French National Assembly Elections, 06/30-07/07

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Unless my understanding of the code électoral is wrong, there's no legal way for there to be a first round on June 30:

Article L157
Les déclarations de candidatures doivent être déposées, en double exemplaire, à la préfecture au plus tard à 18 heures le quatrième vendredi précédant le jour du scrutin.
(Declarations of candidacy must be submitted, in duplicate, to the prefecture no later than 6 p.m. on the fourth Friday preceding polling day.)

In 2022, for a June 12 first round, the candidacy deadline was May 20. Moreover, there's a two week (rather than one week) gap between both rounds in the expat constituencies, which would require a first round in the expat seats on June 22-23.

The candidacy deadline for a June 30 first round would have been... June 7.

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Unless my understanding of the code électoral is wrong, there's no legal way for there to be a first round on June 30:

Article L157
Les déclarations de candidatures doivent être déposées, en double exemplaire, à la préfecture au plus tard à 18 heures le quatrième vendredi précédant le jour du scrutin.
(Declarations of candidacy must be submitted, in duplicate, to the prefecture no later than 6 p.m. on the fourth Friday preceding polling day.)

In 2022, for a June 12 first round, the candidacy deadline was May 20. Moreover, there's a two week (rather than one week) gap between both rounds in the expat constituencies, which would require a first round in the expat seats on June 22-23.

The candidacy deadline for a June 30 first round would have been... June 7.

My bad: article 12 of the constitution says that elections after a dissolution take place, at the earliest, 20 days later. Therefore, June 30 is basically the earliest possible date.

That still leaves a contradiction between the electoral law and the constitution. I'd image the candidacy deadline will be very soon - by the end of the week?

Somebody can correct me, but it'll probably be the shortest legislative electoral campaign under the Fifth Republic: in 1968, de Gaulle dissolved on May 30 for an election beginning on June 23. In 1997, there was a bit over a month between Chirac's dissolution and the first round.

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Unless my understanding of the code électoral is wrong, there's no legal way for there to be a first round on June 30:

Article L157
Les déclarations de candidatures doivent être déposées, en double exemplaire, à la préfecture au plus tard à 18 heures le quatrième vendredi précédant le jour du scrutin.
(Declarations of candidacy must be submitted, in duplicate, to the prefecture no later than 6 p.m. on the fourth Friday preceding polling day.)

In 2022, for a June 12 first round, the candidacy deadline was May 20. Moreover, there's a two week (rather than one week) gap between both rounds in the expat constituencies, which would require a first round in the expat seats on June 22-23.

The candidacy deadline for a June 30 first round would have been... June 7.

My bad: article 12 of the constitution says that elections after a dissolution take place, at the earliest, 20 days later. Therefore, June 30 is basically the earliest possible date.

That still leaves a contradiction between the electoral law and the constitution. I'd image the candidacy deadline will be very soon - by the end of the week?

Somebody can correct me, but it'll probably be the shortest legislative electoral campaign under the Fifth Republic: in 1968, de Gaulle dissolved on May 30 for an election beginning on June 23. In 1997, there was a bit over a month between Chirac's dissolution and the first round.

In 1981, somebody took Mitterrand's dissolution decree to the Constitutional Council saying the campaign (May 22 dissolution decree, May 31 declaration deadline, June 14 election) was too short - the law at the time set the declaration deadline 21 days prior to the election - and the Council ruling was essentially "we don't care, it's constitutionally valid, besides the law doesn't apply to dissolutions". I assume if this decree is challenged, then neither the Council of State or the ConCoun will want to rock the boat and effectively say "we don't care, go away".

In other words, this very short campaign is constitutionally legal but is extremely arbitrary and very contemptuous towards parties and potential candidates - particularly the left, which comes out divided from the EP elections and now has basically just a week to get back together and recreate a sort of Nupes 2.0 or face electoral annihilation if they're divided (and, unlike in 2022, nobody has a strong claim to be the leading force of the left). A classic Macron move.

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So what DOES happen with an RN plurality? If they win, say, 45% of seats, could they form a minority government? Would LRs support them from outside?

We have no idea. France doesn't have much experience with minority governments, especially minority governments opposed to the sitting president. If RN fails to win a majority, Macron might have a lot of leeway in how he wants to play it, though all possible moves will have huge downsides.

