Legislative: abstention, blank or invalid votes... how indecision demolished the Republican front

Are the voting instructions still useful?

This is a question that arises after the second round of the legislative elections, which on Sunday made it possible to finalize the election of 577 deputies - with a non-absolute majority for the presidential majority, a powerful group from the National Rally and a comeback from the left.

The detailed analysis of abstention, blank votes and invalid votes shows a correlation with the duel and demonstrates an erosion of the Republican front.

For this second round of the legislative elections, 7.64% of the votes were blank or invalid, according to the results of the Ministry of the Interior.

Abstention, it points to 53.77%.

In total, then, only 42.70% of voters expressed a choice for a candidate.

A figure down sharply from the first round, where it was 46.46% (52.49% abstention, 1.56% and 0.64% among the votes recorded).

Abstention increased by 1.5% between the two rounds, the number of white votes by 240% and that of invalid votes by 218%.

Read alsoLegislative: five cards to understand an unexpected second round

But when we look at the details of the duels, we can note a discouragement of the voters or a certain resilience.

Let's take abstention, first: when an Ensemble candidate faces a Republican candidate (this is the case in 18 constituencies), the number of voters who will not vote increases by 10.87% (compared to 1 .5% in all constituencies).

This is the only scenario where we see such an explosion of abstention: proof that left-wing voters abstain more?

An explosion of blank and invalid votes

But there is also an explosion of blank and invalid votes.

Here too, their proportion differs according to the duels.

Thus, still in a duel Together / The Republicans, the number of invalid ballots increases by 258% and that of blank votes by 381%.

In the case of an Ensemble/Rassemblement national duel (there were 108 of them), the number of white votes increases by 258% and that of draws by 215%.

A proof, here again, that the voters of the left who are going to vote do not wish to express themselves for a candidate… at the risk of electing a deputy from the far right.

Left-leaning voters do not, however, have a monopoly on indecision.

In the case of a duel between a candidate from Ensemble and one from the New Popular Ecological and Social Union (this was the case in 271 constituencies), the number of blank votes increased by 224% and that of invalid votes by 260%.

But it is even stronger in the case of a Nupes/Rassemblement national duel: the number of white votes then increases by 422% and that of invalid votes by 289%.

Another interesting data: the evolution of “non-expression” in the duels against LR, with the National Rally and Nupes.

In the first case, abstention increased by 4.8%, the number of blank votes by 229% and that of invalid votes by 175%.

In the second, abstention increased by 3.2%, the number of blank votes by 172% and that of invalid votes by 171%.

In these two cases, except for abstention, these figures are lower than those observed at the national level.

Badly “elected” deputies

Behind these very abstract data, however, there are interesting situations to study.

In the third constituency of Moselle, where voters had the choice to vote between Nupes or RN, the number of blank ballots increased by… 873%!

In the 4th and 11th constituencies of Seine-Saint-Denis, the number of abstentionists exploded by 15%… since there was only one candidate in these constituencies – the candidates of the Nupes Soumya Bourouaha and Clémentine Autain, in this case – because their competitor had withdrawn in the interval between the two rounds.

These situations make some parliamentarians poorly “elected” deputies and logically raise questions of legitimacy.

Thus, the deputy UDI Meyer Habib of the 8th constituency of the French abroad was only elected with the votes of 6.5% of voters.

The best elected of the vintage 2022 is Mikaele Seo, the deputy of Wallis-and-Futuna, who collects 38.8% of the votes of all registered voters.

Paradoxically, he is also one of those who had the hottest, passing with 16 votes ahead of his rival!