MARSEILLE, France (CN) — On Sunday, voters cast the first round of ballots that will determine the composition of France's new parliament. The results suggest the far-right National Rally has a shot at running the country’s domestic agenda for the first time ever.
The RN took the biggest share of the vote at roughly 33%, beating the new far-left New Popular Front coalition that took around 28%. French President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist Ensemble coalition trailed behind with 21%.
Plainly, the numbers suggest that the far-right RN — which is led by Marine Le Pen and her 28-year-old protégé Jordan Bardella — could be running the country in about one week. If the RN wins an absolute majority, Macron will elect a prime minister from their ranks, it will almost certainly be Bardella, and the RN will effectively have control over domestic affairs in France.
Symbolically, the results show the RN is succeeding in normalizing its image despite being classified as “extreme” by the Council of State, a label that it has fought to shed in recent years. In parallel, Macronisme — the term denoted to the president’s political movement and swift rise to power — is looking at its final nail in the coffin.
To win an absolute majority, a party would need to win 289 out of 577 seats in the country's lower chamber of parliament. Polls project the RN to win between 240 and 310.
“It’s the continuation of the same electoral dynamic that benefits the National Rally which, basically, sees the decline of the presidential majority confirmed,” Luc Rouban, a senior research fellow at Sciences Po Paris, told Courthouse News. “And we see that basically, the union of the left around the New Popular Front has allowed the left to come in second place.”
Many criticize Macron, who ran on a centrist platform, for ironically causing the country’s extreme right and left platforms to gain ground. The president is not a well-liked political figure. The yellow vest protests, which were catalyzed by rising fuel prices and economic disparity, happened under his watch in 2018. He has consistently been criticized as being out of touch with the general population. In 2023, when Macron raised the retirement age from 62 to 64, millions of people protested across the country to no avail, raising concerns over the state of democracy in France.
“The problem is that Emmanuel Macron is a prisoner of his ideology,” Rouban said. “So now, they find themselves facing the political reality of the country, that is to say the return of the divide between the left and the right, the existence of which has always been very strong.”
On Monday morning in Marseille, Andre Bergereau, a local resident, puffed on a pipe in the central Place du Général-de-Gaulle square. He doesn’t think Macron has a shot at winning the second and final round of these snap legislative elections.
“The actual government did some things, but he only listens to himself and no one else,” Bergereau told Courthouse News. “I think there will be a lot of changes in the next round, they’ll change prime minister and they’ll be obligated to take one from the right or from the left.”
Bergereau used to be pro-left, and said that Jean-Luc Mélenchon — the most controversial figure on the French leftwing political spectrum, and leader of France Unbowed — used to be good when he first came on the scene. Now, his views have softened to the far right.
“There were always worries about the extreme right,” he said. “It’s not the extreme right of before.”
The RN was founded as the National Front in the 1970s by Jean-Marie Le Pen, an extremely controversial political figure that was perhaps best known for calling the Holocaust’s gas chambers a “detail” of history. This led to multiple fines for contesting crimes against humanity. The party has been criticized as xenophobic since its founding, and has continuously been wrapped up in scandals.
When Marine Le Pen, Jean-Marie Le Pen’s daughter, took over the RN in 2011, she embarked on a campaign to repair its image. But analysts credit Bardella, who became party president in 2022, for being the driving force behind its normalization. One key factor is that Bardella doesn’t bear the family name.
On June 9, things came to a head when the RN won the European Elections, which triggered Macron to dissolve the government and call for immediate snap elections.
The final vote will be held on Sunday, June 7.
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