The Rally National party has a big lead in the first round of a crucial election that could see France move towards its first far-right government since World War II.
The Rally National party won a third of the vote in the first round of Sunday’s parliamentary elections, according to polling agencies’ projections, while at the other end of the political spectrum, the left-wing New Popular Front coalition, is showing 29 percent of the vote in early polls. French President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party fell to third place with 20.5 percent.
The parties are competing for a total of 577 seats in the French National Assembly, the equivalent of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Macron called snap elections the day after his party suffered a crushing defeat to the Luxembourg Liberal Party in June’s European Parliament elections. His decision was widely seen as an attempt to alienate voters from political extremists, but the gamble backfired after a lightning-fast three-week campaign failed to turn the tide.
“The center has collapsed,” Samantha de Bendern, a geopolitical consultant at the news organization La Chain Info, said before the election. “Macron miscalculated. He expected both the moderate left and the moderate right to join his side. But they both joined the extremes.”
Mr Macron shocked the world by calling a general election without any obligation, a crucial vote that could plunge France into political turmoil and undo his achievements.
Turnout on Sunday reached nearly 60 percent just hours before the polls closed, according to Ipsos, estimated to be the highest in a first round of parliamentary elections since 1986.
What’s next?
While the first-round results provide an indication of voter sentiment overall, it is still unclear what the makeup of France’s National Assembly will be, as parties are realigning ahead of the runoff elections on July 7, forming coalitions in some districts and withdrawing from others.
The RN is likely to win the most votes in the first round of voting, but will need a further surge in support before July 7 to secure the remaining seats.
We would likely see the emergence of a suspended Congress with lawmakers from opposing parties in the majority, creating political paralysis and the potential for pernicious inaction, making it much more difficult to pass new legislation or move pending bills forward.
If there is no majority, Macron will make the nomination. The Prime Minister is elected by the party with the most seats in Parliament. As head of government, he or she oversees many of the day-to-day domestic policies, while the President controls foreign policy.
But the process could be chaotic due to the conflicting makeup of the cabinet – if other parties unite, the prime minister-designate could face a vote of no confidence, leaving France without a prime minister as parties jockey for power.
“Either there will be no government and there will be a technocratic administration or there will be months of fighting over who should be prime minister,” de Bendern said. “It will be a year of turmoil, because one year and one day after the dissolution of parliament, Macron can call new parliamentary elections.”
However, the second round is harder to predict because voters who supported far-right parties in the first round may vote for a major party.
Who is the Far Right?
The National Rally is It won the most votes, which is in line with pre-election polls showing a surge in support for the far right and far left, and a sharp drop in support for the center.
The party’s flag bearer in this election is Jordan Bardella is a neatly dressed, media-savvy 28-year-old who was elected leader of the party in 2022. (Le Pen is thought to have a shot at the French presidency in 2027.) With Bardella at the forefront, the Rally National party swept power from the centre in this month’s European Parliament elections.
Bardella has vowed to fight a “cultural battle” against Islam, is against immigration and has promoted a platform of “France for the French” in support of policies that benefit the working class – a criticism of some of Macron’s most controversial policies, such as pension reform and the abolition of taxes on France’s wealthiest people.
The party has also been gaining supporters since Marine Le Pen took over as leader, steering it away from its ultra-ethnocentric roots under her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who led the party until 2011.
As leader of a party originally called the National Front, Le Pen was an openly racist, having been convicted multiple times for making anti-Semitic remarks and ignoring the Holocaust as “part” of history.
Still, some RN members continue to express racist, anti-Semitic or homophobic views, and a report published Thursday by France’s Human Rights Advisory Committee found that 54 percent of RN supporters describe themselves as racist.
The far-right has long been on the brink of power. In 2017, Marine Le Pen came in second to Macron in the presidential election, but Macron won by a large margin. In 2022, Le Pen won a runoff election with 41.45% of the vote, giving her a slight edge over Macron.
Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo, a Socialist, feared for the country’s future in the face of such extremism and said Le Pen posed a big risk.
“In France, we say we have no experience with these people, but we have experience in World War II. … This is a huge risk for democracy, for minorities, for women,” she told NBC News, referring to France’s Vichy regime, which collaborated with the Nazis during World War II.
