This milestone, which has yet to be confirmed in Sunday’s ballot, would crown the strategy of more than a decade of “normalization” of the image, not the program, of Le Pen’s party, after decades installed in the role of protest vote.
“The National Group (RN) will have a group and an important group,” the far-right leader said Tuesday on RTL radio, for whom her formation “is the first party in France” and she came out on top in “11,300 municipalities.”
With 18.68% of the vote in the first round of the legislative elections, the RN candidates did not really manage to capitalize on the positive dynamics of Marine Le Pen who got 23% of the vote in the first round of the presidential election in April and more 41% in the second round.
In a context of electoral campaign marked by the duel between the centrist alliance Together of the president Emmanuel Macron and the left-wing front (Nupes) of Jean-Luc MélenchonLe Pen’s match came in third position on Sunday.
According to projections, of the 577 seats in the National Assembly (lower house), Together would achieve 255 to 295 and Nupes 150 to 210. Although much smaller, the far-right battalion would be higher than the eight of 2017 and its leader would have his bench again.
The polls give him between 5 and 45 deputies. To form a group you need at least 15 parliamentarians and if you succeed, you will be able to gain weight in the debates, since in France the group presidents have more time to intervene or they can ask for a recess in the session.
Another source of satisfaction for Marine Le Pen’s camp was the elimination in the first round of the legislative elections of the rival far-right leader Eric Zemmourto whose voters he extended his hand on Sunday ahead of the second round.
In addition, another important aspect for a party with more than 20 million euros in debt is that it can collect 1.64 euros each year for each vote. With its more than 4 million votes, this would represent some 6.9 million euros of public money per year.
“Traditionally”, the result of the extreme right, either with Marine Le Pen or her father Jean-Marie in front, “falls a lot or even sinks” between a presidential and a legislative one, explained to the LCI network Frédéric Dabi, from the institute Ifop.
But “RN is holding up quite well” and recorded “a very good result,” added Dabi. In 2017, the far-right leader obtained 21.5% in the first round of the presidential election and, weeks later, 13.2% in the first round of the legislative elections.
“The only winner compared to 2017 in this first round is RN, which is progressing” and “will increase its seats” after Sunday’s ballotabounds the CEO of Ipsos France, Brice Teinturier.
The extreme right would thus have its own group in the Assembly for the first time since 1986, when the then National Front -renamed Agrupación Naciona– led by Jean-Marie Le Pen won 35 seats, but the electoral system was different.
In France, voters can only choose a single deputy for their constituency, through a two-round majority system that makes it impossible for parties like the RN to get representation in line with their votes at the national level.
This system has been in force since 1958, but the socialist president Francois Mitterrand decided in 1986 to introduce a dose of proportionality, so the constituency became the department and each party presented a list of candidates.
The seats of each department were attributed according to the votes obtained by each list, which allowed Le Pen’s party to win in representation. In 1988, Mitterand dissolved Parliament after his re-election and returned to the previous system.
Source: Ambito
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