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IN NUMBERS: France’s legislative elections

Mainland France goes to the polls on Sunday to vote in the first round of its legislative election. As the country prepares to decide on its future, we have broken down some of the key figures surrounding the contest.

We have broken down some of the key figures ahead of France's legislative elections.
We have broken down some of the key figures ahead of France's legislative elections. (Photo by STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN / AFP)

The imminent parliamentary elections in France will see the country elect MPs to the Assemblée nationale – which is the lower house of the legislature (the equivalent to the House of Representatives in the US or the House of Commons in the UK). 

These elections are important. MPs vote whether or not to approve laws proposed by the government. They can also propose laws of their own, amend legislation and set up investigative committees. 

If Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party doesn’t win a majority of seats, the French President will struggle to push forward his legislative agenda of reforming pensions, cutting taxes and transforming the European Union. 

Here are some of the key numbers you should know around the legislative elections: 

577 MPs 

Over the two rounds of voting, held on June 12th and June 19th, France will elect a total of 577 MPs to sit in the Assemblée nationale. A party needs to win 289 seats to hold a parliamentary majority. 

Each MP represents a geographical constituency – or circonscription in French. 539 of these are in mainland France, 27 are in overseas territories and 11 are for French people living in non-French territories (French people living in the UK for example would vote for an MP to represent them as part of the ‘northern Europe constituency’ which also encompasses Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Ireland).  

Each constituency covers around 125,000 people in total. 

6293 candidates 

There are 6293 candidates running this year.

Among them are Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin and Damien Abad, the Disabilities Minister. 

READ MORE Ministers, maids and ‘Wolverine’ – Who’s standing in France’s parliamentary elections

Last month the Presidency announced that any government minister who failed to win a seat would have to resign. 

44 percent 

Only 44 percent of the candidates are women. The law in France says that political parties are required to field gender-balanced lists of candidates – or face financial penalties. 

Although the proportion of female candidates is higher than ever before, it is still insufficient. 

In total, parties have been denied €2.25m in public funding this time around for failing to push forward equal numbers of men and women. 

€37,400

Political parties receive €37,400 per year in public financing for every MP they get elected to the Assemblée nationale. This means that there is both a political and economic incentive for political parties to win as many seats as possible. 

Over the course of the five years in between parliamentary elections, a party with 20 MPs can rake in €3.74 million. 

Even parties that don’t eventually win seats still receive some public financing – €1.64 per vote – as long as they managed to win at least 1 percent of the vote in at least 50 constituencies. 

As the largest party in the current Assemblée nationale, La République en Marche (renamed Renaissance) has received close to €20million in public funding every year. 

4 

In a bid to overturn Macron’s majority, four left-wing parties have combined into a coalition known as Nupes – La Nouvelle Union populaire écologique et sociale

It is made up of the France Unbowed Party, the Europe Ecology – the Greens Party, the Communist Party and the Socialist Party. 

€7239.91

Compared to other parliamentarians around the world, French MPs are paid a staggering amount. 

The basic salary of a French MP is €7239.91 per month, pre-tax. 

On top of this, they are paid an advance of €5,373 to cover parliamentary expenses over five years; a €1,200 subsidy to cover accommodation costs when they come to Paris; more than €10,500 to pay assistants; and an annual payment of more than €20,000 to cover IT costs and taxi journeys. 

When an MP is eventually voted out of office, they receive monthly payments of €3,191 (pre-tax) for six months to help them readjust to normal life. After six months, these payments begin to gradually decrease. 

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FRENCH ELECTIONS

French election breakdown: TV clash, polling latest and ‘poo’ Le Pen

From the polls latest to the first big TV election clash, via a lot of questions about the French Constitution and the president's future - here's the situation 17 days on from Emmanuel Macron's shock election announcement.

French election breakdown: TV clash, polling latest and 'poo' Le Pen

During the election period we will be publishing a bi-weekly ‘election breakdown’ to help you keep up with the latest developments. You can receive these as an email by going to the newsletter section here and selecting subscribe to ‘breaking news alerts’.

It’s now been 17 days since Macron’s surprise call for snap parliamentary elections, and four days until the first round of voting.

TV debates

The hotly-anticipated first TV debate of the election on Tuesday night turned out to be an ill-tempered affair with a lot of interruptions and men talking over each other.

The line of the night went to the left representative Manuel Bompard – who otherwise struggled to make much of an impact – when he told far-right leader Jordan Bardella (whose Italian ancestors migrated to France several generations back): “When your personal ancestors arrived in France, your political ancestors said exactly the same thing to them. I find that tragic.”

But perhaps the biggest question of all is whether any of this matters? The presidential election debate between Macron and Marine Le Pen back in 2017 is widely credited with influencing the campaign as Macron exposed her contradictory policies and economic illiteracy.

However a debate ahead of the European elections last month between Bardella and prime minister Gabriel Attal was widely agreed to have been ‘won’ by Attal, who also managed to expose flaws and contradictions in the far right party’s policies. Nevertheless, the far-right went on to convincingly beat the Macronists at the polls.

Has the political scene simply moved on so that Bardella’s brief and fact-light TikTok videos convince more people than a two-hour prime-time TV debate?

You can hear the team from The Local discussing all the election latest on the Talking France podcast – listen here or on the link below

Road to chaos

Just over two weeks ago when Macron called this election, he intended to call the bluff of the French electorate – did they really want a government made up of Marine Len Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party?

Well, latest polling suggests that a large portion of French people want exactly that, and significantly fewer people want to continue with a Macron government.

With the caveat that pollsters themselves say this is is a difficult election to call, current polling suggests RN would take 35 percent of the vote, the leftist alliance Nouveau Front Populaire 30 percent and Macron’s centrists 20 percent.

This is potentially bad news for everyone, as those figures would give no party an overall majority in parliament and would instead likely usher in an era of political chaos.

The questions discussed in French conversation and media have now moved on from ‘who will win the election?’ to distinctly more technical concerns like – what exactly does the Constitution say about the powers of a president without a government? Can France have a ‘caretaker government’ in the long term? Is it time for a 6th republic?.

The most over-used phrase in French political discourse this week? Sans précédent (unprecedented).

Démission

From sans précédent to sans président – if this election leads to total chaos, will Macron resign? It’s certainly being discussed, but he says he will not.

For citizens of many European parliamentary democracies it seems virtually automatic that the president would resign if he cannot form a government, but the French system is very different and several French presidents have continued in post despite being obliged to appoint an opponent as prime minister.

READ ALSO Will Macron resign in case of an election disaster?

The only president of the Fifth Republic to resign early was Charles de Gaulle – the trigger was the failure of a referendum on local government, but it may be that he was simply fed up; he was 78 years old and had already been through an attempted coup and the May 1968 general strike which paralysed the country. He died a year after leaving office.

Caca craft

She might be riding high in the polls, but not everyone is enamoured of Le Pen, it seems, especially not in ‘lefty’ eastern Paris – as seen by this rather neatly crafted Marine Le Pen flag stuck into a lump of dog poo left on the pavement.

Thanks to spotter Helen Massy-Beresford, who saw this in Paris’s 20th arrondissement.

You can find all the latest election news HERE, or sign up to receive these election breakdowns as an email by going to the newsletter section here and selecting subscribe to ‘breaking news alerts’.

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