Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigrant National Rally led a first round of voting on Sunday in exceptionally high-stakes elections that could put France’s government in the hands of a far-right party for the first time since World War II. President Emmanuel Macron’s ruling coalition was beaten into third place by a fledgling alliance of the left as the incumbent’s gamble with a snap election backfired spectacularly.
Three weeks after trouncing its rivals in low-turnout European polls, Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) confirmed its status as France’s leading political force in a first round of legislative elections marked by the highest turnout in three decades.
Le Pen’s camp secured a clear victory, albeit not a decisive one, meaning the vote’s ultimate outcome remains uncertain ahead of a second round of voting on July 7. Macron, whose decision to call the snap election had stunned friends and foes alike, has urged voters to rally against the far right next Sunday.
RN and its allies on the right took 33.2% of the first-round vote, ahead of the left-wing New Popular Front (NFP) on 28.1%, according to projections by pollsters Ipsos-Talan. Macron’s Ensemble alliance trailed in third place with 21%, followed by the conservative Les Républicains and their partners on 10%.
Based on those figures, the far-right camp would go on to win between 230 and 280 seats in the National Assembly, the pollsters added, leaving it short of the 289 seats required to win an absolute majority.
Such predictions are extremely difficult, owing to the two rounds of voting and a record number of three-way runoff races. The final result will depend on days of frantic horse-trading as parties work to make alliances in some constituencies or pull out of others.
Addressing jubilant supporters in her northern constituency, where she won an outright victory in the first round, Le Pen called on voters to push her party over the line and give it an “absolute majority” of seats in the National Assembly, France’s lower house of parliament, which wields greater powers than the Senate.
In such a scenario, Macron would be expected to name the party’s 28-year-old poster boy Jordan Bardella as prime minister in an awkward power-sharing system, known as “cohabitation”, that would weaken him both at home and on the world stage.
Victory for RN would lead to France’s first far-right government since the Nazi-allied Vichy Regime – capping an extraordinary turnaround for an extremist party that was co-founded by Le Pen’s father Jean-Marie, a Vichy supporter and convicted anti-Semite.
A more likely outcome would be a hung parliament in which no coalition is able to muster a majority, bringing gridlock to the European Union’s second-largest economy and its leading military power.
Boomerang
Sunday’s vote follows a chaotic and volatile three-week campaign – the shortest in modern French history – that saw Macron warn voters of a threat of “civil war” should they choose either of his main rivals.
Estimated at over 65%, turnout was the highest for a parliamentary vote since former president Jacques Chirac called France’s last snap election in 1997 – and suffered an equally catastrophic backlash.
Macron’s startling move to dissolve the lower house of parliament came on the heels of European parliamentary polls that saw Le Pen’s National Rally trounce the ruling party.
The president took the momentous decision against the advice of senior allies, the heads of France’s two chambers of parliament and his prime minister, who were informed of his decision at the 11th hour and were powerless to change his mind.
The abrupt call presented local officials with a logistical nightmare, coming as school summer holidays begin and with the Paris Olympics just around the corner. Gérard Larcher, the conservative head of the Senate, accused Macron of “beating up" democracy.
Even Le Pen marvelled at the gift from the Élysée Palace, stating, in the wake of the dissolution: “When your opponent is riding a wave of support, the last thing you do is encourage that wave.”
She likened the momentum from her party’s victory in European elections to that enjoyed by a newly elected president, when voters typically hand the incoming head of state a parliamentary majority to govern.
Hubris
Macron had hoped to frame the elections as a final showdown between his “progressive” camp and rival “populist” forces. The strategy had worked before, with voters twice rallying behind him – many reluctantly – to defeat Le Pen in presidential runoffs, in 2017 and 2022.
But instead of playing in his favour, the “clarification” he invoked as he dissolved the National Assembly has resulted in a revival of the left-right divide he thought he had banished years ago.
The sudden prospect of a far-right government succeeded in reuniting France’s bitterly fractured left – with a speed that caught the Élysée Palace off guard.
