Macron will have to deal with a strengthened right and a dispersed majority

2023-09-08 18:00:09
Gérard Larcher and Bruno Retailleau at the States General of the Les Républicains party at the Cirque d’hiver, in Paris, June 17, 2023. BRUNO LEVY

Conducted quietly for several months with local elected officials, the senatorial election campaign entered its final stretch, Friday September 8, with the deadline for submitting candidacies. But, two weeks before the election scheduled for September 24, its outcome is already in no doubt. Despite a Hemicycle renewable by half, like every three years, The Republicans (LR) – today with a group of 145 elected officials – must in all likelihood retain the absolute majority with their allies from the centrist Union (UC) .

For this election by indirect universal suffrage, nearly 79,000 electors – 95% of whom are designated by municipal councils – will elect 170 senators in 42 metropolitan and overseas departments as well as in Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, New Caledonia and six of the twelve territories for French people established outside France. The voting method varies according to the population in the department: a two-round majority ballot in the territories where there are one or two senators to be elected and proportional representation for those who have three or more senators.

Issues: Article reserved for our subscribers 2023 senatorial elections: the challenges of a vote where the Republicans are the big favorites

As has been the case since the start of the Fifth Republic – apart from a socialist interlude between 2011 and 2014 – the right will benefit from its territorial anchoring and a favorable electorate, after its good results in the last elections local. “With municipal [en 2020] which saw it win almost 40% of towns with more than 10,000 inhabitants, retain eight regions out of thirteen and more than three quarters of the departments, LR should on paper retain its majority”, analyze, in a note for the Jean-Jaurès FoundationEmeric Bréhier and Sébastien Roy, from the Observatory of Political Life.

“An element of stability” for the electors

“We must not declare victory too soon”tempers Senator LR from Hauts-de-Seine Roger Karoutchi, still marked by the defeat in 2011 against the Socialist Party. “The division and dispersion of votes can cause us to lose seats we count on”, points out the outgoing senator, candidate for re-election. He himself is confronted in his department with the dissident candidacy of the LR vice-president of the Ile-de-France region, Marie-Do Aeschlimann. In Paris too, the LR leave in dispersed order with three lists: the official one led by the outgoing senator, Catherine Dumas, and two dissidents, the European deputy and LR vice-president, Agnès Evren, and senator Pierre Charon.

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