Voting closes at 8pm local time, or 2pm Eastern time. France’s public broadcaster usually publishes its predictions shortly after the polls close.
Sunday’s results will provide the first indication of how severely voters are willing to punish Mr Macron’s centrist party and back populists on the right and radicals on the left. Few of the candidates representing the country’s 577 constituencies are expected to garner enough votes to win immediately, and some may lack the support to continue their campaigns.
The second round of voting on July 7 will likely reveal the big question: Will the far-right Rally National party win enough seats in the National Assembly to form a government and install its leader, Jordan Bardella, as prime minister, or will France end up in the sticky situation of a hanging parliament?
The latest opinion polls predict the Rally National will win around 36 percent of the vote in the first round, with the left-leaning New Popular Front trailing with around 28 percent and Macron’s Together alliance trailing with around 21 percent.
The National Alliance is expected to make big gains in seats but could still fall several dozen seats short of a majority. Analysts caution that local elections are less predictable than presidential ones due to their complexity.
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Whatever the outcome, Macron can stay on as president until his term expires in 2027 and has said he has no plans to step down. But a victory for the Rally National and a possible drop of Macron’s coalition to third place would be a major defeat for the 46-year-old and effectively end his experiment in centrist politics.
If the Rally National wins a majority, Macron would have to share power with the 28-year-old Bardella and would have little power to block the adoption of laws passed by parliament — or, if the election results in a hung parliament, little would be achieved.
Macron’s allies have also expressed deep dissatisfaction, saying the dissolution of Parliament comes at a terrible time for them and threatens to undermine the president’s achievements.
Macron was first elected president in 2017, becoming the youngest head of state of France since Napoleon Bonaparte and the first modern president not affiliated with the center-left or center-right parties that had dominated France for decades. Having successfully outmaneuvered the traditional left and right and defeated nationalist Marine Le Pen, his supporters saw him as a brilliant political strategist and perhaps the only French politician capable of halting the rise of the far right. Some of his critics say he has destroyed the center, making extremist parties the only viable outlet for those unhappy with his policies.
The National Rally party grew out of a minority movement co-founded by Le Pen’s father, a convicted Holocaust denier, but Le Pen and Bardella’s efforts to make the party more popular and electable have paid off: Its approval rating has nearly doubled in the past two years, from 19% ahead of the 2022 parliamentary elections to 36% now.
Macron announced the early elections after his coalition suffered a humiliating defeat in the June 9 European Parliament elections. He said there was no need to dissolve the French National Assembly, but that he had few other options. He told reporters that if he hadn’t called the vote, “You would have said to me, ‘This guy has lost his touch with reality.’
Macron may have hoped that higher voter turnout and the higher stakes of a national election would improve his chances of forming a coalition government, but opinion polls show that French public sentiment has changed little since the European elections.
“He may have underestimated the hatred he would generate among some of his citizens,” said Chloe Moran, an author and political analyst.
Mr Macron may have underestimated France’s left, which, despite deep divisions, has managed to cobble together a broad coalition that has outperformed Mr Macron’s coalition in opinion polls and is now ranked second.
Macron has at times portrayed the far left as just as dangerous to the country as the far right, irritating some of his left-wing supporters, and the harsh rhetoric and conspiracy theories peddled by Rally National candidates and its base continue to raise concerns about how far the party has evolved from its anti-Semitic and racist roots.
Macron’s outgoing prime minister, Gabriel Attal, said in a televised debate on Thursday night that nearly one in five National Rally party parliamentary candidates had made “racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic remarks.”
Exit polls for the European elections three weeks ago suggested the far-right is benefiting from growing concerns about the cost of living, even as Macron has spent more than many other European countries to keep inflation in check. Voters blame Macron for his unpopular decision last year to raise the retirement age. Immigration and security are also rising concerns, polls show.
His sudden decision to dissolve parliament has caused anxiety in many European capitals. France is one of the European Union’s founding members, the country’s second-largest economy and a driving force in EU affairs.
Although the Rally No. 1 no longer advocates leaving the EU, many of its proposals are not in line with EU policy, and a French turn towards Euroscepticism could undermine Franco-German cooperation, undermine integration and make things generally more difficult to get done.
Another concern is how a far-right victory would change the EU’s policy towards Ukraine. Le Pen has already challenged Macron’s dominance over French foreign policy and defence, proposing that the president take on a more prestigious role as commander-in-chief of the armed forces.
“What arrogance!” Macron said in Brussels on Friday, reacting to comments made by Le Pen in an interview with Le Telegram newspaper the previous day.
According to the Associated Press, he said that far-right politicians “speak as if they are already in power,” “but the French people have not yet made their choice.”
Rauhala reported from Brussels.
