page_title: 2017 French legislative election
section_title: MoDem
hierarchical_section_title: 2017 French legislative election / Parties / La République En Marche! and MoDem / MoDem
caption_attribution_description: François Bayrou portrait en plein air
context_page_description: Legislative elections were held on 11 and 18 June 2017 to elect the 577 members of the 15th National Assembly of the French Fifth Republic. They followed the two-round presidential election won by Emmanuel Macron. The centrist party he founded in 2016, La République En Marche!, led an alliance with the centrist Democratic Movement; together, the two parties won 350 of the 577 seats – a substantial majority – in the National Assembly, including an outright majority of 308 seats for LREM. The Socialist Party was reduced to 30 seats and the Republicans reduced to 112 seats, and both parties' allies also suffered from a marked drop in support; these were the lowest-ever scores for the centre-left and centre-right in the legislative elections. The movement founded by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, la France Insoumise, secured 17 seats, enough for a group in the National Assembly. Among other major parties, the French Communist Party secured ten and the National Front obtained eight seats. Both rounds of the legislative election were marked by record low turnout.
context_section_description: After François Bayrou endorsed Macron in February, the Democratic Movement (MoDem), which he leads, was reportedly to receive 90 constituencies, of which 50 were considered winnable, for its candidates. However, hours of the publication of the initial list, Bayrou indicated that it did not have the "approval" of the MoDem, unsatisfied with the number of constituencies for MoDem candidates, and appealed to Macron to permit joint investitures and planned to convene the political bureau of his party on 12 May. He was also unhappy with what he called a "recycling operation of the PS"; according to a tally by MoDem officials, among the 428 investitures announced, 153 were granted to PS/ex-PS/PRG, 38 to the MoDem, 25 to LR or miscellaneous right, 15 to UDI/ex-UDI, and 197 to civil society figures. On 12 May, Bayrou announced that he had secured a "solid and balanced" draft agreement, claiming that his party would ultimately obtain a bit more than a hundred investitures. A MoDem candidate replaced Gaspard Gantzer, former communications advisor to Hollande, in Ille-et-Vilaine's 2nd constituency after fierce objections by local activists and his renunciation of the investiture, which he claimed he did not apply for, and mayor of Mont-de-Marsan Geneviève Darrieussecq and Senator Leila Aïchi, both members of the MoDem executive bureau, received investitures.
  Bayrou's party hopes to elect at least 15 deputies, necessary for the formation of a parliamentary group in the National Assembly; additionally, to be reimbursed for expenses, the party must receive at least 1% of the vote in at least 50 constituencies where it is present. Public financing is also allocated as a function of the number of elected officials, hence the ambitions of the MoDem.
caption: François Bayrou in 2006
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