Number, age, party… who are the 1,829 Senate candidates?

As every three years, the Senate, the upper house of the French parliament, will be renewed by half. So, 170 Senate seats will be up for grabs this Sunday. At each election, the 348 senators are divided into two groups. Here we are talking about the first episode. It includes 30 metropolitan departments numbered from 37 (Indre-et-Loire) to 66 (Eastern Pyrenees), eight departments of the Ile-de-France, six overseas territories, to which six French senators from abroad are added. The previous extension took place in 2020 and affected 178 senators from other departments.

In the 18 most sparsely populated departments, a majority vote was implemented in two rounds. In the remaining 27, where three or more senators must be elected, it is proportional. The 78,000 “voters” of this Series 1, in particular senators, deputies and especially members of municipal councils, will choose from 1,829 candidates, 233 more than during the previous renewal of Series 1 in 2017. Thus, it is universal indirect suffrage.

Profile of candidates participating in the elections

Among them, 264 candidates are marked “Miscellaneous on the right”, 213 “Miscellaneous” on the left and 183 “La France insoumise”. The National Rally has 177 candidates, the Republican Party has 153, the Socialist Party has 101, the EELV has 66 and the Renaissance has 57.

The average age of candidates is 55 years and 8 months, the Ministry of Internal Affairs reports. More than half of them are between 50 and 69 years of age, and a third of them are under 50 years of age.

The youngest of them is 24 years old, which is the legal minimum to participate in the elections, and Modema’s senator for Pas-de-Calais, Jean-Marie Vanlerenbergh, is the oldest of these candidates, at 84 years old. Before this election, the average age in the Senate was 63.

The number of women candidates is stable compared to 2017, the Ministry of Internal Affairs notes. There are 853 of them, or 46% (compared to 976 men). According to Le Figaro, 59 of the 225 heads of lists of candidates in departments voting by proportional representation are women (26.2%).

MoDem is the party with the highest proportion of female candidates (54%), followed by the Communist Party (52%). “Regionalists” are at the rear (27%).

Among Sunday’s best-known candidates: EELV MEP and presidential candidate Yannick Jadot is fifth on the joint list of the Communist Party, the Socialist Party and the Greens. He is one of seven MEP candidates, such as Karima Delli (EELV) for the North and Brice Ortefe (LR) for Puy de Dome.

Unlike Yannick Jadot, most are not guaranteed election due to their distant position on the list. Six deputies, like LFI Hugo Bernalitzis, who heads the list in the North, are also candidates. Only one minister appears: Secretary of State for Citizenship Sonia Backes of New Caledonia.

Socialist Group President Patrick Kanner is also a candidate for re-election. Rachida Dati ranks last on the LR list in Paris. She has very little chance of becoming a senator.