Far-Right Seat DistributionNational Rally — 503*Union of the Extreme Right — 66*Reconquest — 2France Arise — 1Unclear — 2Uncontested — 3Far-Right Candidates Contested by The RepublicansNational Rally — 270Union of the Extreme Right — 34*Unclear — 1
Uncontested — 272This was a mess. As far as I can tell from the hours I've spent scouring the web for resources regarding France's far-right coalition, this post constitutes the first full examination of where the Republicans are challenging the RN/LR alliance. Part of the issue is that Le Monde's list is heavily editorialized and absolutely riddled with errors. For example, candidates are listed as "divers" despite the Ministry of the Interior and the parties themselves listing them as members; candidates are listed as members of political parties despite the Ministry of the Interior listing them as "divers" and the candidates themselves distancing from any political party label; candidates are mislabeled altogether, with some Ciotti-aligned Republicans listed as National Rally members and vice versa; the "dissident" modifier seems to be given to candidates at random with most Republicans listed under the LR label but with some singled out for no clear reason. Perhaps the worst example of this is Var's fourth constituency, where the candidate for the Republicans - Michel Rezk - was deemed ineligible to run by the Constitutional Council, something easily Googled by looking up his name and reflected in his lack of appearance on the Ministry of the Interior's list. Yet Le Monde has somehow gone out of their way to get this wrong, listing him as the candidate for the Republicans in the district.
There are times when the differences between Le Monde's list and that of the Ministry of the Interior make sense. For example, when the Ministry of the Interior does not account for a party investing a specific candidate or when one of the parties suspend their support for a candidate for various reasons. But, even here, this is not done consistently. As such, using Le Monde as a database for accurate, up-to-date candidate affiliations ended up producing more issues than it resolved. In the end, I had to double-check every race against the Ministry of the Interior to try and get a better sense of what the seat distributions looked like.
So here's what this map actually represents: this is a map of how the far right distributed their seats and where - by the list given by the Ministry of the Interior - there is or is not a "Les Républicains" listed candidate. In many constituencies, there is a center-right candidate, sometimes even running with the support of the Republicans, but that is not what this map seeks to represent. This is a map of where the Republicans were able to rebuild themselves and field a candidate specifically running under their label in the timeline between Ciotti's betrayal and the filing cutoff. There will always be an opportunity for center-right candidates to run under minor party labels or as miscellaneous candidates. This is an opportunity to see what has become of France's established center-right in a time of far-right upheaval and change.
Some other notes:
- There are six seats (three each for the National Rally and Ciotti's Republicans) where the Ministry of the Interior incorrectly lists the candidates as not-party affiliated when they are. In these six cases, I researched who the candidates had been invested by and used that instead of the incorrect "divers" or other labels.
- France Arise (Debout la France) and Reconquest (Reconquête) are not actually members of the Union of the Extreme Right (often fielding candidates against the National Rally, Ciotti's Republicans, and eachother) and are only listed for seats where the Union of the Extreme Right have not fielded a candidate. For France Arise, that singular seat is Essonne-08, the only "metropolitan" seat in all of European France where both the National Rally and Ciotti's Republicans are absent. While the argument could be made that this was a failure of candidate recruitment, I find that hard to believe that the only seat they failed to file for out of all 539 constituencies just so happened to be Nicolas Dupont-Aignan's, the leader and only seat-holder of the France Arise party and a far-right supporter of Le Pen. For the two Reconquest seats, both are from overseas constituencies, where there was a legitimate failure to field candidates. I did go through the other folks running to see if any of them were incorrectly listed as "divers" while actually being associated with RN or LR, but was unable to find any information indicating as such.
- There are two constituencies where it is unclear who - if anyone - is the far-right candidate. In the eighth French Overseas Constituency, no candidate is labeled by either the Ministry of the Interior or Le Monde as being a member of the National Rally or Ciotti's Republicans. However, there are two separate candidates both running as Republicans: incumbent Meyer Habib and challenger Aurelie Assouline. I have read conflicting articles on whether or not Habib has chosen to align himself with the Union of the Extreme Right or not. Most articles agree that he disagreed with Ciotti's initial decision, but differ on whether he later acquiesced or not. Either way, this is a race with both a far-right (if not Habib, then Reconquest's Guillaume Bensoussan) and center-right (if Not Habib, then the Republicans' Aurelie Assouline) candidate. In French-Polynesia-03, the question is much easier, but still with no clear answer. There is no "Les Républicains" labeled candidate, only local parties and "divers." In a recent article recapping the debate between the five candidates running, at least two of them signaled some level of interest in joining the National Rally if elected. To me, if a candidate is publicly saying they're willing to join a party as extreme as the National Rally in the French Assembly, that's good enough to throw them on the list. However, none of the candidates in this constituency are invested by the major parties and thus are not part of any group's list. If you don't count this seat as having a far-right curious candidate, then it becomes the fourth uncontested seat for the far-right in this election.
I've thrown the Overseas Constituencies behind a spoiler as they are even more of a mess than mainland France. Of France's 27 overseas constituencies, the National Rally has fielded candidates in 21 constituencies (three opposed by listed Republicans). Of the other six, three are fully uncontested, two lack RN/LR candidates but do have Reconquest candidates, and one is unclear (explained above). Colors are consistent with the main map, except the three unopposed seats which I've shown in yellow (indicating no far-right candidate, only center-right at best).
Spoiler alert: Overseas Constituencies
French Polynesia 01 — James Heaux (RN)
French Polynesia 02 — Tutu Tetuanui (RN)
French Polynesia 03 — Pascale Haiti Flosse (DVD)
Guadeloupe 01 — Tarius Royer (RN) vs. Rudy Fiacre Faro (LR)
Guadeloupe 02 — Laurent Petit (RN)
Guadeloupe 03 — Rody Tolassy (RN)
Guadeloupe 04 — Lydie Marie Monthouël (RN)
Guiana 01 — Olivier Taoumi (RN)
Guiana 02 — N/A
Martinique 01 — Cédric Crampon (RN)
Martinique 02 — Juvénal Remir (RN)
Martinique 03 — Max Ferraty (RN)
Martinique 04 — Grégory Michel Roy-Larentry (RN)
Mayotte 01 — Aurélia Maillard (REC)
Mayotte 02 — Anchya Bamana (RN) vs. Mansour Kamardine (LR)
New Caledonia 01 — Simon Loueckhote (RN)
New Caledonia 02 — N/A
Réunion 01 — Jean-Jacques Morel (RN) vs. René-Paul Victoria (LR)
Réunion 02 — Christelle Begue (RN)
Réunion 03 — Joseph Riviere (RN)
Réunion 04 — Jonathan Riviere (RN)
Réunion 05 — Joan Doro (RN)
Réunion 06 — Valérie Legros (RN)
Réunion 07 — Jean-Luc Poudroux (RN)
Saint Barthélemy and Saint Martin 01 — Clément Chapdelaine (REC)
Saint Pierre and Miquelon 01 — Patricia Chagnon (RN)
Wallis and Futuna — N/AI've spent a good chunk of my life over the past 10 days since Antonio posted his NFP map working on this, so I hope its at least interesting. I also created
a spreadsheet for this information, where I've noted the UXD party, if there is a challenger from the Republicans, and included any notes where the Ministry of the Interior differed from Le Monde or for anything else that seemed interesting. All information was double-checked (at least) and I did what I could research-wise when differences did occur. There are lots of other interesting tidbits too that don't fit naturally in this post that I'd be happy to share if people are curious too.
