The “clarification” President Emmanuel Macron invoked as he called France’s snap elections has clarified this much: that French voters no longer want him to govern alone – or indeed at all. Exactly who he should share power with remains an open question after an inconclusive first round that has handed Marine Le Pen’s far right a commanding win, but not yet a decisive one.
The anti-immigrant National Rally (RN) led a first round of voting on Sunday in exceptionally high-stakes elections that could put France’s government in the hands of a far-right party for the first time since World War II.
Le Pen has urged voters to push her party over the line and hand it a majority of seats in the National Assembly, an outcome that would force Macron to share power with RN’s new poster boy Jordan Bardella, Le Pen’s choice for PM.
Another outcome, which many pollsters say is the most likely, would be a hung parliament in which no coalition can muster a majority, bringing gridlock to the European Union’s second-largest economy and its leading military power.
One thing is certain: France’s constitution says there can be no new parliamentary election for another year, so an immediate repeat vote is not an option.
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Can the far right win an absolute majority?
Le Pen’s party goes into the second round in a position of unprecedented strength, buoyed by its first-round success and its triumph in European elections earlier this month.
RN candidates and their allies topped the race in 296 out of France’s 577 constituencies on Sunday, winning 39 of them outright with over 50% of the vote – a feat no far-right candidate had managed before.
Those results put the far right on track to win anything between 240 and 300 seats in the 577-seat National Assembly, according to polling institutes, giving it by far the largest number of seats in the lower house of parliament and placing it within reach of an absolute majority.
French elections have always been a matter of dynamique (momentum), and the dynamique is clearly carrying the National Rally. Whether it can clear the last hurdle will hinge on its opponents’ ability to join forces in round two.
France’s two-round elections have traditionally barred the far right from power, with voters from left and right typically banding together in a “Republican Front” to defeat the Le Pen camp – a practice known as building a barrage (dam) against the far right.
But the dam has weakened over the years, even as the far-right wave has grown stronger at each new election, sweeping up former mainstream voters.
“There is now a sizeable share of the mainstream right that would consider voting for the National Rally – or at least no longer sees it as a threat,” said Stéphane Fournier, a researcher at polling institute Cluster 17. “That is especially the case when the other candidate is from the left, which many conservatives are more scared of.”
Céline Bracq, head of the polling agency Odoxa, said surveys found that conservative voters are “twice as likely to vote for RN as they are for a left-wing candidate”.
Getting very close to 289 seats may also be enough for the National Rally, who could win over a few more lawmakers with promises of government jobs. On Tuesday, Le Pen said she would reach out to independents and like-minded MPs if her party fell just short of a majority.
The idea of working with the party co-founded by Le Pen’s father Jean-Marie, a convicted racist and anti-Semite, used to be taboo. But the National Rally has already fractured the mainstream right, luring conservative leader Eric Ciotti, and others could yet follow.
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What happens then?
Should the far right clinch a majority, Macron would be expected to name 28-year-old Bardella as prime minister – Le Pen having set her sights on the 2027 presidential election.
Such an arrangement would weaken the president both at home and abroad, forcing him into an awkward power-sharing system – known as “cohabitation” – with an extremist party that has historic ties with Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
While Macron would maintain overall control over French diplomacy, Bardella has said he would use the powers of prime minister to block the supply of long-range weapons to Ukraine.
With control over domestic policy, a far-right PM would be free to implement the party’s platform, which includes plans to slash immigration, boost police powers and curtail the rights of French citizens with dual nationality to work in some defense, security and nuclear-industry jobs.
Experts have noted that parts of the platform are unconstitutional and would put a Bardella government on a collision course with the country’s Constitutional Council. Some senior RN politicians have advocated ignoring constitutional bounds and side-stepping what they term the “government of judges”, a move that could in turn lead the European Union to take disciplinary measures against France – as it has done with Viktor Orban’s Hungary.
Should RN fall short of a majority in the National Assembly, Macron could still task Bardella with forming a government, though Le Pen has stressed that her party will only govern if it has the means to implement its programme.
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Can the National Rally be stopped?
The prospect of a far-right government has triggered frantic efforts to revive the old “Republican Front”, leading parties to make alliances in some constituencies and pull out of others, hoping to stop the Le Pen juggernaut in its tracks.
“Only a strong republican front, uniting the left, centre and conservatives, can keep the far right at bay and prevent France from tipping over,” French daily Le Monde said in an editorial on Tuesday.
As a deadline to register candidacies expired on Tuesday, more than 200 candidates – most of them from the left – had dropped out of upcoming three-way races in order not to split the anti-Le Pen vote. The left notably withdrew its candidate in the Normandy constituency where former prime minister Elisabeth Borne was beaten into second by her far-right challenger.
Other prominent dropouts included Sabrina Agresti-Roubache, the junior minister for citizenship, who pulled out of her contest in Marseille saying she preferred “defeat” to “dishonour”.
However, there will still be 109 runoffs featuring three or even four candidates, according to an AFP count, as holdouts ignored the mounting pressure to quit the race.
Read moreFrench far right eyes power as rivals wrangle over scope of anti-Le Pen front
Macron’s allies faced accusations of undermining the barrage against Le Pen by refusing to pull out of some races that featured candidates from Jean-Luc Mélenchon hard-left La France insoumise (LFI).
Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire described LFI as a “threat to the nation, much as RN is a threat to the Republic”, while other senior figures urged voters to choose on a “case-by-case” basis regarding Mélenchon’s candidates.
Erwan Lecoeur, a political analyst at the GRESEC research centre and the Université Grenoble Alpes, said the “mixed messaging” coming from Macron’s camp could prevent many centrist voters from backing the left in runoffs with RN.
“Macron chose to frame the election as a choice between his moderate camp and ‘extremists’ to his left and right,” he added. “If party leaders now call for a ‘Republican Front’ in support of left-wing candidates, many of their voters will be baffled and confused.”
While mainstream parties have urged their supporters to shun far-right candidates, experts note that voters are less likely to heed such calls than in the past. Some may also be turned away by the horse-trading between sworn enemies – which Bardella has slammed as an “unholy alliance”.
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Can the left pull off an upset?
Macron’s audacious gamble with snap elections has helped reunite France’s bitterly fractured left, facilitating an accord that weeks of fraught negotiations might otherwise have impeded.
The New Popular Front (NFP) came second in the first round of voting, well ahead of the president’s weakened and demoralised camp. It saw 32 of its candidates win outright in the first round, highlighting the strength of left-wing bastions in Paris and the capital’s northeastern suburbs.
Even after the tactical withdrawal of more than 120 left-wing candidates, the NFP is still contesting about 285 seats – leading some in the alliance to voice hopes of an upset win.
Such hopes are wishful thinking, experts caution, noting that many NFP candidates face uphill battles in the second round.
“There is virtually no chance of the left winning this election,” said Lecoeur. “The New Popular Front will do well to prevent the far right from coming to power. It’s the only objective it can reasonably attain.”
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What happens if no coalition wins?
With a left-wing majority off the cards, and Macron’s camp certain to shed support, the likeliest alternative to a far-right majority is a hung parliament in which no coalition is able to govern alone.
On Monday, Prime Minister Attal called for a “plurality” of political forces to team up in the next National Assembly. He promised to suspend a controversial unemployment benefit reform in a gesture to the left. Other senior politicians have advocated a “national unity” government spanning most of the political spectrum but excluding the National Rally.
“One possibility could be a very broad alliance stretching from the centre-right to parts of LFI that are willing to work with other parties,” said Fournier. “That is probably the only majority that could emerge from the July 7 vote, other than a far-right one.”
A “national unity” government could offer an increasingly polarised country a little respite after a virulent campaign marked by a spike in hate speech, added Lecoeur. It could give all parties time to regroup and prepare for future elections a year from now.
Another option for Macron would be to appoint an apolitical “government of experts” as neighbouring Italy has done twice this century, though such an outcome would be starkly at odds with French political tradition – and would require that lawmakers refrain from shooting down the government at the first opportunity.
“An Italian way out of the French crisis would mean adopting a culture of compromise and negotiation,” said political analyst Jean-Pierre Darnis, a professor at the Université Côte d’Azur, writing for The Conversation. “It would certainly be very difficult, but could also prove necessary.”
