– France is thrown into the arms of the far left, said National Assembly leader Jordan Bardella following the surprising election result that all the forecasts pointed towards late Sunday evening.
President Emmanuel Macron will only announce the result on Monday morning. But already on Sunday evening, a clear picture of a tripartite national assembly emerged:
The left-wing New People’s Front (NFP) clearly gets the most seats, while Macron’s center alliance gets second place. In advance, the far-right party RN was the clear favorite to get the most mandates – there was even talk of what would happen if they got a clear majority. Now none of the party groups get it, and the election experts agree that there will be difficult times – possibly chaos.
– We have won, now we want to govern, said leader Marine Tondelier of De Grønne, one of several parties in NFP. She points out that the highest turnout since 1981 shows how important this election has been for the French.
– Not given how the government will be
Jean-Luc Melenchon’s radical left party Indomitable France (LFI) is the largest party in the loosely composed left alliance NFP. He believes President Emmanuel Macron must now ask the left to form a government.
– This is an enormous relief for a majority of our country’s population. We will keep our word and carry out our program, says Melenchon, who came third in the 2022 presidential election.
France expert Kjerstin Aukrust at the University of Oslo believes it will be difficult to form a government without an absolute majority.
– Even if the composition will be ready tomorrow, and we can see the contours of it tonight, it is by no means a given what the government will look like, she says to NTB.
Le Pen: Victory is coming
National Assembly’s Marine Le Pen seems to be taking the defeat with crushing calm. She says on Sunday evening that she sees the seeds of “tomorrow’s victory in today’s result”.
– Macron’s situation is untenable, says Le Pen.
President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist bloc Ensemble thus came ahead of Marine Le Pen’s party RN in the battle for second place, according to the forecasts. Several people point out that his fight once morest the far right has thus in a way succeeded, even if he himself is not left as the election winner.
– The electoral alliance worked
It was President Macron who dissolved the National Assembly and called new elections on 9 June following the results of the EU elections were clear – with very good results for the far right.
The cooperation across parties to prevent the National Assembly from winning seems to have succeeded, says associate professor Franck Orban of Østfold University College. The parties in the centre, on the left and partially on the right in French politics came together to strategically prevent the National Assembly from winning mandates.
– I interpret the picture so that it has worked, says Orban to NTB.
The first round of the election for a new national assembly was held on 30 June, and the RN and their allies came in first place with 33 percent of the vote.
The National Assembly has 577 seats. In order to get a majority, 289 mandates are thus needed, which none of the party groups seem to get.
Voter turnout was the highest since 1981.
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2024-07-08 05:40:27
