The second round of elections for the French National Assembly showed that the National Rally (RN) party came out on top in terms of the number of deputies, RN representative Marine Le Pen said on July 8, TF1 Info reports.
Marine Le Pen’s remarks came as a surprise in the context of the final election results, which according to official data gave her party only third place. The New Popular Front (NFP) came in first, followed by the presidential camp, made up of parties that formed part of the relative majority of supporters of French President Emmanuel Macron.
According to estimates by the French Institute of Public Opinion (IFOP-Fiducial), in the second round of parliamentary elections the left bloc will win 187 to 198 seats, the supporters of the President of the Republic 161 to 169 seats, and the National Rally 135 to 143 seats. Despite these indicators, a few minutes after the announcement of the results, Marine Le Pen expressed her understanding of the election results.
“I see that today the National Rally is a political party that is the first in France, it is also the first party in terms of the number of deputies”she said.
To understand this statement, as TF1 pointed out, it is necessary to stop talking about political blocs and talk about political parties. In fact, the NFP and the presidential camp do not refer to a single party, but to a set of political entities that have entered into an alliance to increase their chances of electing deputies. The NFP thus brings together the Socialist Party (PS), the Ecologists (EELV), France Invicta (LFI) and the French Communist Party (PCF). The presidential camp is an alliance of Macron’s Renaissance party and its allies from the Democratic Movement (MoDem), Horizons and the Union of Democrats and Independents (UDI).
The results announced on the evening of July 7 are valid for both the NFP and the presidential camp, where each bloc brings together at least four political parties. In contrast, the RN achieved its results almost alone, with the exception of a dozen deputies representing allies of the Republican Party (LR), led by Eric Sciotti.
And if we look at the results by political party, and not by political bloc, we can clearly see that Marine Le Pen is telling the truth. Indeed, the Ifop-Fiducial poll shows that in a left-wing coalition, the LFI would win between 82 and 86 deputies, followed by the PS (62 to 67) and the Ecologists (34 to 35). In the presidential field, Renaissance would elect between 98 and 100 people, MoDem between 29 and 33, and Horizons between 22 and 23. By comparison, the RN alone could send between 121 and 128 deputies to the National Assembly. Which, in essence, makes it the number one political party in the lower house of the French parliament.
However, in the National Assembly everything depends on alliances. A party cannot pass laws on its own if it does not have an absolute majority, and even less so the RN. After all, it is opposed by a powerful “republican front”. That is why coalitions formed by several parties that are able to reach an agreement end up gaining more weight.
Source: Rossa Primavera
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