What if the grenade thrown by Emmanuel Macron had returned to his legs? This would not be the first time that a president has made a mistake in thinking he is taking his opponents by surprise. When Jacques Chirac dissolved the National Assembly in 1997, his party won the early legislative elections and the socialist Lionel Jospin became his Prime Minister until 2002.The one with corn that with”, railed Jacques Chirac’s puppet to the Guignols of the Info. “I wanted to dissolve the Assembly, I dissolved the right.”
Is Emmanuel Macron also at risk of being the sprinkler? The macronie, doomed a priori to disappear one day since it is centered around a person, will it disappear precipitously? The first signals from this blitzkrieg, the early legislative elections taking place on June 30 and July 7, tend to support this idea.
For Emmanuel Macron, the result of the legislative elections will not be “no one’s fault”, but the “responsibility” of everyone
Grumbling internally
First element of analysis: opinion surveys, which are bad. According to an Ifop survey for Radio France and The Parisian revealed this Saturday, June 22, the presidential majority Ensemble formed by the Renaissance, Horizons and Modem parties would come in third position in voting intentions for the first (19.5%), behind the National Rally (RN, 31.5%) and the New Popular Front (NFP, 28%). If it is difficult to make projections in the context of a two-round election in 577 constituencies, pollsters nevertheless predict a division of at least two in the number of deputies from the presidential camp. Ensemble had obtained 245 folding seats after the 2022 legislative elections, already down compared to the 351 seats of La République en Marche in 2017.
Second element: internal protest. This discontent has been expressed in multiple ways, and it has reached a crescendo in recent days.
Fearing a new anti-Macron vote, many executives quickly made it known, just after the announcement of the dissolution, that they preferred that the president remain withdrawn from the campaign. “You must not speak”said Modem leader François Bayrou, according to The world.
Outgoing MPs also contested nominations. Gilles Le Gendre, for example, submitted his candidacy in Paris, with the public support of the outgoing president of the National Assembly Yaël Braun-Pivet, while his camp preferred someone close to the Minister of Culture Rachida Dati.
Other deputies preferred to stop politics, like ex-ministers Olivier Dussopt and Joël Giraud. Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin decided to run in the North but announced that he would refuse any ministry after the results. Elected officials from the majority, like the former minister and deputy for Paris Clément Beaune, even openly criticize President Macron’s comments on social networks.
Another surprising fact: the presidential majority did not nominate a candidate in around sixty constituencies, out of 577 in total. In the first constituency of Corrèze for example, the one where the former socialist president François Hollande is running, she supports the outgoing parliamentarian Francis Dubois (Les Républicains, LR), who would have done well without this dubbing, as he fears the pushback effect of the President of the Republic.
Anticipated legislative elections in France: three blocs emerge from the chaos
Emancipations
The majority candidates for deputy also fear this effect. They did not put Emmanuel Macron’s face on their leaflet, nor his name. Even Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, campaigning in his constituency of Hauts-de-Seine and throughout France, is distancing himself from President Macron.
And then, there was the exit, Thursday evening, of another heavyweight from the majority, former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, a defector from the right who created his party, Horizons, in 2021. “It was the President of the Republic who killed the presidential majority. He dissolved it, not rebels”released the putative candidate for the 2027 presidential election at the microphone of TF1. “Alright. Let’s move on to something else. And another thing, it can’t be exactly the same as before. So, it is creating a new parliamentary majority which will operate on different bases than the old presidential majority.”
Édouard Philippe also asked his candidates to run under the banner of his party, Horizons, and not that of the Ensemble presidential coalition.
Anticipated legislative elections in France: the far right ever closer to power
“A fairly inevitable political logic”
For Olivier Rouquan, political scientist and associated researcher at the Center for Studies and Research in Administrative and Political Sciences (CERSA), “polarized centrism was beginning to show signs of diversity, with several dissonant voices, already since the end of the first five-year term, with then episodes like pension reform and the immigration law. And today, it is clear that the accelerated attrition of the executive during this second mandate encourages, almost mechanically, the leaders of this polarized centrism to make their difference heard. We therefore obviously find Edouard Philippe, François Bayrou, and now Gabriel Attal who also seems, if not to stand his ground, in any case to make his mark.”
”I would say that it is a fairly inevitable political logic, since it is a second term and the president has difficulty making an impression, in advancing priorities, since he is weakened, and since his way of governing is rejected”, slips Olivier Rouquan again. “It is therefore understandable that the executives of this polarized centrism distance themselves from this leader who seems more and more isolated, and that they prepare for the future.”
Olivier Rouquan, however, prefers to avoid talking about the end of Emmanuel Macron’s reign. “Presidents of the Republic have already been able to go through very critical periods, like Jacques Chirac in 1997, at the time of the dissolution of the National Assembly. He had been confronted with internal disputes, with a misunderstanding of his decision both by his own camp and by the electorate. And yet, we know the rest: Jacques Chirac held on, and he was re-elected in 2002.”
Emmanuel Macron cannot run again in the 2027 presidential election, but he can still bounce back before the end of his mandate. “In politics, things happen very quickly, and a defensive strategy is not necessarily a loser”concludes the political scientist.
