The more the fateful days of the poll approach, the more the anxiety mounts. On the right, lucid minds have taken to warning, under wraps, before any analysis on the future of the party: “Let’s wait to see who is still standing after June 12 and 19. » It is because the hour is serious. The entire future of the Les Républicains (LR) party depends on the legislative election held in France that weekend.
It has certainly been several years since this right-wing movement which structured French political life for years, gave it several Presidents of the Republic, has been in agony. But this time, he might just disappear. Absent from the second round of the presidential election in 2017, he was already seriously threatened, he who had just spent five years in the opposition. By making less than 5% at that of April, he found himself in imminent danger of death.
So at LR, we never stop projecting, counting and counting ourselves. Today the party, the country’s leading opposition group, has around 100 seats. About twenty people do not represent themselves, some have passed under the flag of the presidential majority. There are therefore 71 leavers left.
The pitfall of abstention
Who will return to the Assembly? Who will be beaten? Are there possibilities of conquests? The objective is to survive as much as possible by keeping an influential group in the National Assembly. And perhaps, some dream, rebuild the party after a “parenthesis” macronist destined to end with the second term of the President of the Republic. However, nothing is less certain and the candidates who, in the campaign, are playing for their seat or presenting themselves for the first time, know this well. They are confronted with the reality of the constitution of the three blocs around Emmanuel Macron, Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon. A new political geography in which LR takes up no more space than confetti.
“We always say that the reception is good on the market, taunts a candidate on condition of anonymity, but what does that mean? Nothing indicates that we will vote for you for as much. » The difficulty is all the more important as to qualify, the candidates must total 12.5% of the registered. With an abstention which is likely to reach records, and which many project at nearly 50%, it will therefore probably be necessary, to reach the second round, to attract 25% of the votes.
However, the risk for LR is to still suffer the consequences of the useful vote. Faced with the threat of seeing Jean-Luc Mélenchon appointed Prime Minister in the event of victory for the New Popular Ecological and Social Union (Nupes), the right-wing voter, who has already voted for the President of the Republic in the presidential election, could , some fear, want to ensure a majority. Thus once again relegating the right to the status of useless voting.
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