by tax-exempting hours additional costs, or even through the reduction of social security contributions to increase salaries, among other things. Proposals already seen during the presidential campaign such as the “revaluation of pensions according to inflation” or the “abolition of inheritance tax for 95% of French people”.
In terms of health and the environment, the proposals also echo the presidential program. LR promises to put an end to medical deserts thanks to the assignment of 4,000 young doctors to municipalities in need of health professionals, and to straighten out the hospital by recruiting 25,000 caregivers. To preserve the environment, the right is choosing nuclear power mixed with hydrogen and biofuels to reduce CO² emissions in addition to the implementation of a carbon tax at European borders.
The right cannot remove security from its priorities and suggests the establishment of “exemplary minimum sentences for zero impunity and [la création de] 20,000 additional prison places to apply 100% of the sentences”. Here, the proposals are numerous. But among the priorities, LR wishes to “defend secularism and fight against Islamism by expelling foreigners registered in the terrorist radicalization file and by closing all radicalized places of worship” and “suspending allowances for delinquents or parents of juvenile delinquents”. Other measures relate more particularly to immigration, which the right intends to limit with “quotas by country and by profession” and the deprivation of visas for “countries which do not take back their illegal or delinquent nationals”.
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?