RN is weird, on one hand they had very little Senate presence, on the other it’s a bunch of elections that they end up in second position at the national elections. So in the lead up to the national elections a lot of eyes are on them.

I’m no expert, so I hope someone else could come in and bd explain it better.

Directed lobbying and funding. Big money talks, everyone else is silenced.

Like all right-wing voters they don’t care.

Sorry

Okay let me try.

First, senatorial elections are indirect elections. Meaning that senators are elected from an electoral college mostly from local officials. The system is extremely complex and depends on the departement's number of senators, itself roughly proportional to population. The senate as an institution is really controversial, since it has almost always been very right wing because France has a rural bias in terms of of sheer number of rural municipalities vs. urban and more progressive ones (overgeneralisation I know, but mostly true).

Second, the "surge" is only 12 seats of a total of 178 up for election. Not a tsunami wave per se, but still worrying as the system tends to favor the traditional right wing, as it reflects a much larger proportion of far-right presence in local, departemental and regional councils.

And third, because like everywhere else in Europe, nazi cunts from USA, Russia and Israel flood social media with propaganda to destroy democracy from the inside. And a lot of major media outlets are owned by fascist billionaires.

French senators are not elected directly by people, but by "great voters" instead. These "great voters" are every one who are on active mandate ; deputies, city councils members, etc. As french right wing have won a lot of elections for five years, they have now enough "great voters" to get few seats in the senate.

Main reason is that all mass media has been bought up by the billionaire class.

These giga-rich assholes would rather support the far right than anything remotely left leaning because they'll do anything to continue paying no tax, as they were essentially doing under Macron.

When I was a kid, the Lepen were frowned upon and considered racist nuts by the media. Now they're everywhere and totally normalized.