Supporters of the leftist-wing 'Nouveau Front Populaire' political coalition make a stop in front of the primatial cathedral of St. Andrew during a bicycle rally in Bordeaux, southwestern France, on July 3.PHILIPPE LOPEZ/Getty Images
Thomas Lenczner waved his arms frantically as he gathered up a group of canvassers and gave them some final instructions along with a fistful of pamphlets.
The group was among dozens of supporters of a left-wing coalition called New Popular Front who descended on Place de la République in central Paris on Friday offering to do all they could to defeat candidates running for Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally, or RN.
Many had never been involved in politics before, but they all shared a fear of what France could look like on Sunday if the RN wins a majority of seats in the final round of voting across the country. The RN already came out on top in the first round of balloting last week and polls indicate that it could come close to claiming enough seats in Sunday’s vote to form a government.
“I’m here because the extreme right is really, really close to take power in France, and so it’s super, super important to mobilize ourselves in order to beat them,” said Mr. Lenczner, who was campaigning for a political party for the first time. “We’ll do everything we can until the last minute to mobilize ourselves.”
All election campaigning must cease at Friday midnight and candidates were scrambling to make their final pitch to voters. In a further last-minute effort to give the anti-RN candidate a better shot at winning, the New Popular Front and Ensemble (Together) – a coalition of centrist parties connected to French President Emmanuel Macron – have formed a tactical alliance to pull candidates from dozens of ridings.
There’s no guarantee those tactics will pay off and on Sunday the country will hold its collective breath to see whether Ms. Le Pen and her 28-year-old protégée Jordan Bardella can pull off an unprecedented victory or if France will be plunged into political chaos.
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“We are living in a historical moment,” said Pierre Mathiot, a political science professor at Lille’s Sciences Po. “Politically speaking it is very interesting to observe, but it is a little bit stressful for the citizens.”
Dr. Mathiot said most polls show the RN winning between 205 and 230 seats on Sunday, just below the 289 threshold needed for a majority. The party could still try to form a coalition with other right-wing MPs, or Mr. Macron’s group could try to continue governing with support from leftist MPs.
Mr. Macron can’t call another election for a year, but Dr. Mathiot said he could also turn to an outsider to act as a caretaker prime minister until another vote.
Whatever happens on Sunday, Ms. Le Pen has already inflicted a political beating on Mr. Macron who called the snap election last month in the wake of elections to the European Parliament which the RN soundly won.
Mr. Macron was hoping to catch the RN off guard and galvanize public support against the far right. But his gamble has backfired, and Ms. Le Pen’s party will almost certainly emerge as the largest party in the National Assembly while Ensemble is expected to lose up to 100 seats and finish third.
The result is a vindication of Ms. Le Pen’s effort to rebrand the RN into a more mainstream movement. The RN has also tapped into growing public anger over issues such as the soaring cost of living, rising economic disparity and the unease many people in France have about increased immigration.
Jean-Yves Camus, a political scientist at the Fondation Jean-Jaurès, a Paris-based think tank, said the RN has successfully exploited the discomfort many French people have felt about immigration for years. And it has given those people a voice to express their fears.
“We are not a country built on immigration, not in the sense that it is natural for us like it is in Canada,” he explained. “We are not naturally a multicultural society. But we have become a multicultural society.”
Dr. Camus said France’s colonial history “makes immigration, and becoming French, much more difficult because there is a history of war and oppression.” As a result, he said the disconnect has widened between newcomers and the native French population.
The RN has won support by vowing to drastically reduce immigration and cut financial support to people who crossed the border illegally. It also wants to make it harder for children born to two foreign parents in France to claim citizenship. And the party would bar anyone who holds dual citizenship from working in several government departments such as the Ministry of Defence.
Louis Piquet was talking up that message as he met voters in Auteuil on Friday, an upmarket suburb in western Paris. He’s running as a candidate for Union of the Right, which is affiliated with the RN, and he’s found a receptive audience for the tough line on immigration.
Mr. Piquet said his party believes there’s a connection between immigration and economic stagnation.
“We have 500,000 people arriving in the country every year who are poorly qualified and unable to work. And so it drags down the salaries of all French people,” he said as he took a break from handing out flyers on a busy sidewalk. “If we want to return to social progress for low-income workers, we must absolutely stop bringing in foreigners. Once we have done that we can integrate and assimilate people correctly.”
But the RN’s increasingly anti-immigrant rhetoric troubles many people who see it as a smokescreen for stoking racism. A successful showing by the RN could embolden extremists and increase violence against visible minorities, said Victor Baysang who works with an anti-poverty charity in Paris called Emmaus.
“During the campaign we’ve seen that these people feel like now they can speak out loud, now they can act, and nothing is going to happen to them if they go out and beat some people because of the colour of the skin or because of who they love,” Mr. Baysang said.
Back in Auteuil, Mr. Piquet was getting a warm greeting from passersby who eagerly took his leaflets and asked about the party policies. He has dismissed claims that the RN was encouraging violence, but on Friday he acknowledged that France was going through a challenging time.
“I believe that this is a difficult transition for the people of France but it’s necessary to change to a new way of doing politics for the good of everyone,” he said. “We risk chaos but at the same time it’s probably like many events in the history of France; that a crisis gives birth to a new way of thinking.”