The government is under no constitutional obligation (under article 49.1, in its most commonly accepted interpretation and actual practice) to seek a confidence vote in the National Assembly (neither Attal nor Borne sought one after their nominations), so they can try governing until being overthrown in a vote of no confidence in the National Assembly (which, of course, requires an absolute majority voting explicitly against the government). A government trying to govern without seeking a confidence vote would almost certainly face a motion of no confidence immediately thereafter - the left filed such motions against Borne and Attal after they failed to seek a confidence vote.

The scenario of a RN as the largest party with a sizable plurality but no absolute majority and a weakened presidential majority - which is probably the likeliest as of today - would be uncharted territory for the Fifth Republic.

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The decree for the elections has been published. The candidacy declaration deadline will be on Sunday at 6pm, and the official 14 day campaign will be from June 17.

Unlike in the past, the first round in the expat seats will not be held a week before the rest of the country, although there will still be internet voting for those seats open from the Tuesday preceding the election (thankfully for me, since I'll be out of town the last weekend of June).

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Antonio,
Correct me if there is no majority after the elections it will be Impossible to make happen New elections until the next year right?

Yes, per article 12 there can be no dissolution in the year that follows the elections. We're stuck with whatever Frankenstein comes out of this until July 2025, nice job team etc.

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Chiotti has always had very strong fascist characteristics, so this isn't surprising from him, but he seems to have taken this decision on his own without consulting anyone - je n'en ai discuté avec personne, mais c'est la position de mon parti

It's obvious that Chiotti badly miscalculated this and made a huge strategic blunder. He justified his idea in very crass, cynical and opportunist terms - he openly said that LR on its own is too weak, and that he was doing this to save LR's 60ish deputies by offering them a safe reelection in alliance with the RN and to preserve LR's group in the legislature. I'm not even sure if most LR deputies need an alliance with the RN to save their seats - a fair amount are in seats where the RN was not far behind them in 2022, but others are pretty well-rooted incumbents and in general, in 2022, LR enjoyed quite good vote transfers from others (mostly macronismo) in runoffs opposing them to the RN. It's also not at all clear that LR voters want this - Ipsos' poll on the day of the EP elections showed that about 35-40% of LR's electorate actually likes Macron and 76% supported a 'government coalition with the presidential majority and a LR prime minister' (granted, a sizable chunk of LR's electorate does show signs of flirtation with the RN or at least some sympathy for it/its ideas).

Instead of waiting for the perhaps inevitable implosion of the party until after the elections and a potential RN plurality 'hung parliament', Chiotti inexplicably decided to precipitate it for no good reason.

So far the only public endorsements of Chiotti's idea have been from the head of the LR youth wing (a guy named Guilhem Caraymon who looks exactly like you imagine him to be), one MEP-elect (Céline Imart) and one deputy (Christelle D'Intorni, who is a Chiotti loyalist from Alpes-Maritimes who defeated Marine Brenier in 2022). The quasi-entirety of the party bigwigs have completely disowned him and are openly calling for him to resign before they knife him in public - including people like Retailleau and Wauquiez who are pretty right-wing themselves.

Yeah, you'd think the final implosion of the Gaullist political tradition in France (for however artificial a construct it always was) would be the subject of more commentary on this forum.

At the same time, we shouldn't forget that there's a long history of official or discreet alliances between the 'Gaullist right' and the FN/RN, including the infamous Dreux by-election in 1983 or the regional presidents in the 1990s who accepted the FN's votes to be elected. But, yes, this - a 'Gaullist' party leader proposing a nationwide alliance with the RN - is definitely the final death of the Gaullist tradition.

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Alpes-Maritimes LR deputy Michèle Tabarot (very right-wing, daughter of an OAS activist) co-signed a column in Le Figaro opposing Chiotti's idea, so he basically has absolutely no one backing him on this, not even hard-right deputies in his own department.

Another master tactician.

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What will happen to the MPs from LR who don’t want to be in an alliance with RN? Will they run as independents or will they join/create a party in the Macron bloc?

They can very easily run as 'independents' - anyone who has studied French politics knows the ubiquity of 'divers droite', 'divers gauche' candidates. Some have already indicated that they'll do so: Vincent Descoeur, LR deputy in Cantal, has quit the party and will run on his own, and the other LR deputy in Cantal, Jean-Yves Bony, has said he'll leave the party if Ciotti is still president in 48 hours, and that he's already removed LR logos from his posters and campaign lit.

