France, the left-wing bloc surprisingly wins. Le Pen only third –

The united left bloc of the New Popular Front (NFP) surprisingly wins in France, while the far right of Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella ends up in third place (despite multiplying its seats compared to the outgoing Parliament), behind the centrist camp linked to Emmanuel Macron who is reborn and comes in second place. However, the gauche does not have an absolute majority and this opens up a puzzle for the government. According to the first projections by Elabe released at 8 pm following the closing of the polls, the NFP obtains between 175 and 205 seats, the presidential majority between 150 and 175 seats and RN and its allies (i.e. the faction of Les Républicains LR that followed the contested president of the party Eric Ciotti in his alliance with Le Pen) between 115 and 150 seats. Macron “has the duty to call the New Popular Front to govern,” said Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of La France Insoumise (LFI) which is part of the NFP, the first to speak following the release of the data. And an LFI deputy, Clémentine Autain, called on left-wing MPs to meet in plenary on Monday to vote on a unified prime minister to propose, who is “neither François Hollande nor Jean-Luc Mélenchon.” For his part, Macron spoke through his entourage, asking for caution because the results do not answer the question “who should govern.”

The occupant of the Elysée Palace will “wait” for the National Assembly to “be structured” to make decisions on a new government, his office said. Meanwhile, his Prime Minister Gabriel Attal announced that he will resign on Monday morning. After the outcome, a crowd of people began to converge on the Place de la Republique. With Paris preparing to host the Olympics and the Tour de France running through the country alongside the Olympic torch, France had deployed 30,000 police officers across the country, including 5,000 in Paris alone, fearing the risk of riots. And already on Saturday, the shops on the Champs-Elysées had begun to lock down, propping up their windows with wooden panels and bars. Macron’s gamble, once morest all odds, worked. The shock announcement of early elections, made immediately following the triumph of Le Pen’s far-right in the European elections, was intended to try to defuse the strength of the RN. What the centrist president perhaps did not expect was that the left, faced with a lightning election campaign, would choose, and quickly, to unite. But in the end the withdrawals, the result of agreements between the left and the Macronists to block the far-right candidates, contained the wave that following the over 33% in the first round was expected to be overwhelming. However, individual voters played a major role, who mobilized massively with a record turnout and in the name of the anti-RN Republican front agreed to vote, often with their noses shut, for a candidate who would not have been their choice. “The alliance of dishonor”, as Bardella called it, who saw his aspiration to become France’s youngest prime minister at 28 years old shattered.

“Dangerous electoral agreements” tonight “throw France into the arms of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s far left,” he thundered, stressing instead that the RN “is today taking the biggest step forward in its history.” The historic significance of this vote, given the risk of the first far-right government since the Vichy Republic, that is, since the Nazi occupation in the Second World War, has mobilized voters en masse. A record turnout was recorded both at 12 and 17: according to figures released by the Ministry of the Interior, 59.71% of voters had voted at 17:00, an increase compared to the first round on June 30, when 59.39% had voted at the same time. A record since 1981, when 61.4% had voted at 17:00. The puzzle that now opens up is what government is possible. For governability, the majority needed in the National Assembly is at least 289 seats, that is, half plus one of the 577 seats it is composed of, and none of the largest forces has achieved it. Before the vote, two scenarios had been hypothesized: an absolute majority for the Rassemblement National, with Bardella as prime minister in Matignon and therefore cohabitation, or a hung Parliament without a real majority.

The ballot boxes have decreed this second scenario, but the way out is yet to be built. The Macronists, as the second political force, will want to aim to be the kingmaker, but before the vote they repeatedly hammered away insisting that they would never govern with Mélénchon’s La France Insoumise, while on the other side the New Popular Front had made it clear that a Macronist prime minister was out of the question. In recent weeks, Macron had always ruled out the possibility of resigning before the end of his mandate in 2027, even more so following this outcome. The gamble of the president who has rewritten the face of France will have effects far beyond national borders, so the eyes of the European chancelleries will remain focused on what will happen beyond the Alps. Paris’ positions on the war in Ukraine, global diplomacy and the economic stability of Europe are at stake. From Moscow, with the polls still open, a new endorsement for Le Pen had arrived: the French elections do not resemble democracy very much, said Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, pointing the finger at the Republican front’s withdrawals and a “second round designed to manipulate the will of the voters”.