• Despite good polls, the National Rally loses 9 points at the national level compared to the regional ones in 2015.

  • Within the RN, these poorer results are explained by the historic abstention, while the electorate of Marine Le Pen seems to have participated less in the ballot.

  • The casting of the top of the list, less flashy than in 2015, could also have had an impact on the score of the movement.

Cold shower for the National Gathering.

In the first round of the regional, this Sunday, the party of Marine Le Pen collected about 19% of the vote on the whole of the territory, that is to say 8 to 9 points less than in 2015. The good polls, which gave the RN candidates in pole position in six regions, were denied at the polls.

Only Thierry Mariani is ahead of the candidate LR Renaud Muselier in Provence-Alpes-Côte-d'Azur, but only by a short head (36.38 against 31.91%).

How to explain this electoral ebb, in a ballot that the candidate RN hoped to turn into a test ten months before the presidential election?

RN blames abstention

"Our worst enemy is abstention", worried on Thursday the mayor RN of Fréjus David Rachline on the occasion of a campaign trip to the Brusc market, in the Var. At his side, Thierry Mariani and Marine Le Pen also feared a low turnout, accusing the government of "organizing" it. To explain Sunday's disappointing results, party officials echoed the argument, targeting the historic boycott of the ballot box, at more than 66%. “Our disappointment is to have noticed that our electorate - the youngest, the popular classes - did not come to Sunday. We are the first victims of abstention, ”deplores Gilles Pennelle, the head of the list in Brittany, who came in fifth position.

An Ifop-Fiducial poll for TF1 and LCI confirms that the electorate of Marine Le Pen in the first round of 2017 is, with that of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the one who abstained the most this Sunday, at 71%, against only 48% for people who voted François Fillon.

“The low turnout has an impact on the results, especially as we notice a differential abstention.

The electorate is not representative, it is rather the seniors and the most qualified who went to the polls, strengthening the classic right or the PS and marginalizing the extremes, including the RN ”, notes Luc Rouban, researcher at Cevipof and research director at CNRS.

A casting and strategy error?

But can abstention alone explain the poor performance of the National Rally? “This failure is also linked to a casting problem. We can see that Hervé Juvin in Pays de la Loire (4th at 12.53%), or Alexandre Kotarac in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes (3rd at 12.33%) do not make any capital gains on their personality compared to to the score of Marine Le Pen in 2017 in these regions ”, assures Jean-Yves Camus, director of the Observatory of political radicalities at the Jean-Jaurès Foundation. “Despite their strong presence on TV, Sébastien Chenu in Hauts-de-France (2nd at 24.37%) and Laurent Jacobelli in the Grand Est (2nd at 21.12%) are also very far from Marine's scores Le Pen and Florian Philippot in these regions in 2015 (40 and 36%) ”.

With 13.12%, the number 2 of the party, Jordan Bardella, also loses five points compared to his predecessor in Ile-de-France, Wallerand de Saint-Just, in 2015. There is only in Paca that the former Minister of Sarkozy Thierry Mariani approaches the scores of Marion Maréchal. "I wonder if the RN is not also reaching the limit of the demonization strategy: by dint of normalizing, there are not many differences between the right wing of LR, which could demotivate some voters », Adds Jean-Yves Camus. On the RN side, we hope for a "jump" on June 27th.

“I am optimistic because we have a second-round electorate.

We are going to mobilize all week, I remain confident and I think that we will win the Paca ”, indicates Gilles Pennelle.

A victory for Thierry Mariani next Sunday would allow Marine Le Pen to erase Sunday's failure.

A decisive stake, a few months before the presidential election.

Elections

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Elections

Results of the regional: Record abstention, underperformance of the RN, rolled majority ... The lessons of the ballot

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