PFor months now, a background noise has been continuously saturating the public debate: the Republican front is apparently dead. A vestige of a bygone past, it has become inoperative, caught between the normalisation of the National Assembly (RN) and the weariness of left-wing voters tired of being reduced to the role of dam-building beavers.
The lightning campaign during the first round of the legislative elections only reinforced this thesis. Some, on the side of the presidential majority, put an equal sign between the “extreme right” and the “extreme left”, when it was not, like Emmanuel Macron himself, between the RN and the entire New Popular Front (NFP).
The others, especially on the side of La France Insoumise (LFI), sent Prime Minister Gabriel Attal and RN President Jordan Bardella back to back. On the evening of this first round, on 30 June, the big question was therefore about the effects that the difference between the actual results and the forecasts could produce: the RN was elected in 38 constituencies and came out on top in 260 others, after only 3% of voters for both the NFP and the Ensemble coalition (with a presidential majority) thought that the RN was at risk of obtaining an absolute majority.
Then, within a few days, the Republican front was formed and on the 7thmy The wave of the electoral panel, carried out after the second round of the legislative elections on 7 July, demonstrates how extremely effective it was. The political parties shaped the configuration of the second rounds: due to the 210 withdrawals (130 from the NFP and 80 from the Ensemble), there were only a handful of triangulars in the electoral districts where the RN came first.
But, above all, voters followed suit. When voting in duels between the Republican Front and the RN, 97% of NFP voters chose a candidate from the Ensemble (or, where applicable, Les Républicains) and 73% of Ensemble voters chose an NFP candidate. The RN was thus defeated in almost three-quarters of the duels, much more than in 2022.
Limits that should not be overlooked
Beyond the effects of the Republican front, the results of the survey also allow us to better understand the causes. Between 70% and 80% of the supporters of the Renaissance, the Socialist Party, the Ecologists or the LFI share the idea that the Republican front expresses “The concern of those who think that the RN is a threat to democracy” and not “a tactic that allows traditional parties to retain power”.
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