Half of the Senate is renewed this Sunday, September 24: 50 territories are affected by the election.
The senatorial elections took place this Sunday, September 24, 2023, the date on which the electoral colleges were convened. In the departments concerned where elections take place by majority vote, the first round is open from 8:30 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. The second round of voting takes place from 3:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. In the departments where the vote was based on proportional representation, voting takes place from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Elections generally take place in the capital of the department concerned and in embassies for senators representing French people abroad.
The Senate website provides practical and useful information on this election, starting with information on the candidates.
The results of these senatorial elections can be found below: the data comes directly from the website of the Ministry of the Interior:
44 constituencies in France are concerned by the senatorial election, those in “series 1”. The following departments are concerned: Indre-et-Loire, Isère, Jura, Landes, Loir-et-Cher, Loire, Haute-Loire, Loire-Atlantique, Loiret, Lot, Lot-et-Garonne, Lozère, Maine-et-Loire, Manche, Marne, Haute-Marne, Mayenne, Meurthe-et-Moselle, Meuse, Morbihan, Moselle, Nièvre, the North, Oise, Orne, Pas-de-Calais, Puy-de-Dôme, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, Hautes-Pyrénées, Pyrénées-Orientales, Savoie, Paris, Seine-et- Marne, Yvelines, Essonne, Hauts-de-Seine, Seine-Saint-Denis, Val-de-Marne, Val-d’Oise, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Réunion, Saint-Pierre- and Miquelon, Mayotte, New Caledonia. 6 constituencies of French people living abroad are also concerned.
There are two voting methods for senatorial elections. In some of the constituencies, the two-round majority vote applies. To be elected, a candidate must obtain an absolute majority, with a number of votes equal to a quarter of registered voters. If a second round is necessary, a relative majority is sufficient. In the event of a tie in the number of votes, the oldest candidate is elected. In constituencies electing 3 or more senators, the voting method is different: proportional representation applies.
Unlike deputies, senators are not elected by all citizens. They are in fact designated by indirect universal suffrage, by the “electors”. This electoral college is made up of elected officials, who are the result of direct universal suffrage. Namely: deputies, senators, regional advisors of the relevant department, advisors of the Corsican Assembly, departmental advisors. But the bulk of the electors are the delegates of the municipal councils: they alone represent 95% of the 162,000 people making up the electorate. This year, nearly 87,000 voters were called to the polls for the senatorial elections.
It’s a term that is used often. “Senatorial delegate” simply means a voter in the senatorial election. The number of senatorial delegates in a department depends on the number of inhabitants in the municipalities of the territory. The law sets things as follows:
