Early estimates showed the National Rally (RN) won 34% of the vote in the first round of France’s surprise two-term general election, compared with 28%-29% for the left-wing New Popular Front (NFP) coalition and 20%-22% for President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist Together bloc.
However, converting national voter turnout into the number of seats in a constituency is extremely difficult. National Assembly. Because the final outcome depends on the results of the electoral districts, where a lot can and will happen. Polling companies publish estimates of the number of seats, but the French polling watchdog does not approve them.
Here’s your guide to what happens next as voters prepare for a crucial second round of voting on July 7 that could decide to hand France to a far-right, anti-immigration party in power for the first time in its history.
What are the two-round rules?
To win one of the 577 seats in the National Assembly in the first round of voting, a candidate must receive at least 50 percent of the total votes, meaning a vote representing at least 25 percent of registered voters.
While this rarely happens, the 2024 election appears set to be no exception.
If no candidate in a district achieves that goal, the top two vote-getters and any other candidate who receives at least 12.5% of the total registered voters advance to the second round, where the candidate with the most votes is elected.
How does it usually work?
The two-round system is highly lopsided and gives an unfair advantage to larger parties: if turnout is 65%, for example, the 12.5% hurdle means a party would need to secure the support of almost 20% of the electorate to advance to the second round.
In recent parliamentary elections, turnout was significantly lower, with only two candidates making it to the second round in almost every constituency, and very few three- or four-way contests.
In the 2012 election, with a 57% turnout, there were 34 so-called “triangular” runoff elections. In 2017, with a 49% turnout, there was just one, and in the last election in 2022, there were eight, despite a turnout of just 47%. The previous record was 76, set in 1997.
What is different about this election?
The highest voter turnout since the 1980s, combined with a smaller number of candidates from just the three main camps (left, centre and far right) (4,011 compared to 6,290 in 2022), will mean a record number of “triangular” contests in the second round of the 2024 vote.
With an estimated 69% of registered voters casting ballots on Sunday, a record number of constituencies could essentially face three-way races on July 7, potentially for as many as half of all congressional seats, according to pollsters. Pollster Ipsos on Sunday projected three-way races in 285 to 315 constituencies.
In theory, the fragmentation of the opposition vote should favour the party that wins the most votes in the first round in a three- or four-party election (usually the RN in such elections), but this is often not the case in three-party elections.
What typically happens in a “triangle” competition?
Until recently, if the RN was close to winning a seat in a three-way election, the second- and third-placed parties would negotiate to decide which candidate would drop out.
But for this strategy to succeed, it requires both that mainstream parties are willing to withdraw their candidates and that voters follow suit, with centre-left voters supporting centre-right candidates and vice versa.
But that “Republican Front” has been steadily weakening, with voters increasingly unwilling to “hold their noses” and vote for a party whose policies do not necessarily align with their political preferences. In 2022, the RN sent a record 89 MPs.
So what happens this time?
As for the political parties, leaders of the four-party coalition, including Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the firebrand leader of the radical left France Indefatigable (LFI), have promised that in constituencies where the RN comes first and the NFP candidate comes third, the NFP candidate will withdraw.
But Macron’s camp has been less clear about what it would do if its candidates found themselves in a similar position. The president and party leaders have called both camps “extreme.” In the case of the NFP, that’s mainly because the LFI holds the majority. Some Together candidates are unlikely to step aside for the LFI candidate.
When it comes to voters, the situation is more complicated: an Ipsos poll last week found that 87% of NFP voters are willing to vote to block RN, compared with just 62% of Together voters. A separate poll by Odoxa found that fewer voters are willing to block RN (41%) than are willing to block the NFP (47%) and Together (44%).
This means that the situation is very uncertain and will remain fluid until it becomes clear which candidates will actually run in the second round. With up to half of the parliamentary seats likely to be in three-way contests, there is clearly room for an anti-RN “Republican Front”, but the degree of cooperation between the parties will be important, as will voters’ willingness to vote strategically.
