the essential
Yesterday, phone calls multiplied between the party leaderships in order to organize themselves to block the RN. Little by little, the strategies of the New Popular Front and the majority are coming closer together.
He slept three hours and on this Monday morning, this advisor to the former majority is busy analyzing the results constituency by constituency. It’s going to be a long day. Since Sunday evening at 8 p.m., the Macronists have been getting out their calculators. And they are discovering that the grandiloquent, but very vague, “broad democratic and republican gathering” demanded again yesterday afternoon by Emmanuel Macron is clashing with some principles of reality. “Voting instructions are useless,” a Macronist assures us. Sometimes, the withdrawal of the candidate who came in third could benefit the RN. Hence the need to carry out more detailed analyses, work that began yesterday. And a first surprise has emerged: according to our advisor, there are almost as many constituencies where the majority comes in second as constituencies where it is the New Left Front. Enough to reassure some and put pressure on others.
The neither nor seems far away
Another element of negotiation with the left bloc: The polls would reveal that whatever the instructions, there would be more voters of the New Popular Front who would be ready to vote for the center than the other way around. This is what explained yesterday the divergences of positions between the leaders of the center. The neither nor seems far away, it is now a question of knowing if the Macronist candidates must withdraw each time they came third or if in certain cases they must remain to the detriment of the left candidate. “There were attempts to ask us to withdraw when we were in second position but they stopped”, confirmed to us yesterday the national secretary of the PS Sébastien Vincini.
On the left, things also moved a lot yesterday. While Jean-Luc Mélenchon on Sunday evening called for withdrawals only in constituencies in which the RN came out on top, the New Left Front finally agreed to withdraw in all cases. “We have identified 190 constituencies where withdrawal is really necessary to avoid an RN victory, whether the RN is in first or second place. 115 have already been done. At the PS it is done, at the Greens and the PC too and at LFI it is in progress. The NFP is becoming the new republican front”, assures us Sébastien Vincini who adds: “on the other side 74 withdrawals are necessary from Horizons, the Modem and Renaissance”.
Braun-Pivet supports Rabault
The phones were therefore heated throughout the day both at the local and national level between the leaderships of the left and centre parties. “We tell them that we must not add dishonour and infamy to the defeat. Any maintenance will be considered as favouring the RN”, assures Sébastien Vincini. With the president of the National Assembly, things are moving forward for example. Yaël Braun-Pivet is preparing to support the socialist Valérie Rabault in Montauban but also the LFI Caroline Fiat in Meurthe et Moselle.
Because on both sides these agreements are also studied in light of the post-second round. In the event that the RN does not win the absolute majority, Ensemble is putting everything in place to make a grand coalition possible. “In the Assembly, if we do not find an agreement between the non-RN groups for the elections to positions of responsibility, the RN will sweep them all in the third round. So, there will inevitably be discussions. Things will still evolve after next Sunday”, an advisor to the former majority assures us.
The country must be appeased
On the left, it is recognized that the situation will call for responsibility. “Men and women will say that the country must be calmed,” assures Sébastien Vincini. But it is especially urgent for the executives of the New Left Front not to pollute the period between the two rounds with these considerations. “The second round is still ahead of us, the first thing is that the RN does not win the National Assembly. It is not the tsunami that was predicted, we can still prevent Marine Le Pen’s friends from having an absolute majority, we must all mobilize,” declared the national secretary of the PS yesterday. Strategists of all sides have only one day left to play the calculators.
