The hemicycle of the Palais du Luxembourg remains on the right. The results of the senatorial elections in fact confirmed on Sunday the stability of the Upper House, dominated by the right and the center, and the difficulties of the Macronists, in an election marked by the return of the National Rally, with three elected officials.
“This senatorial renewal reinforces the senatorial majority of the right and the center,” rejoiced Gérard Larcher (LR), re-elected at 74 for a sixth term in Yvelines, before a more than probable reappointment to his post as President of the Senate on October 2. “The Senate will continue to be this essential counter-power to democracy,” he added.
The Macronists pay for their weak local roots
The Republicans still note a small erosion and are counting on a group of around 140 senators, against 145 previously, according to their latest estimates Sunday evening. The rebalancing is favorable to the allied group of the centrist Union of Hervé Marseille, re-elected in Hauts-de-Seine, which hopes to “enrich” its troops and “reach sixty members”.
A little over eight months before the next major European electoral meeting, 170 of the 348 senatorial seats were to be filled for six years by indirect ballot in around forty departments. The Macronists have paid for their weak local roots, with a series of setbacks. From Sunday morning, they recorded an emblematic defeat, that of the Secretary of State for Citizenship Sonia Backès, the only minister in the running, beaten in the second round in New Caledonia by the separatist Robert Xowie.
Among its executives in the Senate, Renaissance saved the seat of Xavier Iacovelli (Hauts-de-Seine), but not that of Julien Bargeton in Paris nor Alain Richard (Val-d’Oise). The Macronists united within the RDPI group (24 elected officials) will see their troops decrease, even if their leader François Patriat assured that his group “will end up with more than 20 members”. Like Louis Vogel, elected in Seine-et-Marne, Édouard Philippe’s Horizons party seems more dashing, with a handful of additional elected officials brought to sit in the Independents group.
The left-right divide remains
In a hemicycle still attached to the traditional left-right divide, a reflection of the municipal elections, the socialist group (PS and related) should remain the second force in the Senate by maintaining its base of 64 senators, according to its census Sunday evening before the latest expected results in the West Indies.
“Symbolically, it is important,” recognized the socialist leader – re-elected in the North – Patrick Kanner, satisfied with having signed “a win-win agreement” with the communists and ecologists in around fifteen departments. “I had set myself, with my communist and green colleagues, the bar of 100 senators (of the left), I believe that we will be close to it,” he said.
The sidelining of LFI
This bet was notably won in the capital where this gathering sent eight of the twelve Parisian senators to the Luxembourg Palace, while the divided right obtained four seats. The former environmentalist presidential candidate Yannick Jadot thus entered the Senate just like the communist Ian Brossat. This result marks “a historic victory for environmentalists in Paris”, launched Yannick Jadot, who joins a slightly strengthened green group, with at least 15 members compared to 12 before the vote. The communist group will also progress slightly: it announced that it had 17 senators compared to 15 before the election. This left-wing alliance did not please rebellious France, dismissed for lack of sufficient local coverage to fill the ranks of the Senate.
Finally the National Rally, absent in the Senate since the departure of Stéphane Ravier at Reconquête, makes its return to the upper house. The party obtained three seats: Christopher Szczurek in Pas-de-Calais, Joshua Hochart in the North and Aymeric Durox in Seine-et-Marne.