French voters turned out on Sunday to cast their ballots in the first round of parliamentary elections that could herald the country’s first far-right government since World War Two and signal a major shift at the heart of the European Union.
President Emmanuel Macron stunned the nation by calling for a vote after his centrist coalition was crushed by Marine Le Pen’s Rally National (RN) in European elections this month, and his eurosceptic, anti-immigration party, long a pariah, is now closer to power than ever before.
Polls open at 6am GMT and close at 5pm in smaller towns and cities and 6pm in larger cities, when the first exit polls of the night will be published, along with seat projections for the decider second round a week later.
The high turnout highlighted how France’s deepening political crisis is energizing voters. By midday, 25.9% of voters had turned out, up from 18.43% two years ago. It was the highest turnout since the 1981 legislative elections, said Matthieu Galard, research director at Ipsos France.
France’s electoral system makes it difficult to predict the exact distribution of seats in the 577-seat National Assembly, and the final result will not be known until the second round of voting on July 7.
“We will have an absolute majority,” Le Pen said in a newspaper interview on Wednesday, predicting that her protégé, 28-year-old Jordan Bardella, would become prime minister.
She has sought to detoxify a party known for racism and anti-Semitism, a strategy that is working amid voter anger at Macron, the rising cost of living and growing concerns about immigration.
In the town of Henin-Beaumont, a constituency in northern France where Le Pen could be re-elected in the first round, Denis Ledieu, 67, said residents were suffering from the region’s long-term deindustrialization.
“So if (RNs) promise them something, why not? I think they’d like to give it a try,” he said.
“It’s a disgrace, it’s a disgrace,” one woman shouted in Garches, a small town near Paris, as Bardella came to vote.
“They even invited the leftists,” he said.
On the other side of Paris, in the town of Meaux, 51-year-old Mylène Diop said she had rushed to vote for the New Popular Front.
Trump, who has formed a left-wing coalition, is in second place in the polls and has called this election “the most important election of my lifetime.”
“RN stands at the doorstep of power and we see people’s aggression and racist comments being exposed,” she said.
If the RN wins an absolute majority, French foreign policy could be headed for a period of unprecedented turmoil as Mr Macron, who has said he will remain president until the end of his term in 2027, and Mr Bardella fight over the right to speak for France.
Since the war, France has experienced three periods of “coexistence” in which presidents and governments came from opposite political camps, but never before have such radically different worldviews competed for the top spot in the nation.
Mr. Bardella has signaled his intention to challenge Mr. Macron on global issues, with France slipping from pillar to thorn in the EU’s side, demanding a refund of its contributions to the EU budget, clashing with Brussels over European Commission appointments and undermining Mr. Macron’s push for greater EU unity on defense.
A clear RN victory would also make France’s position on the Russia-Ukraine war unclear: Le Pen has a pro-Russian record, and while her party has said it will cooperate to defend Ukraine against Russian aggressors, it has also drawn red lines, such as refusing to provide long-range missiles.
“If the vote is split, RN will have the advantage.”
The poll showed the RN holding a comfortable lead with 33% to 36% of the vote, with the New Popular Front in second with 28% to 31% and Macron’s centrist coalition in third with 20% to 23%.
The New Popular Front includes a wide range of parties, from moderate centre-left to the far-left, eurosceptic, anti-NATO party Indefatigable France, led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, one of Macron’s fiercest opponents.
Vincent Martini, a political science professor at the University of Nice and the École Polytechnique, said the way elections work makes it difficult to predict how the poll numbers will translate into seats in the National Assembly.
A candidate can win on the first round if he or she receives a supermajority of votes in a district, but this is rare. Most districts require a second round of voting, involving all candidates who received at least 12.5% of registered voters on the first round. The highest scorer wins.
“If participation is very high, a third or fourth party could enter the contest. Then, of course, there is a risk of splitting the vote, and we know that a split vote goes in favour of the National Rally,” Martiny said.
For decades, as the RN has steadily gained popularity, voters and political parties have joined forces to stop it from winning power, but this time that may not be the case.
