Brigitte Bourguignon, the delegate minister in charge of autonomy, at the National Assembly, May 4, 2021. CHRISTOPHE ARCHAMBAULT / AFP
The candidates feared records of abstention. They were right. On Sunday 30 May, the first round of the four parliamentary by-elections held in France was above all marked by a very low turnout : only 15.5% of registered voters went to the polls in the 20th arrondissement of Paris, 18.1% in Indre-et-Loire, 24.3% in Pas-de-Calais, 26.4% in Oise.
The disinterest of a part of the French towards the elections was accentuated by the circumstances. Several times postponed due to the Covid-19 epidemic, these elections are taking place a month from the regional and departmental ones, which feeds confusion. In addition, future elected representatives will only serve one year in the National Assembly, before the next legislative elections. The stakes could therefore seem limited.
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In all four cases, however, these elections were closely scrutinized, especially for their test value before the regional and then the presidential elections of 2022. The first round finally proved rather favorable to the leavers or their natural successors, even if a certain suspense is maintained in Paris. The Republicans party (LR) can find material to satisfaction, while the environmentalists, themselves, emerge losers of this day.
In Oise, the Dassault heir leads
The most clear success is that of Victor Habert, the LR candidate for the first electoral district of Oise. After the death of his uncle Olivier Dassault in a helicopter accident, the 28-year-old lawyer apprentice was very quickly chosen by his aunt and invested by LR to try to take over the family torch in the National Assembly.
The parachuting of this heir in the Hauts-de-France had then caused coughing, left and right. The name Dassault nevertheless proved effective. In the first round, Marcel Dassault’s great-grandson came far ahead, with 58.4 % of the votes cast, ahead of the Rassemblement national (RN), at 15.3 %. The Left and the Republic on the Move (LRM) are eliminated. Despite the gap between the candidates, a second round is made necessary, Victor Habert’s score representing only 15 % of the registered, while 25 % is required to be elected from the first round.
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Success also for Sophie Métadier, the mayor of Beaulieu-lès-Loches, invested by the Union des démocrates et indépendants (UDI) and LR, and supported by LRM in Indre-et-Loire. She finished strongly in the first round with 45 % of the vote, followed by the Socialist Murielle Riolet (20 %). She thus seems able to succeed the outgoing MP Sophie Auconie (UDI), who resigned for health reasons.
Brigitte Bourguignon, the minister in charge of autonomy, a former socialist who joined the LRM, achieved an encouraging score in Pas-de-Calais. In July 2020, after entering the government, his deputy refused to take his place, favoring his mandates as mayor and president of agglomeration, and thus causing a by-election. Relying on her local roots, Brigitte Bourguignon won 34.9% of the vote on Sunday, against 24% for Marie-Christine Bourgeois (RN), her unfortunate opponent in 2017.
PS-LFI duel in Paris
In Paris, finally, in one of the most left-leaning districts of the capital, the second round will be marked by a duel between the Socialist Party (PS) and France insoumise (LFI). The Socialist Lamia El Aaraje, a protégé of Anne Hidalgo, came as expected in the lead, with 25.6 % of the vote. The PS hopes to retain this constituency, the only one it retained in the capital during the Macronist surge of 2017. But Danielle Simonnet (20.8 %), the LFI candidate, very active in the working-class neighborhoods, intends to lie the predictions, by seducing a part of the voters environmentalists (18.4 %) and those of the Communist Party (10.6 %), which achieved its best score for forty years in the borough (20e).
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François-Marie Didier (LR) plans to file an appeal. Coming in third place (18.5 %), he was probably the main victim of the arrival in extremis of a candidate whose ballots displayed the LRM logo, even though he had not been invested by the presidential party ; the latter even tried in vain to ban this manipulation.
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