Nearly 6,300 candidates are running in the legislative elections on 12th and 19th June, in the 577 French constituencies. Many of them claim to belong to a party whose objective is, alone or within a coalition, to obtain a majority in the National Assembly. Hence the importance of the political nuances attributed to each candidate by the Ministry of the Interior: The worldbelieving that the choices made by Place Beauvau are problematic, proceeded to its own classification.
To participate in the legislative elections, each candidate submitted, before May 20, a file in the prefecture of his constituency. In this document, it is possible to join a party or a political grouping by choosing from a list that includes forty-two, some of which are very well known (Socialist Party, PS; Together!; National Rally, RN, etc.) and others more specific (Bâtir le pays Martinique, Union of French Muslim Democrats, etc.). This makes it possible to benefit from public aid and to participate in the official audiovisual campaign – which includes the distribution of speaking time according to the political weight of the parties.
A coalition for Together! but not for Nupes
After the filing of all the files, the State services assign the candidates a political nuance chosen from the eighteen listed in a circular from the Minister of the Interior distributed on May 13. Some correspond to a single party (Rassemblement national, Les Républicains, etc.); others to party groupings. The prefectures have a grid of criteria allowing them to choose the shade, which is a “simple administrative reference” and can ” differ not only from the declared political label, but also from the party of affiliation, and is attributed also from an analysis of the political trajectory of the candidate “accurate to Monde the prefecture of Loire-Atlantique
The coalition Together!, which brings together several formations supporting the president, Emmanuel Macron, around La République en Marche, is stamped as such by the prefectures. But this is not the case of the Nupes (New Popular Ecologist and Social Union), which denounces a “electoral tampering” and regret that “the Macronist camp has decided to separately count the votes collected by candidates from La France insoumise (LFI), Europe Ecology-The Greens (EELV), the Socialist Party (PS) or the French Communist Party (PCF)”. A summary appeal to the Council of State has been filed by the parties concerned, the hearing is set for Friday, June 3.
The Ministry of the Interior justifies not having created the Nupes shade because the alliance “brings together candidates invested independently by the parties associated with this agreement”. “These parties he adds, also present themselves independently, as evidenced in particular by the associations declared under public aid and the audiovisual campaign.. Indeed, unlike Ensemble!, Nupes does not have a single funding association for all the candidates it has dubbed; everyone had to indicate their party of origin (LFI, PS, PCF, EELV, Generations) when declaring their candidacy. “These elements have led to not uniting these candidates under a single political nuance”further specifies the ministry, which adds that this same logic “has led to the independent appearance, under two distinct shades, of the Republican candidates and the candidates [Union des démocrates et indépendants] UDI, despite an agreement between these two political parties”.
The different dates for voting in the 2022 legislative elections
- The polling dates are set for June 12 and 19 in mainland France. The constituencies which will elect their deputy in the first round (with 50% of the votes cast representing at least 25% of registered voters) will only vote on June 12.
- French people abroad who have only been represented by deputies since 2012, will vote on June 4 for the American continent and the Caribbean, on June 5 for the rest of the world. The second round will take place on June 18 for the American continent and the Caribbean, on June 19 for the rest of the world.
- Some DOM-COM (Guadeloupe, Martinique, Guyana, French Polynesia, Saint-Barthélemy, Saint-Martin, Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon) will vote the day before the metropolis (June 11 and 18).
- Candidates for deputy will have four days, from May 16 to 20, to declare their candidacy.
“Ecologists” bringing together EELV and the Animalist Party
As it stands, the official list distributed by the ministry does not allow voters to know precisely under what “colors” some of the candidates in their constituency are running. Does the PS candidate belong to the Nupes coalition or is he a dissident? What about EELV candidates, considered by the ministry in a single nuance “environmentalists” grouping them with representatives of CAP 21, the New Democrats or the Animalist Party, who have very distinct identities and political programs.
Other political formations have also been diluted within one or more shades. Thus, 72 of the applications of the Pirate Party were placed in the category « divers »13 in “regionalists” (a certain number having, according to three prefectures contacted by our care, declared as party of attachment Regions and peoples in solidarity, grouping together regionalist parties), 8 in “various left”1 in “various center” and 1 in “various extreme left”. The same goes for the candidates of the Animalist Party or other formations, ranked in different shades according to the prefectures.
Finally, there remains the case of those who consider the choice of ministry to be erroneous. In Paris, for example, the candidate Quitterie de Villepin wondered about the attribution of the shade “various center”, she who isevendic as “independent” and said he checked the box « divers » when submitting his application.
A collective work of relabeling
Under these conditions, it is impossible to accurately report the results of the elections, from 8 p.m. on June 12 and 19. It is indeed according to these nuances that the results will be expressed which will not make it possible to say clearly how the votes of the French are divided, so much the nuances retained by the ministry differ from the political reality.
For writing the Monde, it was important to provide readers with the most detailed information possible. The Decoders and the political service had published on May 12 a first work of review of the official nominations communicated by some of the parties and coalitions. We relied on this working basis to begin to relabel with as much precision as possible the complete list of 6,293 candidates released by the Ministry of the Interior on the evening of May 23. Not without difficulty: this represents considerable work, which is then supplemented by information from the correspondents of the Monde, fine connoisseurs of local personalities and their trajectories. A database that we update daily and that we make available to all those who wish, in open data on this link.