After the first round of the legislative elections in France, the political picture suggests that the far right could end up with a “non-victory”.
The results of the first round of the legislative elections in France have produced two certainties and one near-certainty. The first two concern the presidential and governmental majority, as well as the choices of the head of state himself, Emmanuel Macron.
More than a clear winner, what this electoral round has definitively produced is a clear loser: none other than the president's party and its allies, united under the banner of Ensemble pour la République. The centrists' result is well below both that of the far right, which certainly won this first round, and that of the left, which stood united under the Nouveau Front Populaire.
The second certainty concerns the risk that Macron personally took with his decision to dissolve the National Assembly after the European elections, which the centrist camp also lost disastrously. A gamble that left even many of his most loyal supporters bewildered, and one that is effectively bringing the Rassemblement National — the far right of Jordan Bardella and Marine Le Pen — to the doors of power.
The near-certainty is that, nonetheless, those doors may ultimately remain closed to the heirs of the Front National — that is, the party founded by Jean-Marie Le Pen, by former Waffen-SS members Pierre Bousquet and Léon Gaultier, by neo-Nazi sympathisers such as François Duprat, and by nostalgists for French Algeria such as Roger Holeindre, a member of the Organisation de l'armée secrète (Oas, a clandestine terrorist group estimated to be responsible for the deaths of 1,700 people). If the heirs of this charming little clique of Nazi-fascists are today the ever-smiling daughter of Jean-Marie and an impeccably groomed young man dressed head to toe in designer clothes, their origins remain what they are. And it is for this reason that the Rassemblement National could only win… if others were to allow it.
Let us try to translate all of this into electoral terms. First premise: the French electoral system provides for a majority vote in two rounds, in each constituency, in order to elect the 577 members of the National Assembly. To be elected in the first round, candidates must obtain at least 50 per cent plus one of the votes cast (as well as a number of votes equal to at least 25 per cent of the total number of registered voters). If no candidate in a given constituency reaches those thresholds, a run-off is held in which not only the two leading candidates take part, but also the subsequent ones, provided they have obtained a number of votes equal to at least 12.5 per cent of those entitled to vote. As a result, in many constituencies three, or even four, candidates have qualified for the second round.
Overall, while the count is still under way on the evening, out of 286 constituencies whose results have been released, only 25 deputies have been elected in the first round (of whom twenty are indeed from the Rassemblement National). In addition to these, there are 151 three-way contests and three four-way contests.
Second premise: the results. National-level estimates put the far right in first place in the first round with around 33.1 per cent of the vote; the Nouveau Front Populaire second with 28 per cent; the presidential coalition third with 20.3 per cent. In fourth place are Les Républicains — the moderate conservatives — with 10.2 per cent. And it is around this last group that a first contest is being played out.
The party has in fact just emerged from a deeply painful internal split, with its president Eric Ciotti having decided to ally himself with Bardella and Le Pen, contrary to the wishes of the vast majority of its leadership. The 34 per cent reached by the Rassemblement National already effectively includes, in many cases, votes from the "Ciotti group". In other words, it is likely that the 10.2 per cent who voted for the moderate conservatives have in practice already made a choice, by rejecting the far right. In the second round, many of them could abstain — or even vote for a centrist or left-wing candidate (perhaps a moderate socialist or an ecologist) simply to act as a "barrage" against the extremists.
The second contest is then inevitably being played out between centrists and the left. And decisions have not been slow in coming, particularly in light of the many three-way contests that emerged after the first round. President Macron immediately issued a call "in the face of the Rassemblement National, for a broad, clearly democratic and republican alliance in the second round." Shortly afterwards, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal was even more explicit: "This is not an evening like any other. The far right is at the doors of power and we must prevent it from obtaining an absolute majority." Therefore, Ensemble pour la République candidates who finished in third place "will withdraw from the race", in order to support "another candidate who defends, as we do, the values of the Republic."
At the same time, the leader of La France Insoumise (the numerically dominant group within the left-wing coalition), Jean-Luc Mélenchon, explained that "in accordance with our principles and our substantive positions, we will not allow the Rassemblement National to win anywhere. And that is why, wherever the far right is in the lead and we have come third, we will withdraw."
It is clear, in this regard, that the many "projections" on possible results in terms of seats risk being of little value. One of the most widely circulated in France — carried out by Ipsos Talan for France Télévisions, Radio France, France 24/RFI and LCP — indicates that the elections could conclude with 230–280 seats for the far right, 125–165 for the left and 70–100 for the centre, with the moderate conservatives between 41 and 61. But polling institutes hesitated for weeks to publish this data, precisely because the situation in France is extremely fluid and uncertain (after all, in the 2022 legislative elections, polls gave the Rassemblement National between 10 and 40 seats, while it ultimately won 89…).
In all likelihood, the three-way contests could ultimately number around 300, and if the "third-placed" candidates do indeed withdraw everywhere (or nearly everywhere), it will be extremely difficult for the party of Bardella and Le Pen to manage to win those seats.
There are therefore three conclusions to be drawn: first, French politics is ever more clearly divided into three major blocs, each of which has — at different times — roughly one third of the electorate on its side. The second is that, despite its clear victory, the far right could once again lose against a "republican front" that will prevent it from "breaking through." For confirmation of this, it will be necessary to check the definitive lists of second-round candidates, but it seems clear that if that "front" holds, the Rassemblement National could obtain a relative majority, but not an absolute one.
What remains, of course, is the political fact of approximately 9.3 million votes going to an ultra-radical party, after seven years of centrist presidency that had presented itself as precisely a bulwark against the rise of Le Pen-style extremism. This is the third conclusion, seasoned by a sharply rising voter turnout, especially in the areas where Rassemblement National candidates performed best. A sign that the far right, in practice, appears to have succeeded in mobilising the great party of abstainers, far more than all the other parties: a truly deeply worrying finding. One over which the entire "republican front" ought to reflect. No one excluded.
The opinions expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of LifeGate.