I'll spare people the legalese about party affiliation for these elections but parties have very little time to finalize their list of candidates - until Sunday evening at the absolute latest (and then, to later obtain party financing, parties must submit to the interior ministry the list of candidates they have officially nominated). With LR's current sh*)tshow, I'm not sure how the party commission in charge of nominations will manage to work.

I think it's important to point out that the bulk of the LR grandees who have come out guns blazing against Ciotti's unilateral alliance aren't 'closer to Macron' or looking to ally with Macron - if you read their statements, many repeat the party's old position against the 'failed government' and against the 'extremes' (left and right). Those right-wingers who want to ally with or work with Macron have already left or been kicked out, although you still have a few deputies who may be more 'constructive' and open to working with the government, although I'm not sure if any of them at this point would seek reelection under macronista colours (it wouldn't be advisable). Macronismo unilaterally and strategically deciding not to field candidates against certain people they judge close to them is another matter - they've done that in 2017 and 2022, and will do so again - and obviously isn't quite the same as that person welcoming that support and publicizing it.

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The bald fash Chiotti is speedrunning WW2 history and is now at the Hitler bunker stage, holed up in his office with the doors to the party hq locked, apparently surrounded by two people and having a meltdown. He has, among other things, fired Tabarot, who is the head of the party's committee in charge of settling nominations. Last night, he tweeted that he had received thousands of messages of support, definitely real I swear. Very normal behaviour.

The politburo of the party, which Chiotti claims has no right to meet by the statutes, is currently meeting, looking to expel Chiotti from the party.

The sort of psychodrama that makes the Copé/Fillon war of 2012 look very tame in comparison.

Enjoying all of this with some popcorn, the RN confirmed yesterday that, for them, the LR (Chiotti faction)-RN alliance is going ahead and mentioned that some 10 or so LR deputies will be supported by RN. No details as to who they are, because only one LR deputy has come out clearly in favour of this alliance (another, Likud deputy Meyer Habib, has insinuated that he's in favour), so perhaps there are some who may have gotten cold feet and preferred to stay silent about their views in the wake of the crisis in LR.

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It kind of went unnoticed with the main show over at LR, but Reconquête(!) has also kind of exploded with the conflict between Panzermiss and Zemmour, which had been brewing increasingly publicly during the campaign.

Panzermiss effectively knifed Zemmour by anointing herself as chief negotiator for the party in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to form an alliance with the RN, going around him and not telling him anything to the point that he later went on tv to say that he needed to 'harass her by text' to get the details of the agreement she wanted to negotiate. In the end, RN pulled the plug, officially because they don't like Zemmour and his attitude. According to this article in a very right-wing magazine, a meeting yesterday was quite violent, with Panzermiss blaming the zemmouristas for the failure of the alliance, to which Zemmour apparently replied 'f off', which she did within 5 minutes.

I haven't followed this drama much, but Panzermiss is followed by (MEPs-elect) Guillaume Peltier (right-wing opportunist who has been in six political parties, from the FN to LR and now REC, since 1996, lost his seat as deputy in 2022), Nicolas Bay (RN dissident) and Laurence Trochu (ex-LR, ultra-social conservative from the 'Mouvement conservateur' faction). On the other hand, Zemmour has Sarah Knafo, his girlfriend and advisor, as well as Stanislas Rigault, the head of the youth wing called 'Generation Z' (he also looks exactly how you'd expect a young zemmourista kid to look like). It seems like Panzermiss and the other career politicians who had followed Zemmour in 2022 now want to make their way back to the RN, which is in no great rush to welcome them back with open arms (Panzergirl is more forgiving towards traitors than Panzerdaddy but still) and will let them sit out in the cold for a while.

Panzermiss was unsuccessful, for the time being, at negotiating her way back into her aunt's good graces, but she has been quite successful at knifing and marginalizing Zemmour, who is at the point where he's a loser begging on right-wing media for right-wing alliances all while having been publicly denounced as the obstacle to one.

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Having retaking control of the party hq, anti-Ciotti forces also control the Twitter account, but it has now been blocked by X (is Elon Musk siding with Chiotti?). Earlier today, the Facebook remained in the hands of Ciotti loyalists, but the anti-Ciotti mutineers seized control of the page earlier today (breaking through the trenches of two-factor authentication) who have, I quote, deleted posts "which do not correspond to the line of General de Gaulle".

https://twitter.com/Alexsulzer/status/1800924410922332363

(this is the funniest thing I've read in weeks)

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Zemmour has excluded Panzermiss from the party and denounced her 'betrayal'.

