With probably record abstention, the outcome of the legislative elections seems tighter than at the start of the campaign. The French seem to want neither the Nupes of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, nor a blank check for Emmanuel Macron. The president’s party could be deprived of an absolute majority.
It is a ghostly campaign that is coming to an end. Rarely have legislative elections received so little attention: four out of ten French people, according to an Ifop-Paris Match poll, are interested in this election. Since the implementation of the five-year term and the reversal of the presidential/legislative calendar in 2002, the election of deputies has no longer been successful. Abstention is breaking records. The pollsters expect, on Sunday, a range of 40 to 45% participation. The French are wrong. Firstly because, even if under the Fifth Republic the executive has very broad powers, nothing can be done without an absolute majority in the National Assembly, or at least with a relative majority.
And that’s the rub. Macronie increasingly fears a bad surprise on June 19, at the end of the second round of legislative elections. The excitement rises a few days before the election. The risk of a defeat of the presidential camp is not the most probable hypothesis according to the polls. No survey predicts an absolute majority for Nupes (the left alliance formed by Jean-Luc Mélenchon). But the surprise scenario of a relative majority is becoming clearer. According to several projections made by polling institutes, the Macronist party (renamed Renaissance) would not have the majority on its own, but with the support of the allied parties, MoDem and Horizons. Another scenario worries the Élysée more: it is that of an executive forced to compose in the National Assembly with what would remain of LR. The Republican right has a hundred incumbents and projections predict between 35 and 55 seats according to the institutes.
The precedent of François Mitterrand in 1988
Although re-elected with 58%, President Macron is faced with a more complex political equation than expected. Who would have imagined that Nupes could threaten the Macronist camp? After three weeks of near-silence, Emmanuel Macron therefore went on the offensive: field trips and interviews in the regional press. Basically, nothing very specific. Macron II buried Jupiter. According to him, he no longer wants to decide alone, but to share everything with the intermediary bodies. After the “Great Debate”, he announced the creation of a National Council for Refoundation to discuss future reforms prior to their examination by the government and Parliament. It smacks of Raffarin and its “France from below”. A way in any case to appease a fractured country and the French on the verge of a nervous breakdown at a time when the decline in purchasing power is accelerating. Also a way to procrastinate is worrying about others.
A few days before the first round of more uncertain elections than expected, Emmanuel Macron is upping his game. He has in mind the precedent of François Mitterrand, the only president deprived of an absolute majority in the wake of his re-election in 1988. the State which knows its History of the Fifth Republic therefore called on the French to make “the choice of solidity” to avoid nightmare legislative elections.