Paris (AFP)
The big voters will choose 172 senators on Sunday, a renewal of half of the upper house which could allow the rebirth of an environmental group, but should not upset the major balances of an assembly dominated by the right since 2014.
No participation problem for this singular ballot, by indirect universal suffrage: the vote is compulsory, under penalty of a fine of 100 euros, for some 87,000 electorate voters called to the polls, mainly representatives of the municipalities, but also of the departments and regions.
The renewal by half of the Senate every three years is played out at the level of the department.
This year, 172 seats out of 348 are concerned, i.e. elected representatives from 58 metropolitan departments between Ain and Indre, and between Bas-Rhin and the Territoire de Belfort, excluding Ile-de-France.
Overseas are also renewed the senators of Guyana, and 4 communities (Wallis and Futuna, Saint-Barthélemy, Saint-Martin, French Polynesia).
117 outgoing candidates are represented.
In majority-voting departments (where one or two senators are elected), the grand electors vote in the prefecture from 8:30 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. for the first round, then in the event of a second round from 3:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.
In the most populous departments, with at least three senators, proportional representation applies, with an open ballot from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
No results can be published before the closing of the last polling station in mainland France.
Each of the seven groups that make up the Senate today has made its projections, but caution remains in order.
The leaders of the two main components of the majority, Bruno Retailleau (Les Républicains) and Hervé Marseille (centrist) expect the current political configuration to be maintained.
"It's difficult to say more", according to Mr. Retailleau, who should be reelected in Vendée.
"You have to know how to weigh fly eggs in cobwebs".
LR has 75 renewable seats out of 143 and the centrists 24 out of 51.
- Low profile for LREM -
Sunday evening, "we will have a global vision, but not the details of the composition of the groups", warns Mr. Marseille.
This is all the complexity of the Senate, where political labels sometimes come after field combinations.
Example: in the Eure, the LREM Minister of Overseas Sébastien Lecornu should be elected from a list containing two outgoing LR senators, Nicole Duranton and Ladislas Poniatowski, while the list led by the outgoing centrist Hervé Maurey has the support of the LR president of the Senate Gérard Larcher.
On the left, "the simulations suggest that the PS group (2nd in the Senate with 71 seats, including 35 renewable, editor's note) will remain at the same level", indicates its president Patrick Kanner.
The surprise announced should therefore come from environmentalists.
With 5 new elected officials, which seems feasible on paper, who would be added to a "core" of five senators already in place - the ecologists Esther Benbassa, Guillaume Gontard, Ronan Dantec, Joël Labbé and Sophie Taillé-Polian of Générations - the account would be good for creating a group.
But a little "fair", recognizes Mr. Dantec.
Unlike 2017, La République en Marche, weakly represented in the Senate (23 senators including 10 renewable), has a low profile.
The boss of the group François Patriat is himself threatened in Côte-d'Or by the socialist Colette Popard, close to the mayor of Dijon François Rebsamen.
At the Luxembourg Palace, LREM is now setting itself a longer-term recomposition objective, confides Mr. Lecornu's entourage.
Another minister is on the track, Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne, in the Yonne.
Among the candidates, there are also two former PS ministers, Marie-Arlette Carlotti (Bouches-du-Rhône) and Jean-Jacques Urvoas (Finistère), as well as 9 deputies.
The Communist majority CRCE group has only 3 renewable senators out of 16. Even with the departure of Esther Benbassa and Guillaume Gontard, it is assured of its maintenance.
The accounts are more delicate for the RDSE with a radical majority (14 renewable out of 24), but its president Jean-Claude Requier hopes to maintain this "historic" group.
Same hope among the Independents, created in 2017, despite 6 renewable seats out of 13, including that of its president Claude Malhuret.
As for the RN, it risks losing its only senator, Stéphane Ravier.
© 2020 AFP