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Chiotti has posted this hilarious video of him in his office

https://twitter.com/ECiotti/status/1801195609434587444

Note the empty desk, with nothing but random fake photos and a phone. The mutineers probably took his computer.

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Dear Leader Mélenchon is carrying out a small midnight Stalinist purge of LFI, evicting certain candidates without prior notice - Raquel Garrido, Alexis Corbière, Danielle Simonnet, Hendrik Davi, Frédéric Mathieu. The first three are fairly prominent figures of LFI, who have been with Mélenchon going back to the PG days (when Mélenchon left the PS at the Reims Congress in 2008), but had over the past few months become publicly critical of the Dear Leader (Garrido was suspended from the group for 4 months last year for having dared criticize Mélenchon; Corbière, her partner, was kicked out of the LFI leadership in 2022). On the other hand, LFI renominated Adrien Quatennens, the redhead wife beater in Lille, so their moral values are quite clear.

The victims of the midnight purge all lashed out in pretty strong terms against Mélenchon on social media, and have been supported by two other critical/independent voices, Clémentine Autain and François Ruffin, the latter tweeting:

https://twitter.com/Francois_Ruffin/status/1801746499757302234

All five purged deputies have said they'd still run as candidates.

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Flanby is running in Corrèze-1, which was (under different boundaries) his old seat. It was won by LR in a runoff against LFI in 2022, the LR (anti-Chiotti) incumbent is running again.

Before anyone asks: he wouldn't be the first former president to return post-presidency to the legislature: Giscard returned to the National Assembly following a by-election in 1984, and held his seat until retiring (to be succeeded by his son) in 2002, save for a brief stint as MEP (1989-1993).

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Because nothing can be straightforward and normal anymore: national PS sources claim to not have nominated Flanby, but rather Bernard Combes, mayor of Tulle and Flanby ally, but the departmental PS fédé has nominated Flanby.

In LFI purge news, the rest of the left alliance seems like they had assurances from LFI that they wouldn't purge deputies and that they wouldn't allow the redhead wife beater to use the colours of the alliance (which he is doing).

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How do Muslims usually vote in France, anyway?

In 2022, Muslims voted heavily for Mélenchon - 69%, versus 14% for Macron (and 7% for Le Pen), according to an Ifop study at the time. This year, again according to a recent Ifop study, 62% for Muslims voted LFI (against 11% for 'others', 8% for the PS and 6% apiece for macronismo and the RN). Of course, the war in Gaza (a major issue for Muslim voters, and an issue which was a big part of the LFI campaign) certainly helped mobilize the Muslim vote (to a certain extent - only 40% of them turned out) for LFI much more than in 2014.

Historically the Muslim vote was solidly Socialist - it voted over 85% or so for Flanby over Sarkozy in the runoff in 2012 - though always with an above-average vote for parties further left, like Mélenchon in 2012. In 2017, the left remained dominant among Muslims - with 37% for Mélenchon and 17% for Hamon (who was accused by the right of being permissive towards certain Muslim cultural practices and so-called 'communautarisme') - but Macron captured a significant chunk of it (24%). By 2022 Macron had lost most of that, in good part because of the government's campaigns against 'political Islam', 'islamo-leftism' (much of it politically targeted at LFI, accused of complacency and tolerance towards radical Islam) and Islamic 'separatism' (culminating in the adoption of the 'separatisms law' in 2021).

But the Muslim vote is also often characterized by low turnout (even in high-turnout presidential elections), particularly in lower-turnout elections like municipal elections, which means that it isn't particularly 'reliable' for the left in all circumstances. Moreover, in local elections, particularly in 2014 and 2020, amidst extremely low turnout (particularly in the Covid-contaminated 2020 elections), the Muslim vote hasn't been as exclusively left-wing as in presidential elections - some of it has gone to the centre-right (in Drancy and Bobigny in the 93, crooked centre-right politician Jean-Christophe Lagarde and his clique set up a clientelist machine, in tacit alliance with certain Muslim community associations and Islamist groups).

