Given the number of deputies directly elected last Sunday, 501 seats remain to be filled for the second round of the legislative elections, Sunday, July 7. After the 224 withdrawals of qualified candidates, the physiognomy of the second round has completely changed with a massive decrease in the number of three-way races: they went from 306 to 89, according to official data from the Ministry of the Interior published Wednesday. As a result, we are witnessing a jump in duels, from 190 to 409. There are also two four-way races.
Key information to remember
⇒ Government spokesperson attacked
⇒ Gabriel Attal does not want to “give voting instructions”
⇒ Marine Le Pen reiterates that the RN will have to obtain an absolute majority in the Assembly to govern
Government spokesperson and her team attacked
Government spokesperson Prisca Thevenot and her team were victims of “an attack during an operation to put up election posters” on Wednesday evening in Meudon (Hauts-de-Seine), the minister’s entourage announced to AFP. The Nanterre prosecutor’s office said it had opened an investigation, in particular for “violence committed in a group against a public official”. Four people, including three minors, were taken into custody, according to the same source. The events occurred around 8 p.m.
According to a source close to the case, Prisca Thevenot and one of her colleagues were attacked by around twenty people. The minister was not hit, but her colleague and an activist were injured and taken to hospital. The government spokesperson, a candidate for re-election in the 8th constituency of Hauts-de-Seine, has filed a complaint. She “will continue her campaign on the ground as planned until Friday evening”, said her entourage, who did not wish to provide further details on the circumstances of the attack. Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, himself an outgoing MP for Hauts-de-Seine, expressed his “full solidarity” on X. “Violence and intimidation have no place in our democracy”, he added.
Gabriel Attal does not want to “give voting instructions”
Gabriel Attal said on Wednesday that he did not intend to give “voting instructions” for the second round of the legislative elections. “I do not (want) to give voting instructions” but “to warn by saying that there is a risk of an absolute majority of the National Rally, of the extreme right”, declared on BFMTV the Prime Minister and head of the campaign of the outgoing majority.
The presidential camp is divided on the conduct to be adopted in the second round, between the supporters of “neither RN nor LFI” and those who advocate an unconditional withdrawal in favor of the left, when the maintenance of candidates who came in third place risks making the RN win. “I warned before the first round of this election of two major risks: an absolute majority led by LFI. This risk at the end of the first round, it is eliminated. […] And then there is a second risk: it is an absolute majority led by the extreme right. […] and it is this risk that we must combat today,” Gabriel Attal repeated.
“We cannot govern if we do not have an absolute majority,” says Marine Le Pen
Marine Le Pen said on TF1 on Wednesday that the National Rally will need to obtain an absolute majority in the Assembly to form a government. “We cannot govern if we do not have an absolute majority,” she said. The RN will not “be able to make agreements” to form coalitions, said the MP, president of the RN group in the Assembly during the previous legislature. “The only ones capable of having an absolute majority are the RN,” she stressed. “We are the only ones who can offer a perspective for France,” added Marine Le Pen.
Marine Le Pen expressed “great confidence” in the National Rally’s ability to obtain an absolute majority in the second round on Sunday. “The French have a real desire for change. They expressed this desire for change and this freedom from the party apparatus in the first round,” said the MP, who was re-elected in the first round in Pas-de-Calais.
New rallies against the far right
Thousands of people – 40,000 according to the organizers – gathered on Wednesday evening in Paris, at the Place de la République, at the call of numerous media outlets, unions and associations to call for a vote against the far right in the second round of the legislative elections.
Another demonstration brought together several hundred people in Avignon, where the festival is in full swing.
Savoie: insulted and jostled, an RN candidate files a complaint
The National Rally legislative candidate in the 3rd constituency of Savoie, Marie Dauchy, filed a complaint on Wednesday after being violently attacked by a trader in a market, according to concordant sources.
“Violently attacked this morning at the La Rochette market, I am suspending my campaign,” she announced on X and Facebook. The events occurred in the morning in this town located between Chambéry and Albertville. The man in question, who spontaneously presented himself to the police station early in the afternoon, was taken into custody “for repeated death threats, insults and contraventional violence,” Chambéry prosecutor Pierre-Yves Michau said in a press release. An investigation has been opened.
According to an RN candidate, “the detail of the story” is not anti-Semitic
The comments by Jean-Marie Le Pen, co-founder of the National Front, on the gas chambers as a “detail of the history” of the Second World War, “were not an anti-Semitic remark”, an RN candidate for the legislative elections said on Wednesday during a debate on BFM Alsace.
Jean-Marie Le Pen, now 96 years old, “inspired me in my youth,” said Laurent Gnaedig, who qualified for the second round of the legislative elections in the 1st constituency of Haut-Rhin where he is facing the outgoing Macronist MP and former minister Brigitte Klinkert.