“We are the only political force able to obtain a strong and clear majority”, insisted Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, who is returning to the campaign on Monday morning in the 6th constituency of Calvados where she came comfortably in the lead in the first round. .

The macronie, united under the label Ensemble!, beat the united left by just over 21,000 votes, out of 23.3 million voters in the first round (25.75% of the vote, against 25.66% for la Nupes) and keeps the advantage in the projections of the 577 seats of deputies.

But the suspense is total to know if Emmanuel Macron will manage, two months after his re-election, to keep an absolute majority of 289 seats allowing him to pass his reforms, starting with that of pensions.

The two camps have one week to ward off record abstention which reached 52.49% of registered voters, exceeding the previous one in 2017 (51.3%).

Increased participation is, in theory, the only reserve Nupes can benefit from after uniting the left-wing parties in the first round. Conversely, Together! can benefit, still in theory, from the contribution of some of the LR voters in the first round.

“There is an anti-Macron referendum which is being set up for the 2nd round”, affirmed Monday on LCP the candidate Nupes Eric Coquerel, continuing the strategy of personalization of the ballot which made Jean-Luc Mélenchon ask let it be taken to Matignon.

The various institutes give the Macron camp within a range of 255 to 295 seats, when the left (LFI, PCF, PS and EELV) gathered under the Nupes banner is evaluated between 150 and 210 seats.

– “Serious warning” –

“The majority is far from certain (…) This is a very serious warning addressed to Emmanuel Macron”, insists Brice Teinturier, Deputy CEO of Ipsos France.

The fifteen ministers in the running passed the first round. But some are in great difficulty, starting with the Minister for Ecological Transition and Territorial Cohesion Amélie Montchalin, the centerpiece of the government. The Minister of European Affairs Clément Beaune is also in unfavorable ballot in Paris where Nupes obtained three elected from the first round and comes first in twelve of the eighteen constituencies.

Others like Elisabeth Borne or the ministers Gabriel Attal and Olivier Véran are on the other hand well on their way to winning and thus retaining their position in government.

Nupes leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon called on the “people” to “surge next Sunday” in the voting booths to allow him to become Prime Minister and impose cohabitation on Emmanuel Macron, as the plural left had achieved in 1997 with Lionel Joseph.

– “Not a single voice for the RN” –

Already Mr. Mélenchon has succeeded since the left, thanks to his historic union agreement, should be the main opposition bloc at the Palais-Bourbon, taking over from the Republicans who will count their survivors among the hundred outgoing. LR however limits the damage, to the point of hoping to appear as a pivotal party in the future legislature.

The outgoing majority, after trial and error which bristled the left on Sunday evening, clearly called on Monday morning not to grant any voice to the RN in the 58 constituencies where candidates from the Lepenist party and Nupes will compete in the second round.

“In these specific cases, RN-Nupes, let’s be very clear: not a single voice for the National Rally. We have never lacked clarity on this subject (…), not a voice for a project closure, for a project that we do not consider good for the country”, launched on RTL the spokesperson of the government, Olivia Grégoire, specifying all the same that in a handful of cases, there would be no instructions of voting.

As expected, the candidates of the National Rally (18.5% to 19.8%) failed to capitalize on the momentum of Marine Le Pen who had garnered more than 40% of the votes in the second round.

Confined to eight elected in 2017, the contingent of RN deputies should however be much larger this time, and still count in its ranks Ms. Le Pen, well ahead in her constituency of Pas-de-Calais (53.96% but not elected in the first round for lack of sufficient voters).

In the event of a duel between Together! and Nupes, Mrs. Le Pen urged her voters “not to choose”. “France is neither a trading room nor a ZAD,” she thundered.

For his part, Eric Zemmour, who was one of the leaders of the presidential election, missed his landing in politics. The far-right polemicist was eliminated in the Var, as were the other ambassadors of his Reconquest! party, Guillaume Peltier in the Loir-et-Cher and Stanislas Rigault in the Vaucluse.