But Marine Le Pen’s National Rally not only fell short of a majority, it also finished in third place, behind a burgeoning left-wing coalition and even President Emmanuel Macron’s weakened centrist coalition.
Why were the results so surprising?
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Pollsters say their models failed to fully capture changing trends in the days before the vote — either recent efforts to thwart the far-right with a coordinated “Republican Front” or an apparent weakening of enthusiasm for the National Coalition.
The chances of a far-right victory were significantly reduced in the week between votes, as more than 200 left-wing and centrist candidates who came third in the first round on June 30 voluntarily withdrew from the runoff elections, to prevent a splitting of the vote that could allow the far-right to win.
There were just three days between the confirmation of the candidate list and the legally mandated voting ban before the election.
“Our biggest challenge is time,” Matthew Galard, director of Ipsos research, told The Washington Post on Tuesday.
While Ipsos and many other companies accurately predicted the National Rally’s national voter turnout in the first round, the statistical models used to forecast the local elections in the second round overestimated the far-right’s victory. The last Ipsos survey of 10,101 registered voters on July 3 and 4 predicted that the National Rally would win between 175 and 205 seats. The far-right’s chances of winning the 289 seats needed for a majority appear to be declining.
“We suspect the situation continued to develop on Friday, Saturday and Sunday,” Garrard said.
The National Coalition ultimately won 143 seats.
French pollsters also misjudged the resistance to the far right in the last election, but in the opposite direction: In 2022, a coalition of left-wing and center parties won fewer seats than expected and fell below the minimum threshold in every survey.
When the results came in, it was clear that the strategy to prevent the far-right gains had been more successful than the polls had predicted, with political researcher Antoine Jardin saying there had been a “big shift in the vote” that had united the opposition.
In the second round, which pitted the left against the far right, between 43 percent and 54 percent of those who initially supported Macron’s candidate voted for the left-wing candidate, according to an Ipsos Tarant exit poll commissioned by France’s national broadcaster.
And in the second round of voting, between Macron’s candidate and the far-right, 72% of voters who had supported the left-leaning New Popular Front coalition switched to supporting a centrist candidate.
Political researcher Pierre Matteo said the week between the two votes may have meant the far-right lost momentum even among its supporters.
Candidates were hastily assembled after Macron suddenly called elections last month, but some far-right candidates struggled in televised debates and other public appearances. “Not everyone was well prepared,” said Renaud Deousse, director of SAIS Europe.
“I think for a small percentage of voters, this has caused them to rethink,” Matiot said.
The Rally National’s election defeat is unlikely to lessen doubts about the party’s ability to govern. The party had hoped to be busy this week preparing to share power with Macron. But on Tuesday, the Paris prosecutor’s office said it had opened a preliminary investigation into whether Le Pen illegally funded the campaign that lost the 2022 presidential election.
Clement reported from Washington. Renee Bronner and Ellie Petit contributed to this report.
