Regional in France: rout for LaREM, setback for the RN
Only one candidate of the RN, Thierry Mariani, is able to arrive at the head of this first round in a single region, Province-Alpes-Côte d'Azur (South), and again in extremis, according to estimates which have changed, because he is neck and neck with the outgoing president.
AFP - SYLVAIN THOMAS
Text by: RFI Follow
5 mins
The lists of La République en Marche and its allies experienced a severe rout on Sunday evening, June 20, depriving the "macronie" of any possibility of being kingmaker.
As for the French far right, the National Rally (RN) did less well than expected.
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LaREM wanted to be modest, hoping to garner 15% of the vote, perhaps even more in some regions, as some optimistic polls predicted.
Alas: the presidential party has convinced only about 10 to 11% of voters.
Worse: he was eliminated from the second round in Occitanie, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and especially in Hauts-de-France, where Minister Laurent Pietraszewski is announced between 7.3% (according to the Harris Interactive institute) and 9.1 % (according to the Ifop estimate), despite the presence of four other members of the government on its list - Agnès Pannier-Runacher, Éric Dupond-Moretti, Gérald Darmanin and Alain Griset.
The score is all the more humiliating as the outgoing candidate Xavier Bertrand (ex-LR) collects between 39% and 46% of the votes, far ahead of the National Rally.
His victory announced next Sunday will be an ideal launching pad for a presidential campaign whose "macronie" would have gone well.
This Sunday also buries any hope of victory in the second round for La République en Marche and its allies in Center-Val-de-Loire, where the Minister of Relations with Parliament Marc Fesneau (MoDem) has long been presented as a favorite.
With a little more than 16%, he certainly offers himself one of the best scores of the majority, but behind the outgoing François Bonneau (PS) and LR Nicolas Forissier.
Likewise, in New Aquitaine, the Minister of Veterans Affairs Geneviève Darrieussecq (MoDem), with about 14%, cannot have any ambition against the outgoing socialist Alain Rousset, who has collected more than 30%.
In Île-de-France, Laurent Saint-Martin won only about 11.6% of the vote, three times less than the outgoing Valérie Pécresse (ex-LR).
Weakened government
What match can La République en Marche still be the referee? Perhaps in Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, where the list of the presidential majority (around 13%) could ally with - or withdraw in favor of - the outgoing PS Marie-Guite Dufay, who came first (around 26% ), but followed by the National Rally and LR.
An agreement would be all the better seen by some of the marchers as it would give a signal to the center left and counterbalance the idea of a right-wing of the presidential majority, embodied by the joint list with LR Renaud Muselier from the first round in Provence-Alpes-Côte-d'Azur. And, in Brittany, LaREM, second or third according to the institutes, will have to position itself against the outgoing PS Loïg Chesnais-Girard, also close to the Minister of Foreign Affairs Jean-Yves Le Drian, who came in first.
Does the severe rout of the "macronie" nevertheless commit the government and, a fortiori, the Head of State, ten months before the presidential election?
If the executive has always insisted that it would not be bound by the results, the question of a ministerial reshuffle is now on the table again, especially as some fifteen ministers were candidates.
The Republic on the move also considered Sunday evening that it had, despite the defeat, a reason to rejoice: with scores lower than those that the polls attributed to it, the National Gathering could fail to conquer a region next Sunday.
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To read also:
Regional and departmental: the right at the head of a ballot sealed by a record abstention
The RN worse than in the polls
The party of Marine Le Pen, finalist in the 2017 presidential election, did less well than the polls anticipated and than in previous regional 2015 when it came out on top in six regions, according to estimates.
Only one candidate of the RN, Thierry Mariani, is able to arrive at the head of this first round in a single region, Province-Alpes-Côte d'Azur (South), and again
in extremis
, according to estimates which have changed, because he is neck and neck with the outgoing president.
Elsewhere, the RN still climbed to second place in a significant number of regions, but does not seem able to win next Sunday.
In general, there was a bonus for outgoing elected officials, which favors the Republicans and the Socialist Party, to the detriment of the RN and LaREM, which have little local presence. In the Hauts-de-France region (north), the outgoing LR Xavier Bertrand, candidate for the 2022 presidential election, came clearly ahead of the RN candidate Sébastien Chenu while the polls announced them neck and neck. He was delighted to have "
broken the jaws of the RN
".
The party of Marine Le Pen, a rising political power for nearly 40 years, has not succeeded, despite its very high scores over the elections, to constitute an electoral stronghold.
He is handicapped by the voting system and has for decades faced hostility from other parties who generally create a united front against him in the second rounds.
(With
AFP
)
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Regional elections in France