The Weekly Dispatch is your weekly summary of the major events taking place in French politics, published on Sundays in order to give you the perfect way to catch up with French news and events.

Polling Update

In the final poll before the first round of voting, we’ve seen the solidification of the polling numbers that will likely guide this election.

Both the leading coalitions Ensemble! (-1%) and NUPES (+2%) are tied with 26% of the voting intentions, and shortly behind them you can find Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (-1%) dropping down to 20%.

The Union du Centre (-1%), led by Les Republicains is currently sitting in a distant 4th place with 10% of the voting intention, while the far-right Reconquete (-1%) have stayed within the same 6% region they’ve frequented for much of this election.

How does this translate into votes, though?

Currently, it’s still looking like the Ensemble! coalition led by Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance will be largely in the lead, but whether they will earn an absolute majority or not will depend on the performance of the deputies in the first and third round.

The NUPES coalition will most likely come in at second place, but the question everybody is asking themselves is whether they will manage to keep the coalition together, or whether the ongoing problems will cause another schism within their ranks.

The French Go to Vote!

Today, French citizens living in the mainland and in French oversea territories outside of the Americas will be voting in the first round of the legislative elections!

NUPES Has a Legal Problem

While the far-left may benefit heavily from the miles of empty space that can be found on the political left, that doesn’t mean that they don’t have a problem on their hands.

What this could mean, which is not entirely problematic, is that Socialist candidates such as Cecilia Gondard, who have had to literally wrestle their way out of some of the incredibly problematic positions that Jean-Luc Melenchon forced upon them, may find themselves in the position of having to fight without the cover of the coalition to protect them.

Could they find themselves without the NUPES banner which has carried many of them thanks to the media support? Could they find themselves having budgetary issues when it comes to making reports? Will this cause the coalition to fracture quickly?

Who knows, and we’ll only find out about this when the candidates report their expenses, negotiate, and take their positions following the legislative election.

A New Challenger Approaches

As my attentive readers will know, the Parti Socialist has been having a very rough time recently.

With both an internal civil war raging on, the recently announced issues with their adhesion to Jean-Luc Melenchon’s NUPES coalition, and the fact that they will be taking a heavy loss in terms of seats in the Parliament, you’d be forgiven for thinking that someone like Francois Hollande could be preparing for taking over the PS.

And you’d be right! Sort of.

Not only is the former Socialist president position himself (and repositioning himself over and over), but another rebel has been making a splash with her actions in support of a truly republican and pro-European left.

Carole Delga, the president of the Occitanie region which has a population of six million, has been one of the Socialist actors who have done the best out of the current situation, having become a symbol of the resistance of the centre-left against the machinations of the far-left.

While she was, indeed, ejected from the party due to her going against the coalition (which has turned out to be prudent legally, and may be useful politically), she commands significant support within the party, currently organising the campaign of 70 dissident socialists who are fighting against the coalition to varying degrees of success.

While we can only go off of polling to figure out what will happen on 19 June, the reality is that the militant PS rebels may be the ones to have the last laugh.

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