For the first time, the far-right National Rally topped the legislative polls, more than doubling its support, while President Emmanuel Macron has been left reeling.
National Rally, the far-right party led by Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella, has surged to first place in the first round of legislative elections, according to a projection produced by Ipsos Talan today (30 June) after polls closed.
The National Rally gained 33.2% of votes cast, according to the estimated poll, a slight decrease on opinion polls last week which put the party and its allies at 36%.
If confirmed, that would represent a significant success for Le Pen’s party, formerly called the National Front.
For the first time, the party has come top in a first-round legislative election, with support doubling since 2022.
It might not be enough to secure a majority in France’s lower legislative chamber, with Ipsos projecting that Le Pen and her allies from the Republicans party may get 230 to 280 seats, just short of an absolute majority of 289.
The vote, called by President Emmanuel Macron after a disastrous performance in EU elections, has failed to turn the tide, and his centrist Ensemble party seems set to lose significant numbers of seats.
Macron’s Ensemble coalition reached 21% of the vote, the poll suggests – down on where he was at the equivalent stage of 2022 legislative elections, but an improvement on recent EU elections, where he gained just 14.6%.
Left-wing parties, meanwhile, performed relatively strongly.
The New Popular Front, an alliance formed after elections were called from the Socialist Party, Greens, and Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s France Unbowed – reached 28.1% of the vote, the projection said, a slight improvement on the 25.7% that NUPES, the equivalent coalition, reached in 2022.
According to those results, Macron could end up with just 70-100 seats, while the New Popular Front would have 125-165, in a left-wing bloc dominated by Mélenchon’s party, Ipsos said.
It looks like a bad night for right-wing firebrand Eric Zemmour, whose Reconquest party has sunk to under 1% – votes that have likely gone to his rival Le Pen, as the far-right vote consolidates.
The centre-right Republicans party – which has been torn apart in an internal debate over whether to stand alongside Le Pen – stayed roughly constant at just over 10%, Ipsos said.
How important are the French legislative elections?
A party with an absolute majority would have the right to appoint a Prime Minister and government – though Macron himself has said he won’t resign as President.
In 2022 elections, Le Pen came third with 18.7% of the vote – and will be hoping to gain the magic 289 seats that will enable it to establish the first far-right government in France since the Nazi occupation.
If so, there could be a period of cohabitation between leaders of different parties – which last happened from 1997 to 2002, when conservative President Jacques Chirac was paired with Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin.
Today’s count won’t give the final result – as the most successful candidates in each constituency will proceed to a second round on 7 July, and the relatively high turnout seen today suggests many of them will.
What happens now, after the first round of elections?
The next week will see a significant amount of horsetrading, with candidates potentially forging electoral pacts or even standing down, meaning the final result can look very different.
In 2022, Macron won just over 25% of votes cast in the first round, but ended up with 42% of the seats – finishing in first place, though losing his majority.
In a speech given just after polls closed, Mélenchon promised to drop out of any constituency where he’d come third, a way to avoid splitting the vote and giving extra seats to Le Pen.
While legislative terms are normally five years, Macron called snap elections on 9 June after receiving a drubbing from voters in European Parliament elections.
Marine Le Pen’s National Rally took over 31% of the vote to select MEPs, more than twice as much as Macron’s coalition managed./euronews
