Voters cast their votes in a polling station during the first round of legislative elections in Paris on June 30.Siegfried Modola/The Globe and Mail
France is facing a flurry of intense political jockeying this week as centrist and leftist parties strategize about how to prevent Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally from winning a majority in the second round of voting on July 7.
The National Rally, or RN, and its allies won 33 per cent of the vote in the first round Sunday, putting the party in line for a historic victory. It was followed by a leftist coalition called the New Popular Front which took 28 per cent while French President Emmanuel Macron’s coalition called Ensemble (Together) finished third with 21 per cent.
The New Popular Front and Ensemble are now plotting to pull their candidates from dozens of ridings in order to stop the RN from winning in the second round, but polls suggest voters may not switch their votes as much as politicians hope.
Sunday’s result was a crushing blow for Mr. Macron’s party which has governed the country for the past seven years. It also leaves the RN in a strong position to form the next government with Ms. Le Pen’s 28-year-old protégé, Jordan Bardella, poised to become prime minister.
A woman walks past a campaign poster for Jordan Bardella outside a polling station in Paris.Siegfried Modola/The Globe and Mail
The RN has been gaining in opinion polls for the past two years by tapping into voter discontent over a range of issues including immigration and the cost of living, as well as dissatisfaction with Mr. Macron who has been President since 2017. He called the snap election on June 9 just after his party was defeated by RN in elections to the European Parliament.
Some observers have estimated that the National Rally could win between 260 and 310 seats in the 577-seat parliament based on the first round of balloting. That’s right around the 289 total needed for a majority.
But everything hinges on the second round on July 7.
Under France’s electoral system, candidates who win 50 per cent or more of the vote in the first round are automatically elected. Only 76 candidates met that threshold last Sunday – 39 for RN, 32 for New Popular Front, two for Ensemble and the remainder from other parties. That means runoffs will be held in the remaining 501 constituencies.
Candidates need to have won 12.5 per cent of the total registered voters in the first round to remain on the ballot. Usually, that hurdle has resulted in only two candidates advancing to the second round in most ridings.
However, because of the high turnout in the first round on Sunday – 66 per cent – and a lower number of candidates running overall, there will be three-way races in 306 ridings on July 7, involving candidates from the RN and the two coalitions. In 2022, when turnout was 47 per cent there were just eight three-way contests in the second round.
A woman walks past a campaign poster for New Popular Front outside a polling station.Siegfried Modola/The Globe and Mail
The question now is how many candidates will the two coalitions agree to withdraw to give their rival a better chance of defeating RN?
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who leads the largest party in the leftist coalition, said the group will pull all of its candidates who finished third in order to help the Ensemble candidate win. Gabriel Attal, the current Prime Minister and a member of Mr. Macron’s party, has said that his group will do the same.
“Our objective is clear,” Mr. Attal said Sunday. “To prevent the Rassemblement National [National Rally] from having an absolute majority in the second round, from dominating the Assemblée Nationale and therefore from governing the country with the disastrous project it has in mind.”
The deadline to decide is Tuesday evening and as of Monday night, more than 170 candidates had been withdrawn, mostly from New Popular Front.
It’s far from certain the strategy will work.
Bruno Jeanbart, vice-president of the Paris-based polling firm OpinionWay, said voters don’t necessarily follow what politicians recommend. A survey of 7,000 voters conducted on Sunday by OpinionWay, found that a majority of Ensemble and New Popular Front supporters would not vote tactically to stop the RN from winning.
Only 31 per cent of Macron supporters said they would vote for the left candidate if their riding came down to a choice between New Popular Front and RN. And only 43 per cent of left voters would back a Macron candidate in a runoff against RN. A larger number – 52 per cent of Macron supporters and 49 per cent of New Popular Front supporters – would not vote at all.
Crowds gather at Place de la Republique in Paris as polls closed and Marine Le Pen’s National Rally dominated the first round of legislative elections on June 30.Siegfried Modola/The Globe and Mail
In addition, 8 per cent of New Popular Front voters and 17 per cent of Macron supporters would vote for the RN candidate.
“With this kind of behaviour of both the left and Macron’s voters in the second round, it’s possible that National Rally can catch the overall majority,” Mr. Jeanbart said.
Further strengthening RN’s hand, the party’s candidates came out on top in 222 of the 577 constituencies in the first round. In 180 of those ridings, they took more than 40 per cent of the vote, putting them within striking distance of winning next Sunday.
Nonetheless, Mr. Jeanbart and others believe the most likely outcome will be a hung parliament where RN is the largest party but doesn’t have a majority. Mr. Jeanbart said RN could try to govern if it came close to a majority and managed to win support from other centre-right MPs.
“It’s a totally new situation in France,” he said adding that the electoral system normally produces a majority government for one party or group. “We’ve never known a situation when they can’t be a majority. So we don’t know how the parties will behave.”