Senatorial elections: the majority of the right and the center confirm

The Senate will not experience the storm of the National Assembly. The senatorial election polls spoke on Sunday and, unsurprisingly, the senatorial majority of the right and center confirms the stability of its forces on the 170 renewable seats this year. At the same time, the good performance of the left in this election, the second political force in the Senate, consolidates the left-right divide within the Upper House.

On the right, Bruno Retailleau, president of the LR group, expressed his satisfaction in the evening. “This evening the LR group will emerge from this election reinforced with around 140 senators. We remain the first group by a long way and the senatorial majority is reinforced,” confides the parliamentarian to Le Figaro. According to him, the results of these elections are the fruits of the “recognition” of the work carried out by the Senate “on a line of opposition of general interest, neither Pavlovian nor complacent”. In addition, the leader of the senatorial right considers that many major voters “now” perceive the Senate as an institution playing a “fundamental role” for French democracy. “Because it is a pole of stability vis-à-vis the National Assembly and a counter-power vis-à-vis the executive,” affirms the senator from Vendée. In Paris, the Republicans saved their 4 outgoing seats and Macronie lost the only LREM senator it had in the capital.

If the right is delighted with the score of its allies in the centrist Union, which it estimated as an increase of two to three elected officials at the time of the completion of this edition, it also considers that this election is marked by the failure of the majority presidential, guilty according to LR of pursuing a policy of “recentralization too far from the field which discourages parliamentarians and local elected officials”.

The presidential majority, minority and dispersed, nevertheless also hoped to maintain a form of stability. But on Sunday, the macronie suffered a setback in New Caledonia with the severe and unexpected defeat of Secretary of State for Citizenship Sonia Backès. By denouncing a “betrayal”, the figure of the presidential party was forced to bow to the independence candidate Robert Xowie, symbol of the entry of the FLNKS into the Senate. The only candidate minister engaged in this electoral battle, she is expected to resign from her post this week. “Overseas as in mainland France, one of the big losers of this election will probably be Emmanuel Macron's party,” said an LR senator on Sunday morning, upon reading the first overseas results, marked by the candidate's victory. of the right who entered into dissidence on the Caledonian Caillou, Georges Naturel.

Without doubt, the Macronist disappointments are the consequence of the last municipal elections of 2020. The Macron camp suffered a national defeat there (2.22%) and we know that the senatorial voting method requires a vote of “electors” of which an overwhelming majority (95%) are made up of municipal councilors.

The left, which for its part had good hopes of crossing the symbolic bar of 100 senators on Sunday evening, was delighted with its slight progress at the Luxembourg Palace. The objective is therefore accomplished for the three groups: socialist, environmentalist and communist. This was the meaning of the agreement, sealed at the beginning of the summer, between the three parties. The Insoumis had not been integrated into the alliance due to their weak territorial roots - consequently having a limited number of "major voters".

Annoyed at having been sidelined, Jean-Luc Mélenchon's troops had decided to present their own lists. In vain: no Insoumis candidate managed to convert the test on Sunday. In the opinion of certain socialists, these Mélenchonist adventures would even have benefited the socialist lists. “Some elected officials were hesitant to vote for us because they considered that we had submitted too much to the rebels. Having a list in front of us proved that we were indeed against them,” summarizes a PS senator. Result: LFI will therefore remain absent from the Palais du Luxembourg until the next renewal of the Upper House in three years. In the meantime, new left-wing figures will arrive in the Senate on Monday. For example, we will find a former candidate for the 2022 presidential election with Yannick Jadot, elected senator from Paris.

After Sunday's vote, also marked by the return of two RN senators, elected officials will be invited to appoint the presidents of the different political groups from Tuesday, knowing that the groups must be formed on October 3 at 4 p.m. Unsurprisingly, Gérard Larcher , senator re-elected on Sunday in Yvelines, should also be re-elected for a sixth term as president on October 2. Two days later, the members of the Senate office will also be elected, the permanent committees formed and the first session of the renewed hemicycle will take place on October 10. Two major parliamentary debates are already in the sights of senators following the last election: the 2024 budget and the text on immigration expected in the Senate in November. Hot in front!