Winning an absolute majority, a group in the Assembly, establishing cohabitation… The main political parties were betting big for these legislative elections in 2022, but the betting results did not meet all expectations.
A National Assembly more divided than ever. This is what the estimates of the results of the second round of the 2022 legislative elections suggest: a weakened presidential coalition, the lefts twice as present as five years ago, an extreme right stronger than ever, and a party Republicans who hold on. No clear majority emerges, and the parties will have to learn to compose together, taking responsibility for their successful or unsuccessful bets.
Together, lost bet
The presidential party (ex-LaREM), omnipotent in previous legislative elections with an absolute majority, had created a coalition, Together!, with the MoDem and Horizon to put the odds on its side. Feeling the wind turn after the first lap, Emmanuel Macron warned on the tarmac at Orly airport on Tuesday June 14 that “ Sunday, no voice must be missing from the Republic “. Understand his coalition. With the estimates for this Sunday evening, the second five-year term of the President of the Republic opens with a political crisis, after five years punctuated by social and health crises.
A reshuffle should take place in the coming days: the beaten ministers, such as Brigitte Bourguignon (Minister of Health) or Amélie de Montchalin (Minister of Ecological Transition), will have to, according to an unspoken rule, leave the government. It is up to Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne to compose a new one. Rather than the Nupes or the National Rally (RN), there is a good chance that it will turn to Les Républicains to exceed the 289 deputies and obtain the vote of confidence from the Assembly.
Another challenge ahead: maintaining the presidential coalition over five years. As we mentioned in a previous article, the risk of a disintegration one or two years before the end of the five-year term is a possibility. Loyal for a while, Horizon, the party of Édouard Philippe, could try to distinguish itself from the presidential party to prepare for the 2027 presidential election.
La Nupes, bet partly won
The union of the left will not have the majority of 289 deputies, which would have made it possible to bring Jean-Luc Mélenchon to Matignon. The figure of the politician, who sometimes divides even among left-wing sympathizers, was omnipresent on the campaign posters of the Nupes candidates. The first round had seen the coalition exceed the presidential majority by several tens of thousands of votes, but the gamble of targeting Matignon, highly publicized, was not enough.
Nevertheless, Jean-Luc Mélenchon has succeeded in a second bet in which no one believed after the tearing of the left in the presidential election. He brought together the main parties of his orientation in a coalition, which had not happened for 25 years. The extended left (Nupes + dissidents) more than doubles the number of its deputies compared to 2017. “ The rout of the presidential party is total “said Jean-Luc Mélenchon, focusing on the small majority of Emmanuel Macron’s coalition to try to make people forget the failure of his ministerial bet.
Main challenge for the Nupes: speak with one voice in the National Assembly to influence legislative work. The presidential majority could play on its internal differences concerning the European Union, international affairs and the energy transition to destabilize it.
The Republicans, bet won
Since the arrival of Emmanuel Macron in the political arena, it has become a habit: The Republicans save the furniture at each election where territorial implantation is important. This time, the results exceeded expectations. Admittedly, the Republican right lost seats compared to 2017, torn between the presidential party and the far right, but it resisted more than expected.
Above all, these results place LR in a strong position to negotiate with the presidential party. From 9 p.m., Olivier Véran, Minister of Relations with Parliament, anticipated the negotiations to come on TF1, evoking the rapid construction of an absolute majority for Together: “ Other groups will allow us to obtain the quota of votes sufficient to present the reforms and have the texts adopted. “.
At the end of the 2022 presidential election, by poaching Damien Abad, ex-LR, in the government, Emmanuel Macron had already anticipated a rapprochement with the right-wing party. Gérald Darmanin, Bruno Le Maire were also part of this political formation, which could facilitate the establishment of a hybridization between LR and the majority.
It remains to be seen whether the Les Républicains party will accept this dilution. If Christian Jacob, its president, assures that they will remain in the opposition, promises of ministries could well turn heads.
The RN, bet more than won
This is the surprise of this election. A multiplication by more than ten: 8 deputies for the National Rally in 2017, more than 80 in 2022. The bet is clearly won for Marine Le Pen, who did not expect such a score. She who hoped for 15 deputies to create a parliamentary group at the end of May, then 60 after the first round, finally obtained a historic result. This is the promise of a substantial far-right parliamentary group in the Assembly, the first since 1986. At the time, the departmental proportional voting system enabled Jean-Marie Le Pen, with only 9.65% of the votes, to elect 35 deputies.
An explosion of joy greeted the results in Hénin-Beaumont, the stronghold of Marine Le Pen. The leader of the RN welcomed the constitution of ” a decisive opposition group against the deconstructors from above, the macronists, and the deconstructors from below, this anti-republican extreme left “. In the grip of financial difficulties, with these good results in these two elections, the National Rally is sure to win a jackpot of public subsidies which would allow it to come back even stronger in 2027.
The discreet RN campaign, which suffered from the unpreparedness of some of its candidates on television sets, was able to play the card of firm opposition to Emmanuel Macron to convince voters. The Nupes, for its part, accused Emmanuel Macron’s camp of being responsible for this unprecedented breakthrough of the far right, by not having called for a systematic vote against the RN candidates in the second round of these elections.
► Read also: Legislative 2022: the results map by constituency