By Romain Fathi
Exit polls after the first round of the French legislative elections indicate the far-right National Rally party leading with about 34% of the vote. The New Popular Front (a coalition of parties from the far left to the moderate left) was in second with about 28% and President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist coalition was a distant third with about 20%.
This is by far the largest amount of votes the far right has received in legislative elections since the second world war.
Although the National Rally was ahead after the first round, however, alliances are likely to coalesce between the leftist, centrist and moderate right political parties this week to form a united front against far-right candidates in most electorates in the second round of voting.
This would likely make it very difficult for National Rally leader Marine Le Pen and president Jordan Bardella to secure enough seats in the National Assembly next Sunday to win an absolute majority.
This second – and most crucial – round of the snap elections will determine whether France has a far-right government, a hard-left government, or a government of moderates united against extreme factions at both ends of the political spectrum.
Although the third solution appears more plausible than the other two, it still may not guarantee political stability. Diverse coalitions don’t have a strong track record of stable government in France.
What happens now?
Although the National Rally was leading after the first round, it is unlikely to be able to form a government on its own. The reason: its capacity to attract more voters in the coming days is limited. This has been a recurrent issue for the far right at the second round in past elections.
Only 67% of French voters cast their ballot on June 30. Although this is high for turnout in the first round of a legislative election in the past two decades, it also means that millions of French people could yet tip the balance one way or another in their electorates next Sunday.
Given France’s traumatic experience of the second world war and the collaboration of its far-right Vichy government with the Nazis, some French people who did not vote in the first round may well head to polling booths next Sunday to prevent the far right from winning.
Hundreds of thousands of people turned out for demonstrations against the far right on Sunday, suggesting a highly mobilised electorate.
More importantly, leftist, centrist and moderate right political parties will likely attempt to forge alliances at the local level to prevent the election of far-right MPs.
This is how it would work. If no candidate receives an absolute majority in a race, the candidates with the two highest shares of the vote progress to the second round, along with anyone else who has received votes from at least 12.5% of registered voters.
So, the leaders of the New Popular Front alliance and Macron’s alliance will now urge their candidates to pull out of races where they placed third, so they can coalesce behind one candidate against the far right.
The leaders of these parties still have strong divisions, but as Raphaël Glucksmann, the head of the center-left socialists, said:
We must unite, we must vote for our democracy, we must prevent France from sinking.
Along with Gluncksmann, politicians as diverse as Marine Tondelier (the Greens), former PM Edouard Philippe (moderate right), François Bayrou (centre), current Prime Minister Gabriel Attal (from Macron’s own party) and many others called for the creation of a “Republican Front” to defeat the National Rally within a hour of the first-round exit polls being made public.
While this strategy was successful in previous elections against the far right – and may work once again – it does not necessarily mean France will end up with a strong and united government when it is all over.
Eurasia Group, a risk analysis firm, has said National Rally is unlikely to win an outright majority in the National Assembly. The group’s managing director, Mujtaba Rahman, said this means France is heading for:
deadlock and confusion with an irreconcilably blocked National Assembly.
The coming days are going to be extraordinary for French politics as alliances will be made (and perhaps some broken). The French people, meanwhile, will hold their breath and ponder what all of this means for the future of their country.
Romain Fathi is Senior Lecturer at the School of History at Australian National University.
The Conversation arose out of deep-seated concerns for the fading quality of our public discourse and recognition of the vital role that academic experts could play in the public arena. Information has always been essential to democracy. It’s a societal good, like clean water. But many now find it difficult to put their trust in the media and experts who have spent years researching a topic. Instead, they listen to those who have the loudest voices. Those uninformed views are amplified by social media networks that reward those who spark outrage instead of insight or thoughtful discussion. The Conversation seeks to be part of the solution to this problem, to raise up the voices of true experts and to make their knowledge available to everyone. The Conversation publishes nightly at 9 p.m. on FlaglerLive.
Marlee says
Latest news……!
France’s far-right National Rally was widely expected to win this snap election, but projections say they have been beaten into third place.
A left-wing alliance called New Popular Front are on course for victory, after a highly charged and abbreviated election called only four weeks ago by a weakened President Emmanuel Macron.
NJ says
WHY do you always post reports written by someone so far from Europe or America who “Claims” they are an “EXPERT” on Europe or America??? We are SICK of your “DISINFORMATION Reports”!! Let each Nation “FIX” their own government! Support AMERICA FIRST so we can FIX America’s Problems FIRST! Start by ending All Foreign Aid and Replace it State and City Aid!
Ray W. says
It’s all going to be alright, NJ. Take a deep breath or three.
Accept that you are the one who is making yourself uneducable and that yours is a distinct minority voice in this country. Educability, as first proposed by Dr. Thomas Reid in the mid-18th century required not only veracity (the ability to speak, know and understand the truth about a subject matter), but also credulity (the ability to believe that someone else can speak, know, and understand the truth about a subject matter).
In the world of educability, when one announces a refusal to believe someone else can speak the truth about a subject matter, that means the announcer is purposely choosing to become uneducable about the subject matter. You have announced to all FlaglerLive readers that you are sick of seeing articles written by people who are more experienced and better educated than you are, i.e., you desire to make yourself uneducable.
To our founding fathers, that thought that anyone would willingly allow themselves to become uneducable was foreign to them; it was one of the worst things they could allow themselves to become. Nearly all of our founding fathers were widely read. They greatly anticipated translations of works published by foreign writers.
Much of our Constitution was drafted with Plato, Aristotle, a multitude of Roman authors, many European philosophers, Montesquieu, in particular, Voltaire, Great Britain’s Gibbon, and many others in mind.
Thankfully, Americans have a long history of desire for foreign news.
In John Ghazvinian’s, “American and Iran”, he writes of 1720s colonial America:
“The very first newspapers published in North America, it turns out, were absolutely enchanted by Iran. In the 1720s, at a time when ‘the United States’ had yet to come into existence, and Britain’s North American colonies were largely a land of yeoman farmers, tobacco plantations, and quiet settler villagers, newspapers in Boston and Philadelphia reported regularly on events in the Persian Empire — with breathless, even hysterical energy. Week in and week out, publications like the Boston News-Letter, the Boston Gazette, and Philadelphia’s American Weekly Mercury fell over one another to feed (and stoke) the public appetite for information about Persia. At one point, the Mercury was regularly devoting 25 to 30 percent of its column-inches to Persian affairs. In July 1724 the newspaper even led with a regretful note: ‘We have at present no News concerning’ the situation, ‘neither do we hear anything from Persia.’ In the American colonies in the 1720s, the mere absence of news from Iran was a front-page story.”