Candidates were making their last campaign pushes Friday for the first round of voting in a high-stakes legislative election in which French President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist government risks a drubbing at the hands of the far right and hard left.
Campaigning ends at midnight Friday, when a media blackout is introduced, with the first round of voting on Sunday.
The far-right, anti-immigration National Rally (RN) is leading the race, potentially giving Marine Le Pen’s party the post of prime minister for the first time in its history.
Macron’s centrist Ensemble alliance, led by current Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, is battling to make up ground.
And there’s a big gap to close.
All the opinion polls show the RN out ahead. An Ipsos poll on Thursday put it on 36 percent, with the left-wing New Popular Front (NFP) on 29 percent and Macron’s Ensemble trailing on 19.5 percent.
If those figures are borne out, RN could massively increase its number of MPs from the current 88 to well over 200 in the 577-seat lower house.
While it would need 289 to secure an absolute majority, some pollsters suggest that cannot be ruled out.
The RN can “not only envisage a relative majority, but we cannot exclude an absolute majority, far from it”, said Brice Teinturier of Ipsos.
Uncertain outcome
A victory for the RN risks saddling Macron with a far-right prime minister in the shape of 28-year old Jordan Bardella – a Le Pen protégé with no governing experience.
However, France's two-round system of voting means that the election’s ultimate outcome will not be resolved for another week.
Unless one party wins an outright majority in Sunday’s first round – which is highly unlikely – a decisive runoff will be held on 7 July.
The results of both rounds will depend greatly on turnout, predicted to be between 60 and 64 percent – considerably higher than the 48 percent who voted in the 2022 parliamentary elections.
Meanwhile more than two million people have registered to vote by proxy, according to the Interior Ministry, suggesting an unusually high level of interest in taking part.
President's gamble
Macron dissolved parliament's lower house and called the early election in hopes of shoring up support for his government after it suffered a humiliating defeat in the 9 June European Parliament vote.
His decision was unpopular, even within his own camp, who reportedly called on him to take a backseat in the campaign.
The president's picture pointedly does not feature on any of the Ensemble election posters.
He insists he will serve out the remainder of his second term until it expires in 2027, regardless of which party wins the election contest.
But his gamble could usher in France’s first far-right government since the World War II Vichy regime that collaborated with the Nazis.
France's leader risks being remembered for a huge political miscalculation and the biggest misreading of a nation’s mood since David Cameron triggered the UK's Brexit vote as prime minister in 2016.
Changed political landscape
Macron's decision has already redrawn France’s political landscape – galvanising previously splintered parties into the NFP coalition with promises of big public spending, which opponents say would be bad for the economy and drag France further into debt.
Macron and his candidates have argued that both the RN and NFP blocs are extreme, antisemitic and dangerous for the economy.
But with polls suggesting big wins for the far right and accusations from Socialist mayor and former minister Martine Aubry that Macron was “deliberately running the risk of an absolute majority for RN”, the presidential alliance appears to be shifting its focus slightly.
“Of course I want to stop the extremes, and notably the far right, from winning these elections,” PM Attal said on Friday.
