The French parliament will consist of three camps in the coming years and President Emmanuel Macron will continue to stand above these three divisions as Sun King – but less stable than before. That is the main outcome of the first round of the parliamentary elections, this Sunday.
The candidates of Macron’s center party Renaissance and his political partners (united in the group Ensemble!) will, according to a poll by IPSOS and Sopra Steria to secure 255 to 295 of the 577 parliamentary seats. With this it appears that they remain the largest group in parliament, but it is possible that Macron will lose the absolute majority he has enjoyed in recent years (289 seats). The second political bloc consists of the (radical) left parties that have united in recent weeks under the banner Nouvelle Union Populaire, écologique et sociale (Nupes). They can count on 150 to 190 seats, according to the poll.
The right, third block is significantly smaller. The conservative-right Les Républicains (formerly UMP, known for former president Sarkozy and presidential candidate Pécresse) and partners could count on 50 to 80 seats. This is significantly less than in 2017 (136 seats), but the embarrassment is less than in the presidential elections in which Pécresse managed to obtain less than 5 percent of the vote.
Marine Le Pen’s right-wing populist Rassemblement National has 20 to 45 seats. That doesn’t seem like much, but has seen a significant increase in 2017 only eight RN members were elected, including Le Pen. The much-discussed radical-right former presidential candidate Eric Zemmour lost in the first round in Le Var.
In a week, the French will go to the polls again, after which it will become definitively clear what the Assemblée Nationale will look like for the next five years.
Also read this analysis of the presidential election: France opts for continuity with clothespin on the nose
Since the presidential election at the end of April, in which Macron was reelected to a second term thanks to protest votes against Le Pen, macronists feared that his opponents would deal with him at the polls this weekend. If the president loses his majority in the Assembly, he must team up with a prime minister of a different political affiliation. That would make it a lot harder for Macron to implement his policies.
Not a radical left prime minister after all
In particular, the left-wing alliance Nupes, led by the radical left-wing former presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon (La France Insoumise), has been pushing for such a move in recent weeks. cohabitation† Mélenchon renamed the parliamentary elections the ‘third round’ of the presidential elections and put himself forward as the prime minister of his dreams. The LFI leader managed to persuade the other left-wing parties to rally behind him, because there was only such a chance that a left-wing prime minister would come. Melenchon Prime Minister has been a widely used slogan in left-wing circles in recent weeks.
The chance that Nupes will succeed is nil. The question is what will happen to the left alliance now. It is historic for the left-wing parties to work together, but there is no guarantee that the alliance will last for years to come. The parties have significant differences of opinion, including on EU and climate policy, and socialist and communist voters in particular are according to polls little loyalty to the new Nupes. A contributing factor here is the fact that prominent members of these parties, including former socialist president Hollande, have expressed themselves very critically.
Also read: Radical left promises influence in France, but supporters are skeptical
France as tompouce
The results of the first round of the parliamentary elections underline the provisional end of the left-right era in France. As political scientist Jérôme Fourquêt recently explained at BFM TV: Before Macron’s arrival, France was “a society composed of two silos: left-wing France and right-wing France”. Within these silos, the social groups, based on education level, field of work and size of residence, were approximately equally represented. But since 2017, politically France can be compared more to a tompouce, according to Fourquêt. “There is a ‘high’ France and a ‘low’ France”, based on social and economic class. The first is represented by president of the riches Macron and Pécresse, the second by ‘people’s candidates’ Le Pen and Mélenchon.
On Sunday, the large number of people who stayed at home is also striking: 52.8 percent of the French chose not to vote. That is the lowest turnout ever in this round of elections. However, it is not unexpected: there was also a particularly low turnout in the presidential elections and research after research has shown for years that the political involvement of the French is decreasing.
Also read this profile: Macron chooses a loyal technocrat and a hard worker as prime minister
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