Abstract In France’s 2024 legislative elections, two-thirds of the candidates who qualified for the runoff withdrew from the competition. The media argued that this was a deliberate strategy to reduce the radical right’s chances of winning an absolute majority of seats. This kind of strategic behavior is based on rationality and collective action that hardly covers the full range of possibilities. This article seeks to identify the reasons why candidates pulled out before the second round of the national legislative elections in France. Our analysis uses semi-structured interviews with candidates who withdrew and identifies several explanations for their decision: electoral tactics driven by coercion, the long-term prospects of profile-raising benefits, voter pressure, disaffection with the campaign content, and the personal examples of other candidates. These results indicate that the decision to leave the race involved rationality, responsiveness to public preferences, emotions, and a learning process.