Emmanuel Macron could be the victim this Sunday of a political pendulum, of the revenge of the left. The French electoral system is capable of provoking apparently contradictory movements in a short period of time. On April 24, Macron was re-elected at the Elysee with more than 58% of the vote. Barely two months later, he risks losing his absolute majority in the National Assembly and being handcuffed for the next five years.
How is such a drastic change of scenery possible? The first explanation is that the comfortable victory in the presidential elections was a distorted result, as happened in 2017. In the second round, Macron benefited from millions of votes cast by left-wing voters. They reluctantly opted for him, forced by an uncomfortable dilemma: either Macron or the far-right Marine Le Pen.
Just look at what happened in the popular northern suburbs of Paris or in cities with high Muslim immigration like Roubaix, near the Belgian border. In the first round of the presidential elections, Mélenchon, the leader of La Francia Insumisa (LFI, radical left), prevailed. Two weeks later, in the second round, Macron won there in a landslide.
The legislative ones are the opportunity, for many of those French leftists, frustrated with the situation, to correct course, to vote with their hearts and not, like on April 24, to put a cold rational calculation before. Many of them are aware that the program of the New Popular Ecological and Social Union (Nupes) is unrealistic. Despite this, they will support her to try to bring about a change in policy and to punish Macron. "He promises a lot, but they are dreams," a Muslim voter told this newspaper a few days ago in La Courneuve, on the northern outskirts of Paris, alluding to Mélenchon. Still, she admitted that she would vote for him "because he is the only one who listens to people like us."
These elections are the fourth in a row since April 10. That causes democratic fatigue. Abstention may once again exceed a historical threshold. Not all citizens understand the relevance of the National Assembly to ensure governability.
Demoscopic studies indicate that the left is strong in urban areas and among young people. An analysis carried out for the newspaper Le Monde estimated that 42% of young people between 18 and 24 years old and 38% of those between 25 and 34 years old voted for Nupes last Sunday. People with a higher level of training and those who occupy intermediate positions in companies or in the Administration lean to the left.
It is obvious that unity has been a blessing for the left. The Nupes works well as an electoral device. Another thing will be its cohesion in Parliament, since it is expected to fragment into at least four autonomous groups: socialists, communists, environmentalists and LFI.
On the government side, on the other hand, the price is paid for the scant territorial presence of the party that Macron founded, La República en Marcha (LREM, now renamed Reconquista). During these years, the head of state, hyperactive in national and international politics, has neglected the grassroots work to root his party, something that takes time and effort. The municipal elections of 2020 and the regional elections of 2021 already showed the structural weakness of the LREM. This becomes evident again in the legislative. It is a macrocephalic structure, but with little infantry.
Macron's difficulties also derive from the scant programmatic specification. The vast majority of voters do not know what they are voting for if they elect a Macronista deputy. The only thing that has reached them is the proposal to raise the retirement age from 65, an unpopular initiative. Mélenchon, on the other hand, has been able to focus on several very clear proposals, such as lowering the retirement age to 60 years, blocking the prices of energy and basic necessities and raising the minimum wage to 1,500 euros.
Despite everything, it is not foreseeable that Nupes will win and that Mélenchon may demand to be prime minister. The most likely scenario is a relative majority for the coalition around Macron, Ensemble (Together), or a tight absolute majority. In both cases, Nupes, with a very numerous and combative parliamentary troop, is expected to behave in an obstructionist manner and make it very difficult for Macron to carry out any initiative. For a president accustomed to having an overwhelming majority, an insufficient victory would completely alter his way of governing and force him to a permanent negotiation of consensus, something rare in the French presidential regime.
