A monochrome Hexagon where only a handful of pockets emerge from the far right. By collecting more than 7.7 million votes on Sunday June 9 in the European elections, the list led by Jordan Bardella not only garnered the second record in the number of votes collected in the history of the National Rally (RN), after the first round of the 2022 presidential election (8.8 million for Marine Le Pen). The far-right party establishes territorial domination which now only affects large cities.
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Unsurprisingly, the former National Front (FN) established its best results at the heart of its two historic geographic lines of force: in the northeast quarter and on the edges of the Mediterranean. From Pas-de-Calais to Haute-Saône, twelve departments brought the RN to more than 40%, with Aisne even giving it more than half of the votes cast (50.6%). None had brought the organization founded by Jean-Marie Le Pen to such a high level in 2019, during the previous European elections. Not escaping the general breakthrough of the movement in this election, these lands – long permeable to its social-popular version – each recorded an increase of almost 10 points in the frontist list in five years.
In the South, an area more sensitive to the identity side of the party, the RN benefits from similar dynamics. From the Pyrénées-Orientales to Var, via Corse-du-Sud, six departments voted for Jordan Bardella’s team with more than 40%. A performance all the more eloquent as it is achieved in sectors where the ex-FN faced, this year, a competitor from the far right – the Reconquest party! of Eric Zemmour, led in this election by Marion Maréchal –, whose best results were recorded near the Mediterranean coasts (9.1% in the Alpes-Maritimes; 8.8% in the Var). Overseas, the appeal of the RN in Mayotte has not diminished, fourteen of the seventeen municipalities in the department placing Jordan Bardella’s list above 50%.
It is impossible, the day after the European election, to draw definitive lessons on the prospects which open up to the RN during the early legislative elections of June 30 and July 7, called after the dissolution of the National Assembly pronounced on Sunday by Emmanuel Macron. The results of June 9, however, consolidate certain territorial gains made by the nationalists in 2022, during the last renewal of the Palais-Bourbon. In Eure, where the RN won four of the five deputations three years ago, the party totaled 42.6% in the European elections (compared to 31.6% in 2019). Confirmations of the same order can be isolated in Aude (40.5% against 31.2%), Lot-et-Garonne (38.6% against 29.4%) and Tarn-et-Garonne (38 .6% versus 29.7%).
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