French political life has entered a period of unprecedented uncertainty since Emmanuel Macron announced the dissolution of the Assemblée Nationale on Sunday, June 9. The changes happening within political parties ahead of early parliamentary elections, scheduled for June 30 and July 7, and the threat posed by the far right, make it more challenging to make predictions than at any other time since the start of the Fifth Republic, in 1958. The are many and sometimes contradictory uncertainties, such as what political alliances, the profiles and number of candidates, turnout levels and the nature of a completely improvised campaign.

The first obvious difficulty is inherent to the voting system. Even if the campaign is national, involving the prominent figures from each camp, including the president, there will be 577 different ballots. Simply transferring the result of the June 9 European elections, which had a single-round ballot with 38 lists, to those of the parliamentary elections provides only a very general indication.

Party headquarters do not anticipate radically different votes among the voters who have turned out, especially for the far-right Rassemblement National (RN), but rather because the electorate is likely to be different and motivated by different reasons. Macron is aware of this as he won the 2022 presidential election fairly clearly (58.5% of the vote versus 41.5% for Marine Le Pen), but was unable to secure an absolute majority in the Assemblée Nationale in the process.

The second difficulty stems from the level of voter turnout, one of the most difficult issues for pollsters to anticipate. Analysis of voting behavior over a long period shows that the electorate falls into three broad categories. In 2022, for example, 16% of voters, i.e. almost eight million people, had not participated in any of the year's four ballots (two rounds for the presidential elections, two rounds for the parliamentary elections). On the other side of the spectrum, 36.4% of registered voters had participated in all four rounds. In between, 47% of registered voters are "intermittent voters," as the French National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) calls them. This demographic is a priority target for mobilization by political parties and their candidates. Due to the country's demographic evolution, the electoral population has increased by 500,000 compared to 2022.

All indications are that the turnout for the 2024 parliamentary elections will be greater than that of 2022, which was marked by a record abstention with 53.7% of registered voters not turning out. Which 2022 abstentionists will vote in 2024? In which constituencies? With what consequences for voting?

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