Editing Union for a Popular Movement (section)

===Foundation and early years===
Before the [[2002 French presidential election|2002 presidential campaign]], the supporters of President [[Jacques Chirac]], divided in three centre-right parliamentary parties, founded an association named '''Union on the Move''' (''Union en mouvement'').<ref name="ump-history">{{cite web|url= http://www.france-politique.fr/histoire-ump.htm|publisher= France politique|title= chronologie UMP|url-status= live|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20090619070817/http://www.france-politique.fr/histoire-ump.htm|archive-date= 19 June 2009|df= dmy-all}}</ref> After Chirac's re-election, in order to contest the [[2002 French legislative election|legislative election]] jointly, the '''Union for the Presidential Majority''' (''Union pour la majorité présidentielle'') was created. It was renamed "Union for a Popular Movement" and as such established as a permanent organisation.<ref name="ump-history"/>

Various parties, such as the Gaullist-conservative [[Rally for the Republic]] (RPR), the [[conservative liberalism|conservative-liberal]] party [[Liberal Democracy (France)|Liberal Democracy]] (DL), a sizeable portion of the [[Union for French Democracy]] (UDF),<ref name="EthridgeHandelman2009">{{cite book|author1=Marcus E. Ethridge|author2=Howard Handelman|title=Politics in a Changing World: A Comparative Introduction to Political Science|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6RkLVlONHyUC&pg=PA144|access-date=19 August 2012|date=16 January 2009|publisher=Cengage Learning|isbn=978-0-495-57048-6|page=144}}</ref> merged their parties into the new party over the course of the first year. The UDF's Christian Democrats (such as [[Philippe Douste-Blazy]] and [[Jacques Barrot]]), the [[Radical Party (France)|Radical Party]] and the centrist [[Popular Party for French Democracy]] (both associate parties of the UDF until 2002), aligned themselves with the party for the [[2002 French legislative election]]. In the UMP four major French political families were thus represented: [[Gaullism]], [[republicanism]] (the kind of liberalism put forward by parties like the [[Democratic Republican Alliance]] or the [[Republican Party (France)|PR]], heir of DL), [[Christian democracy]] (''[[Popolarismo|Popularism]]'') and [[Radicalism (historical)|radicalism]].

Chirac's close ally [[Alain Juppé]] became the party's first president at the party's founding congress at the [[Le Bourget (Seine-Saint-Denis)|Bourget]] in November 2002. Juppé won 79.42% of the vote, defeating [[Nicolas Dupont-Aignan]], the leader of the party's Eurosceptic [[Arise the Republic]] faction, and three other candidates.<ref name="ump-history"/> During the party's earlier years, it was marked by tensions and rivalries between Juppé and other ''chiraquiens'' and supporters of [[Nicolas Sarkozy]], the then-[[Ministry of Interior (France)|Minister of the Interior]].

In the [[2004 French regional elections|2004 regional elections]], the UMP suffered a heavy blow, winning the presidencies of only 2 out of 22 regions in metropolitan France ([[Alsace]] and [[Corsica]]) and only half of the departments (the right had previously won numerous departmental presidencies) in the simultaneous [[2004 French cantonal elections|2004 cantonal elections]]. In the [[2004 European Parliament election in France|2004 European Parliament election]] on 13 June 2004, the UMP also suffered another heavy blow, winning 16.6% of the vote, far behind the [[Socialist Party (France)|Socialist Party]] (PS), and only 16 seats.

The membership in the early 2000s grew from 100,000 to 300,000 after members received a greater say in the selection of the party’s presidential candidate.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Scarrow |first1=Susan |title=Beyond Party Members: Changing Approaches to Partisan Mobilization |date=27 November 2014 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=9780191748332 |page=59 |edition=1 |url=https://academic.oup.com/book/9675 |access-date=15 June 2023}}</ref>