It is not yet in stone, but it is almost a given. A majority of opinion emerged on Monday for the first round of the 2022 presidential election to take place on April 10 and the second on April 24, during a meeting of representatives of political parties around Gérald Darmanin, a we learned from participants. At the end of this meeting, the Minister of the Interior affirmed that the dates of the 2022 presidential election and those of the legislative elections would be presented to the Council of Ministers “in the coming days”.
The choice was limited taking into account the imperatives set by the Constitution. For the presidential election, there are only two possible date pairs: April 10 / April 24 or April 17 / May 1. Same choice constrained for the legislative ones: June 5 / June 12 or June 12 / June 19. A majority emerged for a first round of legislative elections on June 12 and a second round on June 19. On April 10, only zone B will be on school holidays. On April 24, all zones, A, B and C, will be on leave.
“Only bad choices”
Léa Balage (EELV) argued with AFP that “there were only bad choices” for the presidential election: April 10 and April 24 is “not a good solution because of the school holidays”, but April 17 and May 1 is not “a good option either”. “We take the least worse”, she explained, that is to say “on April 10 and 24”.
According to the PS deputy David Habib, “there was unanimity of the participants for the presidential election on April 10 and 24, except the RN and LFI who wanted more campaign time” and the legislative elections on June 12 and 19 “because there was no there is no public holiday in it ”. RN number two Jordan Bardella said that “between two bad solutions”, he leaned for the second, April 17 and May 1.
Fear of abstention
The solution of April 10 and 24 “falls early enough” in the calendar at the risk of “shortening the electoral campaign”, and it “benefits us a little less” since the two dates correspond to the school holidays of two “electoral strength zones ( for the RN), the Paca and the Hauts-de-France ”, lamented the MEP.
The leader of senators LR Bruno Retailleau said on Twitter that his “preference” went to the first solution. The general delegate of En Marche, Stanilas Guerini, judged the meeting “quite consensual” except “at both ends” (RN and LFI). With the holidays, “there were no ideal dates. Now there are obvious constitutional constraints. The winning argument was to avoid May Day, a day of processions, ”he said. For abstention, an election during the holidays “is a small additional obstacle, but it would be wrong to reduce the abstention to questions of dates”.
According to the barometer Harris Interactive forChallenges
, published in mid-May, Emmanuel Macron (25%) and Marine le Pen (27%) are neck and neck in the first round. The head of state remains favorite in second, but the gap is narrowing, to six points (53% -47%).