General election in France 1997

← 1993General election in France 19972002 →

First ballot

 %

30th

20th

10

0

23.49

15.65

14.94

14.22

9.92

6.83

4.22

2.80

7.93

PS

RPR

FN

UDF

PCF

Verts ^f

DVD

DVG

Otherwise.

Gains and losses

compared to 1993

 % p

   6th

   4th

   2

   0

  -2

  -4

  -6

+5.88

-4.43

+2.36

-4.49

+0.62

-4.01

-0.24

+0.03

+4.28

PS

RPR

FN

UDF

PCF

Verts ^f

DVD

DVG

Otherwise.

Remarks:

^f 1993: sum of the results of Les Verts (4.0%) and other ecological groups.

The 1997 parliamentary elections in France took place on May 25 and June 1, 1997. The occasion was the premature dissolution of the 11th French National Assembly by President Jacques Chirac . The election ended with a victory for the left parties of the gauche plurielle under Lionel Jospin .

background

The civil rights of the Union pour la France, supported primarily by the RPR and the UDF , won the parliamentary elections in 1993 - still under President François Mitterrand - with an overwhelming majority of the seats. Overall, the Union held almost 80 percent of the seats in the National Assembly.

After his election as president, Jacques Chirac had appointed a new prime minister, Alain Juppé ; he replaced Édouard Balladur . However, Chirac did not dissolve parliament like his predecessor did. Juppé's government ( Juppé I cabinet ) lost popularity; Juppé has been described by the media as "the most unpopular prime minister of all time".

On April 21, 1997, Jacques Chirac announced the premature dissolution of the National Assembly. He justified this with the fact that his government needed new legitimacy for extensive reform projects. The media suspected that Chirac wanted to avoid the premature dissolution of the election coinciding with the decision on France's euro membership, as would have been the case at the regular election date in March 1998. He feared that the measures necessary to meet the convergence criteria would further damage the already low popularity of his government and that the left and the extreme right could score points with a campaign against the introduction of the euro. At the time of the dissolution, polls predicted a victory for the civil right.

On the left, Lionel Jospin, the first secretary of the Parti Socialiste , managed to conclude an electoral alliance, the gauche plurielle (“diverse left”) , with other left parties, especially the Communists and the Greens . On the right, the "Union pour la France" was broken after the 1995 presidential election.

Results

35

255

12

11

7th

3

112

139

2

1

35 255 12 11 7th 3 112 139 2 1 

A total of 577 seats

• PCF : 35
• PS : 255
• PRS : 12
• DVG : 11
• Verts : 7
• Otherwise: 3
• UDF : 112
• RPR : 139
• DVD : 2
• FN : 1

In the first ballot, the gauche plural won around 44 percent of the vote, with the socialists being the strongest force with 23.5 percent. The civil rights came to a good 36 percent. A problem for them was the strong performance of the Front National , which reached almost 15 percent and was represented in a series of runoff elections with its own candidate. In these constituencies there were usually three-way runoff elections, in which the common gauche plural candidate had an advantage over the two right-wing candidates.

In the second ballot, the gauche plurielle was able to increase its share of the vote to 48 percent and the civil rights to 46.1 percent. Thanks to the majority vote, the left won a clear majority of 320 of the 577 seats, with socialists, communists and the Greens alone already having an absolute majority and not depending on the support of smaller left parties.

As a result of the election, the socialist Lionel Jospin was tasked with forming a government, which led to the third cohabitation . The Jospin government held office until the 2002 French presidential election , which took place a few weeks before the 2002 general election .

political parties		Votes (first ballot)		Votes (second ballot)		Seats
		absolutely	in %	absolutely	in %	Elected MPs	in %
	Extreme left	638.710	2.5	-	-	0	0.0
	Parti communiste français (PCF)	2,519,281	9.9	982.990	3.8	35	6.1
	Parti socialiste (PS)	5,961,612	23.5	9,751,423	38.1	255	44.2
	Parti radical-socialiste (PRS)	366.067	1.4	562.031	2.2	12	2.1
	Various lefts ( Divers gauche )	708.605	2.8	652,882	2.5	11	1.9
	Green parties	1,726,018	6.8	414.871	1.6	7th	1.2
	Other	351.503	1.4	28,916	0.1	3	0.5
	Union for French Democracy (UDF)	3,601,279	14.2	5,323,177	20.8	112	19.4
	Rassemblement pour la République (RPR)	3,977,964	15.7	5,846,717	22.8	139	24.1
	Various rights ( Divers droite )	1,671,626	6.6	628.468	2.5	2	0.3
	Front National (FN)	3,785,383	14.9	1,434,854	5.6	1	0.2
	Extreme rights	26,438	0.1	-	-	0	0.0
Registered voters		39.217.241	100.0	38.487.205	100.0
Non-voters		12,581,299	32.1	11.133.207	28.9
Voting total		26,635,942	67.9	27,353,998	71.1
Invalid votes and blank ballot papers		1,301,456	3.3	1,727,669	4.5
Valid votes		25,334,486	64.6	25,626,329	66.6
↑ a b These 3 MPs cannot be clearly assigned to a camp from the available figures. It may also be DVG or DVD. Source: Assemblée nationale

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b c} Manfred Weber-Lamberdière, Ursula Langmann: Escape to the front. Focus, April 28, 1997, accessed July 1, 2012 . 
2. ↑ ^{a b} Lutz Krusche: Chirac mainly plays banque. Der Spiegel, April 28, 1997, accessed July 1, 2012 .