The second rounds between the left and the extreme right, it’s a bit like the kryptonite of right or center bets that lean to the right. Twenty years that the General Staffs have been entangled in linguistic convolutions so as not to rob anyone, internally, and not to insult the future, externally. Together!, the Macronist coalition, has not escaped it either, since the revelation of the results of the first round of the legislative elections on Sunday evening. What to do in the 60 constituencies where the second round will see the Nupes and the RN clash? Dam or no dam?
To this question since Sunday evening, there have been several answers. First, Elisabeth Borne, during her speech at Ensemble HQ: “In front of us, an unprecedented confusion arises at the extremes. We will not yield anything on one side or the other”, implying that Together did not see the difference between an RN deputy and a Nupes deputy. A few minutes later, in the same place, the general delegate of LREM, Stanislas Guerini, announced a position “on a case-by-case basis”. Understood: a socialist or an ecologist, it can pass, but a rebellious, it is harder. Later in the evening of Sunday, the spokesperson for the presidential party, Maud Bregeon, declared “I want to be very clear this evening, not a voice must go to the RN. Everywhere we call to defeat the extreme right”.
To hue and dia
These words, the candidate Together! in the Hauts-de-Seine repeated them this morning on France Info, and with 20 minutes “Olivia Grégoire, the government spokesperson, said exactly the same thing, this course is national and is extremely clear. “However, he had some failures, this clear course. Monday morning, the Macronist candidate eliminated in the 11th constituency of Pas-de-Calais called for a white vote in the duel which will oppose next Sunday Marine Le Pen (RN) and the ecologist Marine Tondelier (Nupes). It was Stanislas Guerini himself who had to clearly call on Twitter to vote for Marine Tondelier.
In the constituency of Marmande, in Lot-et-Garonne, the outgoing LREM deputy, who came third but qualified in a triangle behind the RN and the Nupes, had initially announced that he would maintain, betting on “his ability to rally” , at the risk of electing a member of the far right. Finally, the order fell from Paris: he had to withdraw. It therefore pulls loudly, and it was not the Prime Minister who helped this Monday morning, toning down her “no voice for the National Front” (sic) with a “if we are dealing with a candidate who respects republican values, so we support him”. But how do you recognize a Republican Nupes candidate from a non-Republican Nupes candidate?
falsely stuck
In recent weeks, especially since the signing of the agreement on the left, the presidential majority, sometimes the president himself, regularly uses the expression “the extremes” to put the far right and the Nupes in the same bag. In the end, didn’t this strategy backfire Together! ? “I don’t think that many people in the majority confuse the far right with the Nupes, believes a deputy from the right wing of the majority. Simply, some people are irritated by ultra radical and very aggressive positioning of certain Nupes. Of course there are disagreements on certain republican principles with them, but in the end it’s democracy, ”he tempers.
“They are necessarily a little stuck, recognizes the political scientist of Cévipof, Bruno Cautrès. Because they asked Jean-Luc Mélenchon for clarity in the dam to Marine Le Pen that they are not able to have in the legislative elections. “Nevertheless, for the specialist, what has been happening since Sunday evening is not just improvised under the influence of a very average result. There is a strategy: “The Macronist majority always wants to position itself like the centrist and central party by sending the others to the extremes. It tries to accentuate the tensions on the center right and the center left, in this case by sorting out the Nupes candidates. In short: Together! does not want to insult the future. The hypothesis that the Macronist coalition does not have an absolute majority next Sunday is clearly on the table, and if it misses the course by a bit, it intends to attract a few moderate deputies from the center left and center right. There, Together! try to drive a wedge into the Nupes.
The stake exceeds the constituencies Nupes against RN
But the ambiguity of the presidential majority on the RN can have virtues much more widely. One of the great unknowns of the second round is the behavior of the very, very many voters of the RN in the first round when their candidate has not passed the ramp. Can’t calling very clearly to block the election of RN deputies “provoke” them? In many places where Nupes does not seem to be the favorite against Ensemble!, these voices can swing the election.
Example: in the 2nd constituency of the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, the outgoing candidate LREM arrives a short head ahead of Nupes, around 30% and has almost no reservations at LR while the extreme candidates right won the last third of the votes. If the latter want to bring down the outgoing, they have the means. The outgoing is a certain Christophe Castaner, who has taken up the argument on a case-by-case basis between the Republican and non-Republican candidates of Nupes. Maybe not entirely a coincidence.