With the final outcome still uncertain, France’s staunchly anti-immigration National Rally and opponents of a long-barred right-wing party scrambled to take advantage of an inconclusive first round of voting in surprise legislative elections on Monday.
The National Rally moved closer to government in the first round on Sunday, but also left open the possibility that voters could block its path to power in a decisive second round. France now faces two possible scenarios in what promises to be the final week of a high-stakes campaign.
Bolstered by a surge in support that made it the first-round winner but not yet the overall winner, the National Rally and its allies could secure a working majority in parliament in the final round next Sunday. Or they could be pipped at the final hurdle by opponents who still hope to prevent the formation of France’s first far-right government. second World War,
Rivals step in to halt election momentum of France’s right-wing National Party
Both scenarios are fraught with uncertainty for France and its impact on Europe and beyond.
“Just imagine the image of France — a country of human rights, a country of knowledge — suddenly becoming a far-right country, among other countries. It’s unimaginable,” said Olivier Faure, a Socialist who comfortably held on to his legislative seat.
The far-right party capitalized on voters’ frustration with inflation and low incomes and a sense that many French families were being left behind by globalization. National Rally leader Marine Le Pen’s party campaigned on a platform promising to boost consumer spending power, cut immigration and take a tough stance on EU regulations. Its anti-immigration agenda has left many French citizens with immigrant backgrounds feeling unwelcome in their own country.
Getting 289 or more MPs in the 577-seat National Assembly would give Le Pen an absolute majority and the means to force a contested election. President Emmanuel Macron He is excited to accept his 28-year-old protégé Jordan Bardella as France’s new prime minister.
Such a power-sharing arrangement between Bardella and the centrist president would be awkward and invite conflict. Macron has said he will not step down before his second term ends in 2027.
Getting closer to 289 seats could also work in Le Pen’s favour. By promising positions in government, she could sway a substantial number of new MPs to her side.
A National Rally government in France would be an additional victory for far-right and populist parties elsewhere in Europe, which have steadily made inroads into the political mainstream and gained power in some countries, including Hungary. Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban will hold the rotating presidency of the European Union for the next six months.
Supporters of French far-right leader Marine Le Pen react after the release of estimates based on actual vote counts in selected constituencies, in Henin-Beaumont, northern France, Sunday, June 30, 2024. French voters gave the far-right National Rally a strong lead in the first round of legislative elections on Sunday, plunging the country into political uncertainty, according to polling estimates. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)
But the first round of voting in France was also sufficiently indecisive to raise the alternative possibility that no single bloc would win a clear and workable majority because of France’s complex, two-round system.
This would take France into uncharted territory.
However, Le Pen’s opponents still see this scenario as more attractive than a victory for her party, which has a history of racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism and hostility toward France’s Muslims — as well as historic ties with Russia and a more adversarial attitude toward the European Union.
“We are facing the ‘Trumpification’ of French democracy,” warned MP Sandrine Rousseau, an ecologist who was re-elected in the first round. “The second round will be absolutely decisive.”
The high stakes and compressed timeframe have made the election more intense, and have overshadowed preparations for hosting the presidential election in Paris. olympic gamesWhich will open in less than a month.
Candidates who did not win outright in the first round but qualified for the second have until 6 p.m. on Tuesday to decide whether to stay in the race or withdraw. By withdrawing, opponents of the National Rally could divert votes to other candidates who are better positioned to defeat the far-right next Sunday.
Some candidates voluntarily announced that they were making defeating the National Rally their top priority. In other cases, party leaders set the tone, saying they would withdraw candidates in certain districts to block Le Pen’s path to power. She inherited her party, then called the National Front, from her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who has multiple convictions for racist and anti-Semitic hate speech.
Official results showed that overall, the National Rally and its allies won a third of the nationwide vote on Sunday. The New Popular Front, a left-wing coalition of parties that joined together for a three-week campaign, outperformed the far-right, winning 28% of the vote, and Macron’s centrist camp came in third with 20%. But the 577 seats are elected by districts. So while the nationwide results provide an overall picture of each camp’s performance, they do not indicate how many seats the groups will get in the end.
Bardella urged voters to give him a majority, saying they were facing a choice between left-wing “arsonists” who pose an “existential threat” to France and his party’s “responsible break” from the Macron era.
The National Rally and the New Popular Front received so much support that on Sunday they both won more than 30 seats by getting more than 50% of the votes in some districts. This means that there will be no second phase in those districts.
Voter turnout – nearly 67% – was the highest since 1997, halting nearly three decades of growing voter apathy toward legislative elections and, for a growing number of French people, apathy toward politics in general.
Macron dissolved the National Assembly and called a snap election for June 9, following a crushing defeat at the hands of the National Rally in voting for the European Parliament in France. The deeply unpopular and vulnerable president gambled that the right wing would be unable to repeat that success when the country’s own fate hung in the balance.
But Macron’s plan backfired. He is now being accused, even by members of his own camp, of opening the way for a national rally by calling voters back to the ballot box, especially when many are angry at inflation, the cost of living, immigration and Macron himself.
If the National Rally is able to form a government, it has promised to undo many of Macron’s key domestic and foreign policies, including pension reform that raised the retirement age. It has also said it would halt France’s delivery of long-range missiles to Ukraine in its war against Russia.
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Opponents of the National Rally fear the party will undermine civil liberties if it comes to power. It plans to increase police powers and reduce the rights of French citizens with dual nationality to work in some defense, security and nuclear industry jobs. Macron himself has warned that the rise of the far-right could put France on the path to civil war.
