Former prime minister Elisabeth Borne won in the second round of France's snap parliamentary elections, on Sunday, July 7, in the 6th constituency of Calvados, in Normandy, with 56.37% of the vote, ahead of the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party candidate Nicolas Calbrix (43.63%). She therefore retains the seat in the constituency in which she was first elected in 2022.
In the first round, Borne had come second with 28.93% of the vote, trailing Calbrix (36.26%). The candidate for the left-wing Nouveau Front Populaire alliance, Noé Gauchard (La France Insoumise, radical left), came third (23.16%) in the first round of voting, but, though he was in a position to run for the second round, had opted to withdraw in favor of the former prime minister, as a way to block the far right. "We're going to save her," Socialist party leader Olivier Faure had said at the time.
Borne left the premiership in January, ahead of the most recent cabinet reshuffle, after serving as prime minister for a year and seven months. During her tenure, she saw through the highly controversial pension reform and faced some 30 motions of no confidence in the Assemblée Nationale. In the 2022 parliamentary elections, she won in the second round, with 52.5% of the vote, against Gauchard, who was already the candidate of the previous alliance of left-wing parties, the NUPES. In the June 9, 2024, European elections, the RN obtained 34% of the vote in her constituency.
Translation of an original article published in French on lemonde.fr; the publisher may only be liable for the French version.