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00:00Well, let's start with that, Gavin. How do you win a seat?
00:02So, in general, a candidate needs over 50% in the first round
00:07or at least 12.5% of votes to advance to the second round.
00:13Now, the National Assembly, so that's a lower house of French Parliament,
00:16is made up of 577 seats, each constituency representing thereabouts 125,000 citizens,
00:26and voting is done by direct universal suffrage.
00:30Now, as I mentioned, 577, that's a number of seats in the National Assembly.
00:36The magic number is 289. That is what's needed for an absolute majority.
00:43If, in the case of as it was in 2022, there was no absolute majority,
00:47there was a relative majority, meaning that no party got 289 seats,
00:53but Emmanuel Macron's group got the most number of seats.
00:58There is a third option. It's extremely rare. It's never happened before.
01:02It's called a caretaker government or, in French, a technical government, if you like.
01:07In the absence of an absolute majority,
01:10the president could name a technical government, a caretaker government,
01:14made up of senior civil servants and experts who run the country
01:18until new parliamentary or presidential elections are held.
01:22The prime minister and the government would be completely depoliticized.
01:26They would just be there to make sure that the country keeps running
01:29until new elections are held, and no votes of no confidence
01:33would be allowed during that time so that they don't add chaos on top of chaos.
01:37It's a very unlikely situation, but it's not impossible either.