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List of candidates has been released: https://www.resultats-elections.interieur.gouv.fr/legislatives2024/

According to political journalist Laurent de Boissieu (one of the few French political journalists to have any knowledge of electoral history and an interest in data and arcane details), there are 4,011 candidates, which is the lowest in a long time (6,290 in 2022, 7,877 in 2017), for an average of just 7 per constituency.



The interior ministry gnomes have assigned the label 'Union de l'extrême droite' to RN-LR (Chiotti) candidates (about 60 of them), while pure RN candidates have the label 'RN'. It would appear that the 'LR' label has been given to LR (anti-Chiotti) candidates. All NFP candidates have the label 'Union de la gauche' assigned to them.

I don't have the numbers on me, but macronismo is not contesting about a tenth of constituencies (65 or so), which they claim are where they consider there is a need for strategic vote against 'the extremes' from the first round and they are supporting other candidates - usually LR, PS or LIOT deputies, although that doesn't imply that those incumbents asked for that support, want it or are even all that pro-macronismo. LR deputies Michèle Tabarot, Marie-Christine Dalloz, Virginie Duby-Muller, Emilie Bonnivard, Nicolas Forissier and Julien Dive have no macronista opponents, while in the Hauts-de-Seine there was a partial alliance between a LR faction (Philippe Juvin) and macronismo, though this alliance was rejected by the LR (anti-Chiotti) faction which is running LR candidates against certain macronistas including Attal (confused? good!). In Corrèze-1, they are supporting the LR incumbent against our beloved national Flanby. Macronismo is also not running candidates against LIOT deputies Bertrand Pancher, Charles de Courson, Benjamin Saint-Huile (PS dissident who also has no LR opponent in a seat in the Nord that could very easily flip to the RN), Christophe Naegelen, Martine Froger (PS dissident who is now also the 'official' PS-NFP candidate in her Ariège constituency) and Pierre Morel-A-L’Huissier. Macronismo also has no candidates against Jérôme Guedj (PS incumbent in Essonne who opposes the NFP and has a dissident LFI opponent) as well as PS deputies Dominique Potier (who was anti-Nupes in 2022) and Cécile Untermaier.

I don't know how many candidates LR is running, but LR has no candidates in several constituencies in the Nord - absent in the 15th (RN-held seat where macronismo has nominated Jean-Pierre Bataille, who is a regional VP in Xavier Bertrand's majority in the regional council), in the 5th (RN-held seat where macronismo has nominated former LR/UMP deputy Sébastien Huygues, defeated in 2022, most famous for defeating Martine Aubry in 2002), in the 7th and 14th against two philippista (Horizons) incumbents or in the 21st (open seat, once held by Jean-Louis Borloo, where macronismo is supporting former UDI senator Valérie Létard).

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Going through the spreadsheet of candidates, here's the number of candidates for the major blocs per ministry labels:

'Union de la gauche' (NFP): 546
RN: 499 + 63 'Union de l'extrême droite'
Ensemble: 445
Reconquête: 327
LR: 305

There are also 191 DVD, 140 DVG, 215 'divers' (others), 654 'far-left', 23 'far-right', 149 'divers centre', 114 'droite souverainiste' (mostly NDA's DLF crew), 144 ecologists.

Of course anyone who knows about French politics can tell you that the ministry's labels are frustrating but also often quite arbitrary, misleading and sometimes even inaccurate.

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It's worth noting that Panzergirl (and Panzerdaddy before her) has long tried to expand her political base to include others who may sympathize with the FN/RN but are more reticent to be fully associated and tied to it and its name. As Antonio said, every major political bloc in France has always had satellite parties or movements around them, of people who are close to them or politically in line with them but who for whatever reason want to retain their own personal political identity or are unwilling to be explicitly affiliated and tied to a larger party. There's always been, even before Macron and from both the left and right, an obsession with "candidats d'ouverture" - candidates from other political horizons brought in a sign of political 'openness', signaling some kind of broader base. The RN has been no different.

