Frédéric Sawicki, professor of political science at Panthéon-Sorbonne University and researcher at the European Center for Sociology and Political Science (Cessp-CNRS), is the author, with Igor Martinache, of The End of Parties? (PUF, 2020) and Socialist Party Networks. Sociology of a partisan environment (Belin, 1997).
The legislative elections of June 30 and July 7 will be governed by a single-member majority vote in two rounds, and not by the proportional vote of the European elections. Do these ways of voting shape different political landscapes?
In the European elections, the proportional system, which only has one round, pushed the parties to count themselves, and therefore to mark their differences. When representatives are elected by proportional representation, the designation of the head of the executive and the government program result from compromises which are constructed after the vote.
Read also | Legislative elections 2024: why participation and negotiations between parties are crucial issues in the first round
Add to your selections
With the two-round majority vote in the legislative elections, it is the opposite: the system encourages the parties to conclude alliances, or even to present joint candidacies and a common program, even before the first round. The constitution of the New Popular Front is the most exemplary expression of this, but the incredible negotiations between the National Rally (RN), Reconquest! and the president of the Les Républicains (LR) party, as well as the discreet agreements made here and there between Renaissance and LR to share certain constituencies, are part of the same logic.
The two-round majority vote distorts political representation: it crushes the small parties and amplifies the victory of the big ones. Could this logic, which has long reduced the representation of the National Front (FN), increase its number of elected officials tomorrow?
The two-round majority vote kept the FN, then the RN, away from power for a very long time – except between 1986 and 1988, when the FN had a group of thirty-five deputies, because the Assembly was elected proportionally. While it represented around 20% of the electorate in the years 2000-2020, the FN/RN was excluded from Parliament until 2022. On this date, the tripolarization, however, ceased to be contained by the mode election: in 2022, the RN obtained the majority of votes in dozens of constituencies.
Also read (2022) | Article reserved for our subscribers 2022 legislative elections: the National Rally achieves historic success, with 89 deputies
Add to your selections
Can the RN now hope to become a majority in the Assembly?
Everything will depend on the participation rate, the mobilization of the different electorates and the strategy of the other parties in the running. Since the establishment of the five-year term, the legislative elections have been a confirmation ballot with a very low participation rate – as if many French people, particularly those who supported the losers, considered that the presidential election had decided. This allowed presidents, until 2022, to have a solid parliamentary majority – even if it was sometimes elected with less than 20% of those registered, as in 2017.
You have 50.13% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
