ROUSEL. The communist candidate comes first in the 20th district of the North, ahead of the RN candidate Guillaume Florquin by a short head.
Candidate in the 20th district of the North in the 2022 legislative elections, Fabien Roussel arrives first in the first round with 34.13% votes (PCF-Nupes), just ahead of the RN candidate Guillaume Florquin (32.64%). The presidential majority candidate, Delphine Alexandre, is only credited with 16.57%. Fabien Roussel will therefore be present in the second round and will have to fight with the RN candidate to win a deputy seat.
A few weeks after his defeat in the presidential election, Fabien Roussel therefore returned to the campaign. Exit the 8th place and the 2.28% won in the presidential election, Fabien Roussel is turned towards the new deadline: that of the legislative elections. The boss of the French Communist Party intends to re-enter the National Assembly, he who entered it in 2017 after being elected in the 20th district of the North (grouping several municipalities north of Valenciennes), thanks to a blocking vote against his opponent from the National Front. A candidate representing the New Popular Ecological and Social Union (NUPES), the 50-year-old wants “to do everything to defend our purchasing power and prevent any form of social regression such as retirement at 65”, as he declared during his the formalization of his candidacy. However, the return of the former journalist to the Bourbon Palace does not seem to be a foregone conclusion, as he boasts of his outspokenness and clearly displays his distance from Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
What was Fabien Roussel’s result in the presidential election?
Candidate for the first time in the presidential election in April 2022, Fabien Roussel was far from making it to the second round. The communist candidate had obtained 2.2% of the votes in the 1st round. If his campaign had shuddered, bringing him up to 5% of voting intentions in January, Fabien Roussel had not managed to find a place in the middle of the Macron-Le Pen-Mélenchon steamroller. Anti-“woke”, pro-nuclear and pro-hunting, Fabien Roussel had carried an unprecedented voice in his party, a voice which could be criticized on the left (in particular by the ecologist Sandrine Rousseau) as welcomed on the right (we remembers Eric Ciotti’s “full support” at the time of the gastronomic controversy).
However, he had appeared as the new face of communism, after two elections exempted from the colors of the International (the party having sided behind Jean-Luc Mélenchon twice, in 2017, and in 2012, under the banner of the Front de left). If he had beaten the socialist party of Anne Hidalgo (which falls to only 1.7% of the vote), the dynamic around his project had been insufficient, not allowing him to reach the 5% of the votes which would have allowed to reimburse his campaign expenses. On the evening of Sunday April 10, after reacting to the results of the first round of the 2022 presidential election, Fabien Roussel had called to vote for Emmanuel Macron in the second round, without directly quoting the latter.
Who is Fabien Roussel?
Born in Béthune on April 16, 1969, Fabien Roussel began his professional career as a journalist. His political commitment took shape in high school, where he joined the Movement of Young Communists of France. In 2000, he was entrusted with the management of the PCF federation in the North. After a failure in the municipal elections of 2004, he was elected municipal councilor of Saint-Amand-les-Eaux. Three years later, he was elected in the second round as deputy for the 20th constituency in the North. On this occasion, he joined the Finance, General Economy and Budgetary Control Committee of the Lower House. In 2018, Fabien Roussel succeeded Pierre Laurent as national secretary of the PCF. In May 2021, he was invested by the PCF to become a presidential candidate in 2022. Arrived in 8th position, he is a candidate for re-election as a deputy.