A frenetic new week of campaigning will begin in France on Monday, a day after the far-right National Rally party dominated the first round of legislative elections that attracted an unusually high number of voters and dealt a blow to President Emmanuel Macron. .
Voters are asked to elect their representatives in the 577-seat National Assembly, the lower and most prominent house of the country’s Parliament. They will return to the polls on July 7 for the second round of voting.
If a new majority of anti-Macron MPs is achieved, he will be forced to appoint a political opponent as prime minister, which will radically change France’s domestic politics and cloud its foreign policy. This will be especially so if he is forced to govern alongside Jordan Bardella, the 28-year-old president of the National Rally.
If no clear majority emerges, the country could be headed for months of political stalemate or unrest. Macron, who has ruled out resigning, will not be able to call new legislative elections for another year.
On Sunday, when the projections for the first round of voting were known, the nationalist and anti-immigrant National Rally party was leading the national legislative elections for the first time in its history, with nearly 34 percent of the votes. The New Popular Front, a broad alliance of leftist parties, won about 29 percent; Macron’s centrist Renaissance party and its allies won about 22 percent; and the traditional conservatives won only about 10 percent.
Here are four takeaways from the first round to help understand the election so far.
Voters went to the polls in unusually high numbers.
Legislative elections in France typically take place a few weeks after the presidential race and generally favor the party that won the presidency. That makes legislative votes less likely to attract voters, many of whom feel the outcome is predetermined.
But this vote – an early election unexpectedly called by Macron – was different. Sunday’s participation rate exceeded 65 percent, well above the 47.5 percent recorded in the first round of the last parliamentary elections, in 2022.
That jump reflected intense interest in a high-stakes race and voters’ belief that their vote could fundamentally alter the course of Macron’s presidency.
The final results are especially difficult to predict.
To win an absolute majority, a party needs 289 seats, and France’s main electoral institutes have published cautious projections suggesting the National Rally could win between 240 and 310 in the next round of voting.
The New Popular Front alliance, they say, can win between 150 and 200 seats, while Macron’s Renaissance party and its allies can win between 70 and 120.
But using the results of the first round to predict the outcome of the second round has always been complicated due to the nature of the French electoral system. Legislative elections are, in essence, 577 different races.
Under certain conditions, a candidate who receives more than 50 percent of the votes in the first round wins directly. On Sunday, the electoral institutes estimated that at least 60 candidates had been directly elected in this way.
But most seats are decided only after a runoff between the two candidates who get the most votes.
Pollsters have projected that the National Rally and its allies reached at least 390 runoffs, the New Popular Front at least 370, and Macron’s centrist coalition at least 290.
A lot can happen between the two rounds.
To further complicate matters, runoffs in some districts can include three or even four candidates if they manage to get enough votes. This is usually rare. But on Sunday, due to the jump in participation, it was not like that.
In 2022, there were only eight three-candidate races. This time, polling institutes projected there would be more than 200.
Many parties, especially those on the left, said they would field a third-place candidate to help prevent the far right from winning. But confusion remained on Sunday evening.
Some of Macron’s allies, for example, suggested that his party or its allies should not withdraw a candidate in cases where doing so would help a candidate from the far-left Unbreakable France party, which He has been accused of anti-Semitism. Others said that the extreme right had to be stopped at all costs.
The next step could be a far-right government or stagnation.
There are most likely two outcomes:
Only the National Rally seems in a position to secure enough seats for an absolute majority. If so, Macron will have no choice but to appoint Bardella as prime minister. He would then form a cabinet and control domestic policy.
Presidents have traditionally retained control over foreign policy and defense matters in such settings, but the Constitution does not always offer clear guidelines.
That would put a eurosceptic, anti-immigrant far-right party governing a country that has been at the heart of the European project. Bardella could clash with Macron over issues such as France’s contribution to the European Union budget or support for Ukraine in its war with Russia.
Several thousand demonstrators, mainly from the left, gathered in central Paris on Sunday evening to protest against the National Rally.
If the National Rally fails to obtain an absolute majority (Bardella has said he would not govern without it), Macron could find himself facing an unmanageable lower house, with two large blocs on the right and left opposing him. His centrist coalition, greatly reduced and trapped between extremes, would be reduced to relative impotence.
The government has already announced it will suspend plans to tighten rules on unemployment benefits that had angered unions. Gabriel Attal, Macron’s prime minister, all but acknowledged in a speech that his party will soon have less influence.
“What is at stake in this second round is to deprive the extreme right of an absolute majority,” he stated. The goal of his party, he said, is to have “enough weight” to work with other parties.
It remains unclear who Macron will name as prime minister if parliament fails to reach an agreement.
The president could try to form a coalition, but France is not used to doing so, unlike Germany. He is also not accustomed to the notion of an interim government taking over the day-to-day management of the country until there is a political breakthrough, as has happened in Belgium.
The extreme right has penetrated all segments of the population.
The National Rally’s victory was another sign that the party, which has been in power for years from the margins of French politics to the gilded halls of the French Republic, has almost come full circle. It nearly doubled its share of the vote compared to 2022, when it won 18.68 percent of the vote in the first round of parliamentary elections.
A study published on Sunday made clear how much the party has expanded its voter base.
The Ipsos poll, conducted among a representative sample of 10,000 voters registered before the election, found that the National Rally’s electorate had “grown and diversified.”
The party still scores best among the working class, the polling institute said in an analysis, noting that it won 57 percent of the workers’ vote.
But its electoral base has “broadened considerably” beyond those categories, Ipsos said, noting that the party had increased its scores by 15 to 20 percentage points among retirees, women, people under 35, voters with higher incomes and the inhabitants of large cities.
“In the end, the National Rally vote has spread,” the polling institute said, “creating an electorate that is more homogeneous than before, and that is quite in tune with the French population as a whole.”
Ségolène Le Stradic contributed reporting from Hénin-Beaumont, France.
