According to initial estimates of the legislative elections, Marine Le Pen’s party would have reached more than 34%, while the ruling party would be in third position.
The far right won the first round of crucial legislative elections in France this Sunday, where President Emmanuel Macron’s center-right forces find themselves in third place, behind the left, according to initial estimates.
The far-right National Rally (RN) party of Marine Le Pen and her allies won more than 34% of the vote, but will have to wait until the second round on July 7 to find out whether they will obtain an absolute majority in the National Assembly (lower house).
The left-wing coalition New Popular Front (NFP) would obtain between 28.5% and 29.1% of the vote and Macron’s alliance between 20.5% and 21.5%, according to initial estimates from polling institutes Ifop and Ipsos at the close of polls. The arrival in power of the extreme right, for the first time since the Liberation of France from Nazi occupation in 1945, would add a new country in the European Union (EU) governed by this tendency, like Italy. This could weaken Macron’s policy of support for Ukraine.
Although Le Pen’s party, whose detractors consider her close to Vladimir Putin’s Russia, assures that it supports kyiv, it insists on the need to avoid an escalation with Moscow. In a testament to a vote seen as historic, three hours before the polls closed, turnout reached 59.39%, 20 points more than at the same time in 2022, according to the Interior Ministry.
The electoral system itself makes the final result of a National Assembly uncertain, where the three blocs resulting from the 2022 elections will continue, but with a new distribution of forces.
The 577 deputies are elected in single-member constituencies with a two-round majority system. Depending on the results of each constituency, two, three or more candidates can advance to the second round.
The first projections this Sunday oscillate between a simple or absolute majority in the lower house. The socialists, communists and ecologists, allies of the radical party La France Insoumise (LFI) in the left-wing coalition, assured during the campaign that they will withdraw their candidates if they come in third position in the second round, to give more chances to the official candidate facing a far-right candidate.
Under pressure to adopt a similar policy towards left-wing forces, Macron, whose popularity has plummeted due to the early elections and who will convene his government on Monday, has suggested that his voting instructions will be not to vote for the “extremes” that he believes the RN and the LFI represent.
Second round, key
Macron, whose term ends in 2027, brought forward the June 9 election following the RN’s landslide victory in France’s European elections and now risks sharing power with a government of another political color, less than a month before the Paris Olympics.
The RN has already announced that if it obtains an absolute majority with its allies in the legislative elections, it will propose as Prime Minister its young emerging leader Jordan Bardella, who, at 28, has already led his party to victory in the European elections.
The far-right party is pushing a program to limit immigration, impose “authority” in schools and reduce household electricity bills, among other measures. The RN’s rivals have tried in the final stretch to warn of the risk of the far right coming to power, which has worked over the past decade to moderate the image inherited from its founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, known for his racist and anti-Semitic comments.
“Giving up any power to him means nothing less than risking the gradual undoing of everything that has been built and conquered over more than two and a half centuries,” warned the newspaper Le Monde.
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