Image source, Reuters
Caption: Marine Le Pen celebrated the victory of her party, the National Rally.Article information
- Author, Editorial
- Role, BBC News World
-
June 30, 2024
The far-right National Rally (RN) party has secured a historic victory in the first round of parliamentary elections in France on Sunday, according to projections.
According to polls released by France Télévisions and Radio France after the polls closed, Marine Le Pen’s party, RN, won around 33% of the vote.
The left-wing New Popular Front coalition won around 28% of the vote, while President Emmanuel Macron’s Ensemble coalition won around 21%.
Once the first results were known, Le Pen addressed her supporters.
“Democracy has spoken and the French have put RN and its allies on top, virtually annihilating Macron’s camp,” he said.
He added that people clearly want to “turn the page after seven years of disdainful and corrosive government” and called on his supporters to vote for RN again next Sunday in the second round.
President Macron, who unexpectedly called these parliamentary elections last month after the results of the European elections that were also positive for RN, said that a front must be created to defeat the far right.
“We must vote for Republican and Democratic candidates,” he added, referring to the second round.
The French president welcomed the massive turnout in Sunday’s elections, which according to several reports is the highest in the last 40 years.
Photo caption: Supporters of the National Rally celebrated their party’s victory in the first round of the legislative elections.
The French parliamentary elections, which will determine the makeup of the National Assembly, have two rounds. The second round will take place next Sunday and will ultimately define the French political landscape.
Macron reiterated that, whatever the outcome of the election, he will not resign from his post as president, whose term ends in 2027.
A partial triumph
The National Rally has never before won the first round of parliamentary elections in the country.
In the last parliamentary elections, those of 2022, he obtained 18.7% of the votes in the first round – 15% less than this Sunday.
But this historic victory does not mean that the fight is over.
These elections elect the 577 deputies of the National Assembly, who will hold office for 5 years (or less, if the president dissolves the Assembly, as happened in this case).
To elect them, the country is divided into 577 constituencies and in each one a deputy is elected.
For a candidate to win in his or her constituency in the first round, he or she must obtain more than 50% of the votes.
If no candidate succeeds, the election goes to a second round, in which the two candidates who received the most votes in the first round and all other candidates who received 12.5% or more of the votes registered to vote in the constituency compete.
That is, there may be constituencies in which there are more than two candidates contesting the second round.
Image source, EPA
Caption: The French president called for elections after the results of the European elections were known, which were also favourable to RN.
According to Paul Kirby, the BBC’s digital editor for Europe, “each constituency has its own political history.”
“RN may win some of them tonight and be ahead in most of the others.”
“However, the left alliance also did very well.”
In their reactions to Sunday’s results, President Macron and some other centre-left leaders have already called for a tactical vote next Sunday to exclude the candidates of the far-right RN.
Former leftist presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who heads one of the parties in the New Popular Front coalition, said: “We will not allow the National Rally to win anywhere.”
“That is why, in cases where we come third, we will withdraw from the competition,” he added.
Gabriel Attal, the current Prime Minister of France (in line with President Macron), made a statement to the same effect.
He announced that candidates from the Macron-led coalition Ensemble, who obtained enough votes to participate in the second round but have no chance of winning, would withdraw to give a non-RN candidate a chance to win.
“Our goal now is to prevent RN from obtaining an absolute majority and leading the country with its disastrous project,” he said.
Two paths to France
Caption: If the far-right National Rally party wins an absolute majority next Sunday, Jordan Bardella is expected to be appointed prime minister.
When the final results are known on Sunday, President Macron will appoint a new prime minister. Traditionally, the head of the party or coalition that has won the most seats in the Assembly is chosen.
If the National Rally wins an absolute majority next Sunday, the party’s chairman, Jordan Bardella, is expected to become prime minister.
Bardella is a 28-year-old politician who has worked closely with Marine Le Pen since he was 16 and succeeded her as party president when she ran for president in 2022.
Following the preliminary results on Sunday, Bardella said the country has two paths: “the worst” – that of the left-wing coalition, which he described as an “existential danger” – and that of his party.
He added, however, that he would be a prime minister for “all French people” and that he would respect cohabitation with President Macron, which is the phenomenon that occurs when the party that leads in parliament is not the same as the president.
Speaking on Sunday, Marine Le Pen said: “We need an absolute majority so that Jordan Bardella can be appointed Prime Minister within a week.”
Polls by France Télévisions and Radio France, however, project that RN will win between 230 and 280 seats in the Assembly after next Sunday’s elections, less than the 289 needed for the absolute majority that Le Pen is talking about.
In any case, the current Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, said that the far right in France is “on the verge of power.”
Caption: In these elections, France elects the 577 deputies who will make up the National Assembly.
Analysis by Hugh Schofield, BBC correspondent in Paris
The far-right National Rally has scored another victory and is well on its way to turning French politics upside down.
In the coming days there will be much talk about centre and left-wing candidates who will withdraw from the second round in order to concentrate the anti-RN vote.
But it would take a setback of monumental proportions to overturn the only conclusion that can be drawn from this first round of voting, which is that RN is now indisputably the dominant political force in France.
However, what remains to be decided in the coming week remains very important.
It is the difference between a far-right government with a free hand thanks to an absolute majority in the National Assembly and a far-right government unable to do much because the Assembly is divided.
To minimise the damage, President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist forces and the left-wing New Popular Front alliance will ask their supporters to vote tactically in the run-off on 7 July. Even if their own candidate was eliminated, voters will be urged to choose whoever faces RN in their constituency.
But the problem with these kinds of party orders is that people are paying less and less attention to them.
The disappearance of the shame that used to accompany voting for RN has been a long process, but it can certainly now be considered over.
The other difficulty for RN’s opponents is the high number of so-called triangular votes in the second round, i.e. those constituencies in which next Sunday not two but three candidates will face each other. Normally, one from the centre, one from the far right and one from the left.
The reason for the high number of triangular votes is the high voter turnout, which is in turn a result of the high stakes.
This is also because the lightning-fast campaign made it impossible for the small parties to come to an agreement, so the vote was concentrated in the three blocks.
Obviously, if there are three parties competing in a constituency, it is more difficult for the anti-RN vote to coalesce. In many places there will be centrist or left-wing candidates, but not in all.
In general, the country now seems to be gripped by a feeling that a far-right victory is inevitable. What was once seen as an unimaginable possibility is now a tangible fact.
This depresses and angers many people, especially in big cities like Paris, where a pall of gloom hangs over the city.
In the rest of the country, in rural areas, people presumably feel the opposite.
And remember that you can receive notifications in our app. Download the latest version and activate them.