The Republicans will elect their new president this Sunday, with the Elysée in their sights.

Members, who began voting online late Saturday afternoon, have until 6 p.m. to choose the candidate who will fill the vacant position since former leader Eric Ciotti chose to ally himself with the National Rally (RN) nearly a year ago in the early legislative elections.

It is the party's secretary general, Annie Genevard, who is also Minister of Agriculture, who will announce the results at the end of the afternoon at the Paris headquarters of the Republicans.

Although Bruno Retailleau is the favorite against Laurent Wauquiez, the voting method makes the result uncertain: the number of members practically tripled during the campaign, going from 43,859 to 121,617, without it being possible to determine who will benefit from these recruitments, carried out at full speed by the two candidates.

"Advantage Retailleau, but great campaign Wauquiez," summarizes a former LR who knows his former political family well.

"Create surprise"

But Wauquiez is confident: "I'm going to create a surprise," he told Le Figaro.

A large victory would give the winner a strong argument to launch himself into the race for the Elysée on the right.

A narrow victory, on the other hand, would complicate his task of asserting himself against rivals like Edouard Philippe, the favorite in the polls, or even supporters of Bruno Retailleau, like the president of Hauts-de-France Xavier Bertrand or the mayor of Cannes David Lisnard, who are calling for primaries open to the right, while the Vendéen wants to limit the vote to LR members.

The candidate of the right and the center "will have to be designated during a large open primary, from Renaissance to the Republicans," demanded on Sunday in Ouest-France the centrist Hervé Morin, spokesperson for Nouvelle Energie, the party of the mayor of Cannes.

Laurent Wauquiez also refuses to hear of an open primary and has repeatedly raised the danger of "diluting the right in Macron's party" if his president had a dual role with Beauvau, citing "rumors" about an electoral agreement with Edouard Philippe.

The Haute-Loire MP has already taken the lead, calling for a rematch with Bruno Retailleau next year to designate the LR candidate for the Élysée.

"Please, let's not immediately have presidential obsessions that have cost us dearly!" replied the Vendée resident, who pledged to remain at Beauvau if he won, claiming to be "a political minister, not a technocrat."

Philippe against Wauquiez

Within the common core, we are closely following the election of the president of LR, a party that came close to disappearing when Eric Ciotti left and which has regained momentum after entering the government in September with one of its own at Matignon, Michel Barnier, who was censured three months later by the left and the RN.

At a meeting in Marseille on Saturday, Edouard Philippe reserved his attacks for the Haute-Loire MP.

"The French are not fooled by those who indulge in small-time Trumpism by dreaming of resurrecting the Count of Monte Cristo's prison camp in Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon," quipped Edouard Philippe, in a swipe at Laurent Wauquiez, who proposed sending "dangerous foreigners" subject to an obligation to leave the territory (OQTF) to the island.

Laurent Wauquiez replied to him from Puy-en-Velay, where he went to the LR office in the department to vote on a computer: "What pleases me is that he understood that I would not do at the same time."

The leader of the LR deputies has pulled out all the stops during this campaign with very right-wing proposals. Elevating the ultraconservative Italian Giorgia Meloni as a "role model for the right," he advocated for a rallying of the right, ranging from the Minister of Justice, former LR Gérald Darmanin, to the Zemmourist MEP Sarah Knafo (excluding the RN and its allies).