For her, the precedent is the 'Rassemblement bleu Marine', some sort of alliance she launched in 2012, presented as an alliance of 'patriots' or 'nationals', to gather several candidates who were not from the FN (and didn't want to be explicitly affiliated with it) but supported Panzergirl. The 'RBM' mostly flopped, although it did elect Gilbert Collard (who later joined the FN in 2017 but defected to zemmourismo in 2022), only getting a few relatively minor former members of the major parties and various other names floating in the hard-right galaxy (most notably former Nice mayor Jacques Peyrat, who had quit the FN in the 1990s to join the RPR and be elected mayor of Nice). The only party with some semblance of partisan organization who joined the RBM was the SIEL, a minor party then led by Paul-Marie Coûteaux, a former souverainiste MEP (elected on the Pasqua-Villiers list in 1999 and reelected in alliance with de Villiers' MPF in 2004), who wanted the SIEL to be the umpteenth alliance of souverainistes of both the left and right (the SIEL collapsed a few years later, with Coûteaux falling out of favour with Panzergirl for going too cuckoo and later being couped out of his own party, which eventually drifted out of the RN's sphere of respectability into far-right cuckooland). In a way, the LR-RN alliance serves a similar purpose to the RBM, though with bigger names and higher chances of success: an umbrella under which you have various Panzergirl-sympathetic people who don't feel comfortable being fully associated and labeled with the RN logo, but ultimately will serve her interests and designs while being able to feel better about themselves saying stuff about how it's a 'union of the rights' against the far-left menace and not allying with the far-right.

The LR-RN alliance could also be compared to a similar strategy employed by Panzerdaddy in 1986, who allied with various 'respectable' figures from the conservative right who accepted to campaign on his ideas while keeping up the pretenses of being independent from the FN, an alliance which took the name of... Rassemblement national. These conservative notables came mostly from the CNIP, an old and one-time prominent right-wing party which, since the 1980s, has floated hesitantly between the far-right and the 'mainstream' right, and included Édouard Frédéric-Dupont, a right-wing parliamentarian who served over 40 years in the National Assembly from the 1930s up until 1993.

Le Monde says that only 8 of the LR-RN candidates are dues paying LR members in 2024 (another 8 were dues paying members in 2023) - one of them, which Chiotti has just disowned today for anti-Semitic comments, is the son of Pascal Gannat, who was a Panzerdaddy FN cadre in the 'Pays-de-la-Loire' back in the day...

Besides Chiotti and d'Intorni, the LR-RN candidates include: Thierry Coudert (a former prefect, in Côte-d'Or 3), Michel Hunault (a former UMP/NC deputy defeated in 2012, in Loire-Atlantique 7, which isn't his former seat), Gilles Bourdouleix (mayor of Cholet since 1995 and former three-term UMP/UDI deputy, famous for saying in 2013 that perhaps Hitler hadn't killed enough Roma...), Marie-Hélène Quatreboeufs (LR departmental councillor in Nord), Typhanie Degois (a former macronista deputy, running in her old seat, Savoie-1), Jacques Myard (hard-right former LR deputy, defeated in 2017, running for his old seat in Yvelines against the outgoing macronista president of the National Assembly Yaël Braun-Pivet, though he's labeled as DVD by the ministry), Guilhem Carayon (the aforementioned LR Chiotti youth wing ghoul), Brigitte Barèges (hard-right LR mayor of Montauban and former deputy, defeated in 2012, running against Valérie Rabault in Tarn-et-Garonne) and Sébastien Meurant (former LR/zemmourista senator, defeated in 2023).

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The thing I'm most curious about is turnout. 64% would be the highest turnout since 2002, which would be a good sign for democracy if nothing else, but would also significantly lower the threshold for runoff qualification as noted. At that level, it would take about 20% of the valid votes to qualify, vs over 25% last time.

However, do French pollsters have a good track record with gauging turnout? In other countries it's notoriously the hardest thing to poll. Have pollsters tried to estimate turnout in legislative elections before, and how did that go?

I have the same doubts as you since I've always been under the impression that pollsters are quite bad at estimating turnout. However, Ifop's last rolling tracker for the EP elections estimated a 52.5% turnout (it was 51.5% in the end, but probably over 52.5% only in metro France). Their last poll for the 2022 legislative elections estimated 46% turnout, which was a bit less than the final number.

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Stupid question, but:

Are the larger runoffs if candidates surpass 12.5% of the potential vote limited to 3 candidates? Could you have a 4 way runoff if you had, say, 60% turnout and four candidates getting a quarter of the vote?

They're not limited to three candidates - any candidates surpassing 12.5% of registered voters are qualified for the runoff, so there could in theory be a quadrangulaire.

However, there's never been a quadrangulaire ever since the qualification threshold was raised in 1976 - the last one was in 1973. It seems highly unlikely we'll ever see one in a legislative election, this year or in the future.

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Just voted online a few minutes ago. Unlike in 2022 and some elections before that, there were no charming random candidates to throw my first vote to, and the NFP's candidate was not from LFI (I'd never vote for a LFI candidate in the first round), so I voted NFP.

Of course in this constituency it's really only between macronismo and the left, with the former probably slightly favoured.

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I've done a very rough, imprecise general prediction. This is less meant to be a constituency-by-constituency prediction (although it kind of ended up being that) but more a general ballpark figure for each party. It was done quickly, mistakes are likely, and I'm probably unable to convincingly defend my calls on specific seats. There's a huge amount of uncertainty in doing this exercise before the first round, and there's bound to be a lot of differences between different people.

I didn't use any fancy 'models' or algorithms like the kids do nowadays, but instead looked at each constituency, quickly, without much detailed thinking, and based largely on 2024 EP results, 2022 results and candidates. I was, on balance, more generous towards the RN, based on the polls, the assumption that the election will be more 'nationalized' and local factors less important and the high likelihoods of triangulaires in many places (and an assumption that, like in 2022, transfers to block the RN will be poor).

I ended up with:
RN+Chiottista fash: 239
NFP: 176 (includes the dvg-LIOT/PS dissidents officially supported by NFP)
ENS: 98
LR: 40
REG: 9
DVD: 8
DVG: 4
EXD: 2 (Ménard and NDA)
DVC: 1 (Serva)

Overseas are mostly complete guesses, very (too) incumbent-favourable. Also the yapms basemap sucks.



Again, this map is probably rather favourable to the RN in many of its calls. Again, there's a huge amount of uncertainty in this election because it is uncharted territory - nobody in their right mind, as recently as two years ago, would ever have predicted that the RN would stand a chance at winning 240+ seats in a two-round legislative election.

I think a RN plurality, of this size give or take 15-20 seats in either direction, is the most likely outcome.

I believe a RN absolute majority, while not the likeliest outcome, is definitely quite possible but it would require several things for it to happen. Some of these things, in my mind, include:

- the degree of resistance of LR incumbents. LR candidates in two-way runoffs in 2022, almost regardless of their opponents (left, RN or macronismo), got the best transfers in their favour, and often won by solid margins despite rather weak first round results. Will these incumbents benefit from incumbency, local factors and, in runoffs, a similar ability to get good transfers regardless of their opponent? Some of them hold seats where the RN is quite strong - Hubert Brigand (Côte-d'Or 4), Stéphane Viry (Vosges 1), the non-Chiottista LR in Alpes-Maritimes, Nicolas Forissier (Indre 2), Sylvie Bonnet and others in Loire, Yannick Neuder (Isère 7), Emmanuelle Anthoine (Drôme 4), Emmanuel Maquet (Somme 3), Pierre-Henri Dumont (Pas-de-Calais 7), those in the Orne and Oise etc. My map is generally quite kind to LR, although I do predict a fair number of them to go down to the RN, taking into account triangulaires. But to win an absolute majority, RN would need to knock off even more of them.

- the resilience of strong local incumbents, both left and right, in constituencies with huge RN votes in 'national' (EP) elections - I am thinking, on the left, of the maverick northern centre-leftists (all Nupes dissidents or skeptics) Jean-Louis Bricout, Benjamin Saint-Huile and Bertrand Petit, as well as PCF incumbents like Fabien Roussel, Nicolas Sansu and Sébastien Jumel; and, on the right, Charles de Courson, Jean-Luc Warsmann, Bertrand Pancher and Christophe Naegelen. On my map, I have been perhaps too harsh on the lefties on this list, predicting all of them will go down, and perhaps a bit too generous with some of the rightists. Basically, it'll be a test of whether local factors/candidate quality (particularly since a lot of RN candidates are, as usual, nobodies, not from the area or many shades of crackpots who post a lot about Hitler on social media) will be able to overcome a big national wave and, probably, a more nationalized election than 2022 given higher turnout likely reducing local effects. The RN needs to knock off basically all of these incumbents to win an absolute majority.

- it would also require that most third placed candidates do not withdraw from triangulaires where the RN is ahead (this will be one of the big things to follow immediately post round one: will third-placed macronista and non-LFI leftists withdraw if the RN is way ahead in the seat?), that transfers to the non-RN candidates in runoffs are mediocre (as was the case in 2022) and therefore limited anti-RN tactical voting.

A bare RN absolute majority map might look a bit like this: