When the sequential election train derails : A look back at the making of the 2022 Hung Parliament

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For the first time since the adoption of the five-year presidential term and the reordering of the electoral calendar (which places legislative elections right after the presidential election), the 2022 legislative elections failed to give the president of the Republic a stable majority with which to govern. The first round of the elections saw electoral apathy affecting voters for Emmanuel Macron and, contrary to what happened in 2017, candidates running under the Ensemble banner (a coalition that brings together the parties of the presidential majority) did not benefit from any electoral momentum in the second round, as evidenced when analyzing the results of the duels between the candidates of the presidential majority and those of either the NUPES (a broad left-wing electoral alliance) or the Rassemblement National (a far-right-wing party). Does this mean that we need to discard — or perhaps amend — the “honeymoon elections“ model developed by Matthew S. Shugart and Rein Taagepera?