In the "new world", political parties are definitely no longer popular. This seems to be demonstrated by the opinion on the general publication of the accounts of political parties and groups, published this weekend in the Official Journal. This document is only interested in the 2018 financial year, a year late therefore, but it is the first official health bulletin of political parties in a whole year since the victory of Emmanuel Macron.
The National Gathering - which has just launched a borrowing campaign with its supporters - has seen its membership fees drop from 1.9 million euros in 2017 to 1.1 million euros in 2018! Over two years, the fall is even more dizzying: in 2016, contributions amounted to 2.4 million euros! Knowing that, according to an internal source, the "average basket" is 40 euros per member, a simple calculation makes it possible to assess the number of members of Marine Le Pen's party, which would therefore have dropped from 60,000 before the last presidential election, to 28,000 after. The ex-FN suffered a serious backlash after the failure of its boss in May 2017.
On the other hand, donations from natural persons increased slightly in 2018, the year in which Marine Le Pen launched an appeal for donations to compensate for a partial freeze on public subsidies decided by the courts.
Tumble at LR and PS
The situation is also complicated at Les Républicains, whose revenue fell from 36.7 million euros in 2017 to 22.6 million euros in 2018. Not only did public funding drop by nearly 6 million euros - the party has fewer MPs - but donations are falling from over 8 million euros to just over 3 million euros.
The Socialist Party, for its part, benefited in 2018 from exceptional proceeds in the amount of 50.5 million euros, which correspond in part to the sale of its headquarters on rue de Solférino (Paris VIIe). But the situation is not very encouraging, with public aid falling from 24.8 million euros to 6.4 million euros due to the electoral Bérézina. Donations from supporters have also slowed down, from 582,000 to 321,000 euros. Not to mention the membership fees, which fall by 459,000 euros between 2018 and 2017, a year already catastrophic compared to 2016!
Main winner in this landscape: LREM. Logically, the party did not exist in the National Assembly before the legislative elections in 2017. Its revenues increased between 2017 and 2018 from 14.3 million euros to 23.9 million euros financed almost exclusively by public allocations. France rebellious, for the same reasons, sees its budget more than double with the creation of a group in the National Assembly.