At the other end of the spectrum, the lightning campaign enabled Le Pen’s party to dramatically accelerate its takeover of France’s right-wing electorate – facilitated by the sudden implosion of rival outfits.
Pulling strings from behind the scenes was arch-conservative billionaire Vincent Bolloré, dubbed the “French Murdoch”, who put his sprawling media empire at the service of France’s nationalist right.
Read moreHow Bolloré, the ‘French Murdoch’, carried Le Pen’s far right to the brink of power
The French president also underestimated the extent to which his own political capital has evaporated after seven years in power and a multitude of crises.
Last year’s bitter battle over pension reform, which saw Macron use special powers to bypass parliament amid fierce opposition across the country, undermined his democratic credentials in the eyes of many voters, while a controversial immigration law passed with support from le Pen's lawmakers further alienated many on the left.
Seen as a gift to the far right, his latest gamble proved to be the final straw for many voters who had reluctantly backed him to keep Le Pen out of power.
Macron’s own allies begged the president to take a backseat during the campaign. Many of his candidates asked not to have the president’s photo on their campaign posters, preferring to be pictured alongside his more popular prime minister.
But Macron ignored their warnings, making repeated campaign appearances and promising – for the umpteenth time – to “change the way we govern” in a letter to French voters.
His depiction of the election as a tussle between his moderate camp and “extremists” on the left and right ultimately failed to sway voters, leaving his bloc as the weakest of three forces now vying to govern France.
‘Not a single vote for RN’
How Macron’s weakened bloc positions itself in the days ahead is likely to determine the outcome of the July 7 vote.
Left-wing leaders including Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who heads the hard-left La France inoumise (LFI), were quick to declare they would withdraw all candidates who came third in their respective constituencies, in order not to split the anti-Le Pen vote.
The move puts pressure on the ruling camp to return the favour – and do for left-wing candidates what left-wing voters have repeatedly done for Macron when facing the far right.
Prime Minister Attal, who looks certain to lose his job, said the ruling Renaissance party would do likewise with its third-placed candidates – but only in constituencies where RN’s remaining opponent “shares our Republican values”. The wording suggested the party will likely refuse to withdraw candidates in favour of Mélenchon’s LFI, which Macron’s camp has labelled “extremist”.
“The priority is to ensure the far right does not win an absolute majority,” Attal added. “Not one single vote must go to the National Rally.”
While Le Pen has made huge strides in her efforts to “normalise” the far right, her anti-immigrant, Kremlin-friendly party is still rejected by swathes of the French electorate.
Bardella, her choice of PM, says he would use the powers of prime minister to stop Macron from continuing to supply long-range weapons to Ukraine for the war with Russia.
The National Rally has also questioned the right to citizenship for people born in France and promised to curtail the rights of French citizens with dual nationality, a move critics blasted as contrary to fundamental human rights and a threat to France’s democratic ideals.
Echoes of Chirac
The left-wing NFP – a broad church stretching from former president François Hollande to a fringe anti-capitalist outfit – has also spooked many voters alarmed by its big-spending economic programme and the radicalism of some candidates.
Édouard Philippe, a former prime minister, explicitly called on candidates from his Macron-allied party not to drop out of three-way races where an LFI candidate represents the left. Aurore Bergé, the minister for family affairs, went a step further, urging voters to “band together” against Mélenchon’s party.
Experts note that many voters no longer heed the advice of party leaders. It is also possible that candidates will refuse to drop out despite guidance from political headquarters in Paris, making the outcome of the second round extraordinarily hard to predict
One thing is certain: Macron’s “clarification” has clarified that French voters no longer want him to govern alone.
Since the president's audacious gamble, a quote by former conservative minister Patrick Devedjian has been doing the rounds on social media. It referred to Chirac’s ill-fated snap election in 1997 but could just as well apply to Macron’s.
“We were holed up in an apartment with a gas leak,” the late Devedjian quipped. "That’s when Chirac lit a match to see what was going on.”
