Supporters of France’s far-right leader Marine Le Pen react following voting projections in some constituencies in Henin-Beaumont, northern France, on Sunday. French voters gave the far-right Rally National party a commanding lead in the first round of parliamentary elections on Sunday, plunging the country into political instability.
Thibaut Camus/AP
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Thibaut Camus/AP
BERLIN — This is one of the most significant double votes in post-war French history.
At stake is whether Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party can win an absolute majority in the National Assembly, which could give France a far-right party in government for the first time since the Vichy government collaborated with the Nazis in World War II.
Here are the results from Sunday’s first round:
- The National Rally won 33.15% of the vote, or about one-third of the votes.
- The New Popular Front, a coalition of the centre-left Socialist Party, the Green Party and far-left parties, came in second with 28.14%.
- President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist coalition came in third with 20.76%.
- According to the official tally at 5 pm on Sunday, turnout was high at 59.39%.
The second round will take place on July 7th. Here are some things to look out for:
National rally focuses on Prime Minister
Opinion polls predict the Rally National can win a majority in France’s 577-seat National Assembly in the upcoming second round of voting. If that happens, Le Pen would like the party’s 28-year-old leader, Jordan Bardella, to become prime minister.
After the first-round results were announced on Sunday night, Bardella vowed to speak to cameras and be “the prime minister of all French people… respecting the opposition, open to dialogue and always caring about national unity.”
The party knows it needs to persuade voters to side with it ahead of the runoff elections.
But there is still a chance of a so-called hung parliament, where no party wins a majority in the National Assembly, which could lead to Macron calling for fresh elections next year.
Macron shocked France and much of the world when he dissolved parliament and called so-called general elections after his National Rally party came in first in France’s European elections on June 9. The president said he wanted to give French people the chance to “say no to radical ideas.”
But then trouble began: In the first round of hotly contested parliamentary elections, voters appeared to say “yes.”
Voters supported two extreme views.
The Rally National wasn’t the only party to beat Macron. The second-placed left-wing New Popular Front party is also unsettling some voters, including the Unbowed France party led by the firebrand former journalist Jean-Luc Mélenchon, whose harsh criticism of Israel over the Gaza war has led some Jewish and other voters to say they voted for Le Pen’s party. It’s a notable shift for a party once notorious for its founder’s anti-Semitic beliefs.
The complexity of this two-round election is due to the high voter turnout: the rules governing the eligibility of candidates to proceed to the second round mean that there are a significant number of three- or even four-candidate races this election, more than 300 in total.
This would allow the parties that come second and third in the first round of voting – such as the Left Coalition or Macron’s own Ensemble coalition – to make a pact with each other in which one candidate would step down and ask voters to vote for the other coalition party.
So the coming days are likely to see a number of local showdowns as the Rally National opponents try to secure a deal and remove Le Pen’s party from power.
“Our objective is clear: to prevent the National Rally from winning an absolute majority in the second round of voting, taking control of parliament and ruling the country with its disastrous plans,” French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said on social media.
Other countries are watching very closely
Meanwhile, other countries are closely watching France, many with caution, but some supporters of nationalist populists are heartened by the results.
Belgian Le Soir The German news magazine called Macron “a president who, far from permanently protecting the country from the far-right, has legitimized it by handing over the ballot box to them.” Der Spiegel “Why is Emmanuel Macron trying to hand the country over to the far right?”
In Ukraine, Ukrainskaya Pravda The newspaper carried news articles about the elections, ending with this worrying statement: “The position of the National Coalition on the Russian-Ukrainian war is unclear. The party currently claims to help Ukraine defend itself against Russian forces, but it also sets out red lines that should not be crossed, such as not giving Ukraine long-range weapons.”
