They had of course anticipated a defeat in the presidential election. But almost no member of the Les Républicains (LR) party had imagined that their candidate would finish below 5%. A score so low that it can jeopardize the entire edifice built by the right-wing formation for years. Party, elected officials, activists, executives… All are playing their survival today. MPs seeking re-election in June have the most to lose. So far the leading opposition group in the National Assembly with 101 members, LR risks being plucked after the elections on June 12 and 19.
On the right, everyone remembers the fate of the elected members of the Socialist Party. After Benoît Hamon’s very low score in 2017 (6.36%), only 30 socialist deputies had managed to get elected. How to save his constituency when at the national level the political force to which they belong came fifth in the ballot, far behind Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Eric Zemmour, narrowly ahead of Yannick Jadot?
To limit the breakage, many of them have started by their own admission “survival mode”. Very little present alongside Valérie Pécresse at the end of her difficult campaign, the deputies took massive refuge in their constituency, crisscrossing them as much as possible. Especially since with the candidate, the relationship was not necessarily in good shape. To the group, it is pointed out that Valérie Pécresse only came a handful of times to see the elected officials of the Palais-Bourbon, who remained marked by her desire to change their position on the vaccination pass (she was for it, they were versus).
Thirty deputies threatened
“There will inevitably be lossesacknowledges fatalistic Julien Dive, MP for Aisne. We have an electorate who voted for something other than LR in the presidential election. In places, in certain constituencies, they could reflexively vote for the representative of the majority. » Candidate for his re-election in Seine-et-Marne, Jean-Louis Thiériot is just as lucid. “I do not measure the degree to which the Macron vote is a vote of membership or a useful vote. It will be played constituency by constituency ”, he explains. Within the group, it is thus estimated that around thirty deputies would be particularly threatened, in particular in the constituencies covering cities or areas where Emmanuel Macron has made an excellent score, such as in Neuilly (Hauts-de-Seine).
However, everyone wants to believe it: those who sit today in the Assembly were elected in 2017 in a particularly unfavorable context, snatching their victory against winds and tides. They hope to repeat the feat. “With us, those who were elected in 2017 have already survived a Macron-Le Pen duel”recalls Pierre-Henri Dumont, MP for Pas-de-Calais.
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