How to watch the French parliamentary election like a pro

 

POLITICO PRIMER

How to watch the French parliamentary election like a pro

 

He’s got the presidency, but will he have the power? Emmanuel Macron’s second term hinges on Sunday’s legislative runoff. Wise up with our guide.

 

BY PETER O'BRIEN

June 10, 2022 4:03 am

https://www.politico.eu/article/watch-france-parliamentary-election-pro/

 

This article has been updated since the first round of the election.

 

PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron’s parliamentary alliance won a massive majority five years ago. This time he might not get a majority at all.

 

A new left-wing bloc on the block is set to gobble up a large number of the centrists’ seats in Sunday’s final parliamentary vote, our aggregate polling suggests, with the most probable outcome being a hung parliament, an extremely rare occurrence in France.

 

The first round of the two-round vote last week confirmed a surge on the left, with candidates for NUPES, the alliance led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, receiving almost as many votes as candidates for Ensemble, the ruling coalition.

 

The strong showing for the hard left in the first vote won’t entirely translate into seats, since the two-round system generally favors more centrist candidates. The left-wing vote is concentrated around fewer, mostly urban, constituencies, compared with the more widely spread centrist electorate.

 

However, NUPES could easily defeat enough Ensemble candidates to deny the president an absolute majority, transforming the way France is run for the next five years.

 

If this happened, Macron would probably have to ally with the right-wing Les Républicains to be able to govern. Even then, lawmaking wouldn’t be anything like the easy ride it’s been in the last five years. Turnout, demographics and the ability of Macron’s candidates to respond to this major challenge will be key on Sunday. Three of his ministers’ jobs are even under threat.

 

This year, France’s legislative election is arguably more important than its presidential one. Here’s how to understand it like a pro.

 

The nuts and bolts

France’s parliamentary election is held every five years — two months after its presidential vote (the country switched from a seven-year to a five-year presidential term in 2002). The parliamentary elections determine the MPs, or députés, who sit in the National Assembly, France’s lower chamber of parliament.

 

Candidates battle it out over two rounds to be elected as the representative of a constituency, or circonscription. These were last carved out in 2010, when they represented 125,000 people each, though the population numbers have changed since then. There are 577 constituencies, including 11 abroad.

 

A candidate can win in the first round if they receive at least half the share of votes cast, as well as the votes of at least a quarter of registered voters in the constituency. Five candidates achieved this last Sunday, four from NUPES and one from Ensemble.

 

Otherwise, the top two candidates plus those who received votes from at least 12.5 percent of the registered voters head to a second-round vote. The candidate who gets the most votes in the second-round runoff becomes an MP.

 

Being a first-past-the-post instead of a proportional system — second-place candidates lose out even if they receive as much as 49 percent of the vote — the election tends to produce a clear majority in parliament. The fact that it might not this time shows that a large swath of the electorate wants significant change — if not in who runs the country, at least in how it’s run.

 

What powers are there to play for?

Along with proposing, amending and voting on legislation, the National Assembly’s powers include triggering official investigations, questioning ministers and holding votes of no confidence.

 

Clearly, the fewer seats the governing party has, the more scrutiny it’ll face. But an absolute majority of 289 seats or more means no negotiation with other parties is needed to pass legislation.

 

Because of their enormous majority, the Macronists have so far been able to churn out laws, voting through some 354 since June 2017 — when Macron took the helm at the Elysée — even if some of the most controversial ones were revised after interventions from the constitutional council.

 

Macron’s leaky vehicle

Voters tend to choose members of parliament who come from the same political family as the president they have just elected, but things are different this time. Ipsos polling found that almost 30 percent of those who voted for Macron in the first round of the presidential election voted against one of his candidates on Sunday.

 

A staggering 51 percent of those who voted for him in the second round of the presidential election voted against one of his candidates, seemingly showing that half of those that voted for Macron in the second round did so by lack of a better option or purely to stop Marine Le Pen coming to power.

 

If Ensemble leaks enough support, its central party, Macron’s La République en marche (LREM), may face more of a challenge from its partners, particularly Mouvement Democrate, led by former Justice Minister François Bayrou, and Horizons, led by former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe. It’s widely speculated that Philippe is preparing his own presidential bid.

 

If Ensemble fails to win an absolute majority, it will need to look for more coalition partners to increase its seats tally. The traditional conservative party Les Républicains would be the obvious choice as it’s expected to be the largest minority group in parliament, but it would likely be a messy, vote-by-vote ad hoc alliance rather than a proper coalition.

 

‘Mélenchon premier ministre’?

Those words adorn the campaign posters of the radical left leader of NUPES, who’s decided not to run for reelection as MP for Bouches-du-Rhône, insisting that he’ll be prime minister. He’s so confident that he’s referred to Elisabeth Borne, France’s newly appointed prime minister, as his “predecessor.” Riding high off his best-ever result in the presidential election, Mélenchon believes NUPES can beat Ensemble, win a majority, unseat Borne, and usher in France’s first cohabitation government — where the president and prime minister belong to opposing parties — since 2002.

 

Such a situation neuters the president’s ability to implement reforms, handing a bulk of the policymaking power to the prime minister and their majority in parliament.

 

Our polling suggests the chances of this happening are extremely slim. However, Mélenchon — even without a seat in parliament, let alone the premiership — could still prove more influential than ever. With his alliance becoming the main opposition force in parliament, he’ll do everything in his power to block Macron’s agenda.

 

How far will the far right go?

The National Rally led by Marine Le Pen earned a historic score in the first round of the legislatives, winning almost 19 percent of the popular vote, compared with less than 14 percent in 2017 and 2012, when it was known as the National Front.

 

More than 200 of its candidates qualified for the second round, though less than a quarter of them are expected to win seats, as the far right remains toxic enough that runoff votes are a tough battle to win for its candidates. Still, that’s a lot more than the eight National Front MPs elected last time.

 

Will voters show up?

Abstention in the first round was more than 52 percent, the highest in the history of the Fifth Republic, continuing a decline in interest since the 1990s.

 

Since they were synchronized to happen one after the other, the presidential race has overshadowed the parliamentary election, but even in the presidential vote, abstention has been on the rise since 2007. This year, at 26 percent for the first round and 28 percent for the second, abstention was particularly high because of a perceived lack of options and the war in Ukraine.

 

Turnout will however be crucial on Sunday, because the older you are in France, the more likely you are to vote, and the more likely you are to vote for Macron’s candidates. If Macron fails to get a majority, it will be in large part down to the younger generations, who have favored Mélenchon in larger numbers.

 

I’m not French. Why should I care?

With war on the doorstep, political stability as well as who has the power to pass laws in France, a leading force in the EU, are of huge consequence.

 

The world is watching how France pushes forward on European sovereignty and implements landmark EU rules. In the unlikely event of a major upset, we could be looking at a Euroskeptic prime minister in Mélenchon, who plans to “disobey” EU rules. And that’s a softer stance than he’s often taken in the past.

 

If the president retains his majority, following through with existing laws made under Macron, as well as advancing new ones, will be vastly more difficult with a hung parliament, particularly for controversial reforms like pensions. And an alliance with Les Républicains would change the complexion of the ruling coalition, shifting it to the right.

 

Over the longer term, the demographic shift is one to follow. As it stands, France’s support for centrist politics will be replaced with more left-right division as its population ages. It’s a trend that will change the face of one of Europe’s key powers.