PARIS (AFP) - The first round of France’s legislative elections has confirmed that Marine Le Pen’s far right is now the dominant force in French politics, putting her anti-immigrant National Rally within reach of power. Whether the rest of the political spectrum still has the ability – and the will – to hold it back will determine the outcome of July 7 runoffs.
After a lightening campaign marred by a rise in hate speech, French voters on Sunday put the National Rally (RN) in a commanding position in the first round of snap elections, placing the party founded by supporters of Nazi-allied Vichy France at the gates of power.
Le Pen’s party and its partners on the right took a third of the first-round vote, five points clear of a fledgling coalition of the left known as the New Popular Front – and a staggering 12 points ahead of President Emmanuel Macron’s ruling alliance.
The nationalist, anti-immigrant party topped the race in 296 out of France’s 577 constituencies, winning 39 of them outright with over 50% of the vote. Whether it can clear the last hurdle in a second round next Sunday will hinge on a record number of three-way races pitting, in most cases, RN candidates against rivals from the left and Macron’s centre-right camp.
Le Pen has urged voters to push her party over the line and hand it an “absolute majority” of seats in the National Assembly. 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.
That prospect has triggered frantic horse-trading as parties work to make alliances in some constituencies or pull out of others, hoping to stop the Le Pen juggernaut in its tracks.
France’s two-round elections have traditionally barred the far right from power, with voters from left and right typically banding together in a “Republican Front” to defeat the Le Pen camp – a practice known as building a barrage (dam) against the far right.
Once watertight, the dam has been steadily eroded, even as the far-right wave has grown stronger at each new election.
MACRON’S BAFFLING GAMBLE
Sunday’s snap vote followed Macron’s abrupt decision to dissolve the National Assembly after his party’s drubbing at the hands of the far right in European elections on June 9.
Designed to bolster his minority government, the president’s gamble has instead resulted in France’s biggest political own goal since his predecessor Jacques Chirac was forced to share power with the left after a similar snap election backfired in 1997, two years into his presidency.
Even Le Pen has 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.
“Le Pen’s analysis of the situation appears to be more accurate and reliable than that of Macron and his advisers,” said Erwan Lecoeur, a political analyst at the GRESEC research centre and the Université Grenoble Alpes. He added: “Absolutely everyone, starting with Le Pen, was simply baffled by the absurdity of Macron’s decision.”
Stéphane Fournier, a researcher at polling institute Cluster 17, said Sunday’s high turnout – at 66.7%, the highest since Chirac’s 1997 gambit – was evidence of the election’s exceptionally high stakes.
“French voters understood very well that what it is at stake here is the prospect of a government in the hands of the far right,” he said. “Clearly, a third of voters want that prospect to become reality.”
Before this election, Le Pen's party had never seen one of its candidates secure an outright victory in round one. On Sunday, she was among 39 party members who pulled off that feat.
One of those victories came at the expense of Communist Party leader Fabien Roussel, a former presidential candidate and a prominent name in French politics, who was knocked out in a northern constituency held by the left since 1958.
LEFT PULLS OUT, RULING CAMP DITHERS
Roussel’s allies in the NFP – including Jean-Luc Mélenchon of the hard-left La France insoumise (LFI) – have been quick to declare they will withdraw all candidates who came third in their respective constituencies, in order not to split the anti-Le Pen vote.
The left has notably pulled out of the Normandy constituency where former prime minister Elisabeth Borne was beaten into second by her far-right challenger. By Monday afternoon, a further 120 candidates for the New Popular Front had followed suit, ahead of a July 2 deadline to drop out of their races.
The move puts pressure on Macron's camp to return the favour – and do for left-wing candidates what left-wing voters have repeatedly done for the president, pushing him over the line in his two presidential runoffs against Le Pen.
The president’s allies, however, have been much less forthcoming in their endorsement of left-wingers with a better chance of defeating the far right.
Prime Minister Attal, who looks certain to lose his job, said the ruling Renaissance party would withdraw its third-placed candidates in constituencies where RN’s remaining opponent “shares our Republican values” – suggesting LFI candidates would be left out of the equation.
Yaël Braun-Pivet, the speaker of the National Assembly, said decisions should be made on a “case-by-case basis” regarding LFI candidates, while Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire ruled out backing Mélenchon’s party, which he described as a “threat to the nation, much as RN is a threat to the Republic”.
His comments drew anger and dismay from the left. Greens leader Marine Tondelier slammed the “cowardly behaviour of privileged people” who have little to fear from a government run by Le Pen’s anti-immigrant party, which has questioned the right to citizenship for people born in France and promised to curtail the rights of French citizens with dual nationality.
The ruling camp’s ambiguous language has encouraged several of its candidates to stay in the race, at the risk of favouring the far right. They include Dominique Faure, the junior minister for local government, who declined to withdraw from her race in the Toulouse region, despite arriving third behind a moderate left-winger and the far right.
Others like Sabrina Agresti-Roubache, the junior minister for citizenship, have chosen not to split the anti-Le Pen vote.
“Of course I am pulling out, just like the left did for me two years ago,” Agresti-Roubache wrote on X after pulling out of her contest in Marseille. “Defeats happen, but one never recovers from dishonour.”
CRACKS IN THE DAM
The race in Agresti-Roubache's constituency highlights the extraordinary progress made by Le Pen’s party since the last legislative elections. Its local candidate Monique Grisetti took 27% of the first-round vote in 2022, before a narrow defeat in the runoff. This time she enters the second round as a strong favourite, riding a wave of support that saw her pick up 45% of the vote on June 30.
Such waves may be too high for the old anti-Le Pen barrage to hold.
“There is now a sizeable share of the mainstream right that would consider voting for the National Rally – or at least no longer sees it as a threat,” said Fournier. “That is especially the case when the other candidate is from the left, which many conservatives are more scared of.”
While left-wing and centrist voters have repeatedly joined the “Republican Front” to shut out Le Pen, the conservative camp is largely untested, added Lecoeur.
“Mainstream conservatives have never had to vote for the left to keep the far right at bay,” he said. “How they will vote is anyone’s guess.”
Lecoeur said the “mixed messaging” coming from Macron’s camp may also prevent many centrist voters from backing the left in runoffs with RN. Had the New Popular Front won the first round, many in the president’s entourage would no doubt be calling today for an anti-Mélenchon front to bar the left from power.
“Macron chose to frame the election as a choice between his moderate camp and ‘extremists’ to his left and right. It was his idea to put the far right and the so-called ‘far left’ on an equal footing,” he added. “If party leaders now call for a ‘Republican Front’ in support of left-wing candidates, many of their voters will be baffled and confused.”
Even left-wing voters – traditionally those most determined to block the far right – may have been asked once too often to “hold their noses” and back a “lesser evil” in the second round.
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.
An Odoxa survey published ahead of Sunday’s first round pointed to a growing reluctance to back Macron’s candidates among left-wing voters.
“About half said they would back the centrist camp, 10% would switch to RN and the remaining 40% planned to abstain,” Odoxa’s director Céline Bracq told AFP. “And these are the voters most motivated to defeat the far right.”