Regional in PACA: is the RN really right to be happy?

Thierry Mariani, the head of the National Assembly list in the regional elections in Paca, was largely delighted with the merger, even before the first round, of the En Marche list with that of the Republicans.

His party has never ceased, since this political event, to send messages to traditional voters of the Republican right on the theme "they betrayed you, they come to terms with Macron, vote for us, for a real right of conviction" .

Behind these elements of language, there is a broad smile of satisfaction.

His hope is that this affair will push into his arms cohorts of right-wing voters who will not want to vote Macron, and that it will change the whole face of the election.

The truth is, nothing is that simple.

In this Paca region, as in many others, the presidential party is so weak that, if it had passed the first round, there is no guarantee that it would have been able to line up in the second.

He would therefore probably call to side with Renaud Muselier and his list Les Républicains.

In other words, what happened before the first round would have happened before the second.

The proof, Christian Jacob, the boss of the Republicans, had set as a political line: no agreement with La République en Marche before the first round.

Does this timing matter change anything?

What we know, and the municipal elections of last year have amply proved it, is that the rallies between the two rounds of an election are far from always winning.

The proof in Bordeaux where the right believed to be doing a good deal by welcoming En Marche representatives to its list before the second round.

Result, the right lost this city.

But conversely, a little further south, in Toulouse, the outgoing mayor LR Jean-Luc Moudenc, who had toped with En Marche before the first round was nicely reelected in the second.

So the National Rally would be wrong to celebrate too quickly?

In the case of the South region, yes. Marine Le Pen's party is going a little fast. And then, the more he shouts cocorico, the more he puts himself at risk of a violent flashback in the event of a defeat at the regional level. But it is true that for the future, that is to say for the presidential election of next year, then it is true that the scenario which unfolded before our eyes consecrates the domination of two figures on the French political scene: Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen. This is not a surprise, but in a universe as shaken up as politics in times of Covid, this reassurance is worth a lot.