France has said no to the far right. The cordon sanitaire put in place by the left and the centre of President Emmanuel Macron has allowed the National Rally (RN) of Marine Le Pen to be soundly defeated in early general elections on Sunday, in which the surprise winner is the left-wing New Popular Front (NFP).
According to the Ifop institute’s estimate after the start of the vote, the NFP has won between 188 and 199 seats in the new National Assembly, where it had 153. In second place are the Macronists of Ensemble (Together), with a range of between 164 and 169 seats, far fewer than the 250 in the previous hemicycle, but a solid and decisive bloc for the future government. And third, Le Pen’s RN, which started as the favourite after being the party with the most votes in the first round a week ago, and won between 135 and 143 seats: a success if one takes into account that it had 88 seats; a failure given expectations.
The result is a surprise to everyone. After the overwhelming victory of the RN in the European elections on 9 June, which led Macron to dissolve the Assembly and call early elections, and after the first round, some projections placed Le Pen’s party close to an absolute majority. The disappointment for her and her successor, Jordan Bardella, whom she wanted to appoint as Prime Minister, is painful. And the relief is enormous for the majority of French people who feared a far-right in power, and for those who were worried about a result that would overshadow the great international event of the Olympic Games, starting on 26 July.
The Ifop data coincide with those of other polling institutes. The final figures will be adjusted throughout the night and as the counting progresses. But the estimates at the close of the polls almost always coincide, with adjustments and variations, with the final results, to the point that the leaders and parties react based on these figures.
The numbers do not give an absolute majority for any bloc. But they open the way to a grand coalition between the left and Macronism with a sufficient number of deputies to form a stable and lasting government. The search for a consensus prime minister, possibly from the moderate left, but with the ability to bring together centrists and the moderate right, will begin tonight.
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It will not be easy. The culture of coalition is not well established in the presidentialist Fifth Republic. France will have to take a crash course in the culture of consensus and coalition in the coming days.
The left and Macronism are far apart on economic policy, and so are the resentments that have built up over the years. There are also deep divisions between the radical left of Jean-Luc Mélenchon and the social democracy that is being revived in these elections.
At party headquarters and at the Elysée Palace, the numbers are being worked out to see whether the anti-Mélenchon left, the centre and a section of the moderate right together have 289 seats, the threshold for an absolute majority, or can come close to it. And there are possible points of agreement between this more moderate left and Macronism. On Europeanism and Ukraine, for example, and perhaps on giving a more social dimension to the reforms.
“We are in the lead, but with a divided Assembly,” said one of the prime ministerial candidatesthe social-democratic MEP Raphaël Glucksmann, who broke the hegemony of the populists and Eurosceptics of Jean-Luc Mélenchon on the left in the European elections. He added: “We will have to behave like adults.”
After two years of paralysis and polarisation in the National Assembly and on the streets, and a president who since his re-election two years ago had governed on the right, the grand coalition could tilt the French government towards more progressive policies. But the arithmetic, if it includes the moderate right, will force a rebalancing towards the centre with which Macron won power in 2017.
Mobilization
As of tonight, the calendar established by the Constitution will be activated for the legislature to begin and for the new National Assembly to form the groups and elect their positions. The Chamber must meet “on the second Thursday” after the election. The first plenary session would be on July 18, one week and one day before the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympic Games.
There is no constitutional deadline for the appointment of a new prime minister. The outgoing prime minister, Gabriel Attal, has announced that he will submit his resignation to Macron on Monday, which he can accept or reject while waiting for his replacement to be named. Among the names that have been mentioned is Glucksmann. Also the name of the environmentalist Marine Tondelier, whose electoral stronghold is the same as Le Pen’s, in the deindustrialised north. And Laurent Berger, a veteran and pragmatic trade unionist respected by all.
There is no constitutional deadline for the appointment of a new prime minister. The outgoing prime minister, in this case Attal, and his government remain in office until a replacement is found.
In a statement, Attal celebrated the fact that the French had denied an absolute majority to those he called “the extremes”: the RN and La France Insoumise, Mélenchon’s party. Referring to the Macronist camp, he declared: “We have held on and we are standing.”
Participation in the second round was the highest since 1997, 66.7% (provisional data), and 20 points higher than in the second round of the previous legislative elections in 2022. This is a reflection of the fact that, despite the start of the holiday period, the French considered that France had a lot at stake in this election.
The prospect of a government in the hands of the extreme right set off alarm bells. The centre and left-wing parties mobilised. They withdrew their candidates from the second round in the districts where there were three finalists in order to concentrate the vote on the candidate with the best chance of defeating the RN. It worked.
Voters on the left and centre, and some on the moderate right as well, largely followed the lead and voted for candidates who were perhaps not to their liking, but who would help to rein in the far right. And so the so-called Republican Front, the French form of the cordon sanitaire, was activated again, as it had done in the presidential elections of 2017 and 2022 to give Macron victory over Le Pen.
Millions of French people saw the possibility of Le Pen’s successor, Jordan Bardella, becoming prime minister these days. They feared that France – a country that prides itself on being the homeland of human rights and the Enlightenment – would be led by a party like the RN, founded by xenophobes and anti-Semites. This party has evolved over time, but it still has at its core an anti-immigration programme and distinguishes between categories of French people. And these French people said no, and contradicted the predictions and predictions.
The NFP left is the winner, although it is far from an absolute majority. The Macronists of Ensemble are holding their own. And the RN, although far from its expectations, has added dozens of deputies compared to the 88 it had since 2022 and the 8 it won in 2017. Objectively, and if we ignore the forecasts of recent weeks, this is a considerable advance, and it indicates that the extreme right is here to stay.
“The tide is still rising,” Le Pen said. “All that has happened is that our victory has been postponed.”
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