Europe

Macron’s candidates lose ground compared to 2017 legislative elections first round

16/06/2022

The presidential coalition came in second place on Sunday, June 12, and is not guaranteed an absolute majority in the Assemblée Nationale.

By Alexandre Lemarié
Published on June 14, 2022

It was a mixed result and an underwhelming performance for Emmanuel Macron’s troops. The president may well receive a majority in the Assemblée Nationale but, unlike in 2017, he cannot be sure of an absolute majority that would allow his program to broadly prevail. Following Sunday’s first round, the presidential camp – composed of La République en Marche (LRM), MoDem, Agir, and Horizons – was likely to receive 255 to 295 seats, according to projections by Ipsos-Sopra Steria. The number of seats going to the president’s allies has no guarantee of reaching an absolute majority, which would require 289 seats or more.

As the Macronist camp feared, it was likely to only receive a relative majority, forcing it to form ad hoc alliances with Les Républicain (LR) to get certain proposals approved. This is far from the initial ambition of the president, who had called on voters to give him a “strong and clear” majority, like the 360 MPs (308 LRM and 47 MoDem) he had managed five years ago when he came to power.

The outgoing majority has suffered from the offensive led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, head of the Nouvelle Union Populaire Écologique et Sociale (NUPES), to the point of receiving fewer votes nationally than the left-wing alliance – which received 26.1% – compared with 25.81% for LRM and its allies. The overall result was far from the 32.3% obtained by LRM and the MoDem in 2017. It was a score also lower than that of Mr. Macron himself in the first round of the presidential election (27.8%), six weeks ago. The strategy adopted by the president to start campaigning as late as he could in order to give as little traction as possible to his opponents therefore proved unsuccessful.