how the entrenchment of the RN vote coupled with the wave of degagism allowed the party to win in the Eure

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FactualConfirming a fundamental increase in the far-right vote in the Normandy department, the National Rally won, after the legislative elections, four seats out of five. A shift helped by an “anti-Macron” feeling and a wave of clearance, sweeping in its path the outgoing deputies.

“What is terrible is that the candidates of the National Rally won like us in 2017: on a label, nothing else. » Sipping his Perrier lemon in the shade of the town hall square in Evreux (Eure), Fabien Gouttefarde has haggard eyes, Wednesday June 22. Since Sunday, the outgoing deputy of the 2^e constituency of Eure is struck by a defeat which he had not anticipated. At the end of the second round of legislative elections, he won only 48.9% of the vote against the candidate of the National Rally (RN) Katiana Levavasseur (51.1%).

Fabien Gouttefarde, outgoing deputy (La République en Marche) from the 2nd constituency of Eure, beaten in the second round of the legislative elections by a candidate from the National Rally, in Evreux, on June 22, 2022. AGNES DHERBEYS/MYOP FOR “THE WORLD”

He is not the only baffled “walker” deputy from the Eure. In this rural department of Normandy, located on the western edge of Ile-de-France, strongholds of two ministers, Bruno Le Maire and Sébastien Lecornu, five La République en Marche (LRM) deputies had been in place since 2017. Sunday 19 June, the voters returned them, however, granting four seats to the RN and one to the Nupes.

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The department, of which Mr. Lecornu has been president since 2015, thus becomes the only one in the region to send deputies from the far-right party to the National Assembly and not to grant Emmanuel Macron a single seat. The most symbolic of them, the one occupied by the Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, in the 1^re constituency since 2007, and to which he gave way to his deputy, Séverine Gipson (49.38%), was won by Christine Loir (50.62%), carer, member of the RN for two years. A setback, therefore, for the presidential coalition and its two local figures.

Territorial fracture and feeling of downgrading

On the terrace of the Normandy Hotel in Vernon, where Marine Le Pen made a very media stage during the presidential election, the young town councilor, François Ouzilleau, close to Sébastien Lecornu, whom he succeeded in 2015, a disappointed candidate Together! in the 5^e constituency (49.37%), analyzes the situation despite his disappointment: “It is the result of a gradual anchoring of the RN vote since the 1980s. We are stuck between Paris and Rouen. Our problem is isolation and economic downgrading. »

François Ouzilleau, mayor of Vernon (Eure) and candidate (La République en Marche-Together!) in the 5th constituency of Eure, defeated in the second round of the legislative elections, in Vernon, on June 22, 2022. AGNES DHERBEYS / MYOP FOR “THE WORLD”

A territorial and economic divide that Kévin Mauvieux, RN deputy elected in the 3^e constituency against outgoing Marie Tamarelle-Verhaeghe (54.05% of the vote against 45.95%). “We suffer from being a rural area that is economically devastated and deserted of public services”, he advances. For him, his party has managed to establish itself in this department, where the “yellow vests” have been very active and where the feeling of abandonment is strong, “because, unlike Mr. Macron, he is aimed at ordinary people and their daily worries”.

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