RN: rooting at “establishment” in Gard

Of the six districts of the department, four were won by the far right. A new phenomenon on these left lands.

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With four deputies elected out of six constituencies, the Gard is one of the departments affected by the “Tsunami” National Rally (RN). If, during the presidential election, Marine Le Pen came first in the second round (52.15 %), nobody, on the side of the presidential coalition as left forces gathered in the new ecological and social popular union (NUPPES ), had not imagined such a scenario. “It’s a blow, it’s cold in the back,” recognizes Valérie Rouverand, Coréferete de la République en Marche (LRM) in the Gard.

On the three outgoing deputies of the presidential coalition qualified for the second round, only one is re -elected, Philippe Berta, by beating Nicolas Cadène (Nuts), in the 6 e district. To everyone’s surprise, Françoise Dumas (1 re district) and Anthony Cellier (3 ^{e ) lose in front of the lepenist candidates. Two other constituencies give their confidence to the RN: the 2 e – Territoire de la Petite Camargue, which has cultivated the voting for the far right for several decades and where Nicolas Meizonnet collects 56 % of the votes – and, More unexpected, the 4 e} , which encompasses the northeast part of the Gard and which places a quasi-unknown, Pierre Meurin, in front of the first secretary of the Gard socialist party, Arnaud Bord. There remains the Protestant and Cévenole 5 e constituency, who chose the Nuts, the only disappointment of the RN in the second round.

“Macron sanctioned”

In 2017, a candidate of the National Front (now RN), the media Gilbert Collard, had obtained his ticket for the National Assembly. Five years later, there will be four to sit at the Palais-Bourbon. How can we understand the Gardois vote in the 2022 elections, when, a year earlier, this department served as a laboratory, by bringing together all the left parties for the departmental parties, offering a comfortable majority? Lack of militants on the ground? Undoubtedly for the presidential party – they are only “thirty in action”, recognizes Valérie Rouverand -, but certainly not for the Nuts, whose united activists have led a real campaign, going to meet the voters in all constituencies.

Absence of a clear republican front? Maybe, but not only. For Arnaud Bord, the reasons are multiple, starting with the national stake of the ballot. “It is Marine Le Pen who won and especially Macron who is sanctioned. For our part, we must question himself and reclaim popular education: what is politics?” On this territory that includes Alès, Second city of Gard, but also more rural areas of the Rhône valley, the left candidate denounces a work of demonization: “When we manage to make believe that Jean-Luc Mélenchon is more dangerous than Le Pen, it’s complicated to do a work of truth in a week, “says the one who deplores the” shyness “of the other parties.

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