Following Sunday’s election, which saw 35,000 mayors, as well as regional, departmental, and municipal councilors, head to the ballot boxes, to elect half of the French Senate’s 348 seats being contested, the establishment center-right Les Republicains (LR) emerged as the clear victor, maintaining its majority, while Marine Le Pen’s right-wing populist Rassemblement National (RN) made notable gains.
While Le Pen’s Rassemblement National had been widely anticipated to achieve a notable Senate breakthrough, its actual performance at the polls—which resulted in the party gaining three seats—exceeded all expectations. Previously, during the presidential election in April 2022, RN lost its only Senate seat when Stéphane Ravier defected to Éric Zemmour’s Reconquête.
Speaking before Sunday’s elections, Jordan Bardella, who serves as the President of Rassemblement National, said: “We have zero senators. If we get one, it’s a victory. If we have two it’s a victory, if we have three…”
Meanwhile, an expert who specializes in the analysis of RN’s electoral map told Le Figaro that if the party manages to have one senator elected it should be considered a “small wave,” while two senators should be considered an “average wave.” Three and four senators, the specialist added, should be conceived as a “large wave.”
And while the results may have exceeded expectations, they are essentially a reflection of Le Pen’s party’s relatively strong performance in the municipal elections in 2020.
After the election’s results were clear, President of the Senate Gérard Larcher said: “This senatorial renewal reinforces the senatorial majority of the right and the center and is a testimony of its territorial roots.”
Larcher’s party colleague, Eric Ciotti, also commented on the results, saying: “Les Republicains remain a solid opposition and will carry out a project for France and the French.”
The French Left, which held the second-largest number of seats in the upper house, was plagued with internal divisions this round of election. France Unbowed, a hard-left faction, ran its own candidates but failed to secure any seats. At the same time, the Socialist Party (PD) and the Greens cooperated on some level, fielding joint candidates in some constituencies.
President Emmanuel Macron’s liberal-globalist Renaissance party, although it maintains the most seats in the National Assembly, has faced challenges in establishing a strong presence at the local level. Still, irrespective of the shifts in France’s political system over the past several years, the traditionally dominant political factions—the center-right Les Repubicains and the leftist Socialist Party—remain dominant at the local level.
The Senate, under France’s Fifth Republic, has considerably less legislative power compared to the National Assembly, given that, in situations where there is a legislative dispute, the Assembly, the lower house, has the final say.
