Emmanuel Macron likes to defy historical precedent. In 2017, he disrupted France’s political landscape by winning the presidency and upending the country’s traditional left-right divide. In April this year, he became the first French head of state to win re-election for two decades. And now he has bucked the trend again, although not in a manner that will please him: after Sunday’s elections, Macron’s centrist alliance, Ensemble, lost its parliamentary majority – a highly unusual occurrence for a president in the history of the Fifth Republic.
Ensemble won 246 seats, 43 fewer than was needed for a majority. The consensus of the main French polling organisations had been that Macron’s alliance would win between 255 and 295 of the assembly’s 577 seats. Ensemble’s performance therefore came in below even the worst expectations.
