How do they work and why are they important?

Macron’s decision to hold two rounds of elections on June 30 and July 7 is seen by rivals and allies as a reckless gamble that could hand political power to the far right.

He wants to regain control of French politics, but polls suggest that won’t happen.

Jordan Bardella and Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party defeats Emmanuel Macron’s party in European elections An hour later, the French president said on television that he could not act as if nothing had happened.

After receiving 31.4% of the vote in a national rally to his party’s 14.6%, he said it was time for a new alliance between the French people and politicians who “do not recognize themselves in the frenzy of extremism”.

There is no need for Mr Macron to call National Assembly elections as the last one was held in June 2022 and no further votes will be required until 2027.

Macron has obviously been contemplating an election for months, but France is busy preparing for the Paris Olympics, which runs from July 26 to August 11.

He clearly wants to break the deadlock after failing to gain an absolute majority in the National Assembly in June 2022. And tougher immigration rules will require support from rallies across the country.

Macron said: “If France wants to maintain calm and harmony, it needs an absolute majority.” However, he plunged French politics into chaos.

His Renaissance, Horizon and Modern centrist alliance floundered in third place, and his hopes of attracting the center left were dashed.

The Socialists formed the New Popular Front together with the Greens, the far-left French Indies (LFI) and the Communist Party.

“This decision has caused concern, incomprehension and sometimes even anger across our country, among the French people,” Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said.

A national rally could win power in France for the first time. The party is led by 28-year-old Jordan Bardella, and parliament is led by Marine Le Pen, who ran for president three times but lost each time.

But she won more votes each time. Polls now suggest her party could become France’s largest but fall short of an outright majority. Following closely in the polls is a broad left-wing coalition that includes far-left parties.

The National Assembly has a total of 577 seats, including 13 overseas constituencies and 11 constituencies representing the French diaspora abroad. To obtain an absolute majority, a party needs 289 votes.

Macron’s coalition has only 250 seats in the outgoing parliament and must win the support of other parties every time a law is passed.

All candidates who did not receive 12.5% ​​of the vote were eliminated in the first round. Anyone who gets 50% of the vote and turns out at least a quarter of the local electorate automatically wins. This happens in a few constituencies.

The second round is a series of runoffs between two, three, and sometimes four candidates. Some candidates may withdraw before July 7 to give allies a better chance of preventing opponents, such as the far right, from winning.

Two-wheeling means nothing is clear cut.

Even if the National Rally qualifies for the second round in a large number of constituencies, voters could choose to exclude the party using “le vote utile” (tactical voting).

They held 88 seats in the outgoing parliament, but polls suggest they may have far more than 200.

In addition to the polls, we also need to pay attention to the European election results, where the National Rally received 31.37% of the vote, while another far-right party, Reconquista, received 5.47% of the vote. Some supporters of the center-right Republican Party may support RN, but others may also join the movement to stop them – forming a “barrage”.

The combined vote share of the left-wing, Green Party and far-left parties also exceeded 30%. But not all left-wing voters will support the New Popular Front due to the involvement of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s far-left French Incumbent Party (LFI).

Another factor is turnout, which will be significantly higher than the 51% in the European Parliament vote on June 9.

Regardless of who wins, Mr Macron has said he will not resign as president.

If his party fails and the National Rally or the New Popular Front wins, it would be left with nearly three years of “cohabitation” or power-sharing, in which the president of one party leads the country and the other runs the government.

This has happened before, with domestic policy in the hands of the prime minister and cabinet, and foreign and defense policy in the hands of the president.

unnecessary. Under the constitution, Mr Macron decides who will lead the next government. But he does have to reflect the make-up of the new parliament, so if the National Rally is the main party, he may find it difficult to choose someone else.

If RN wins an outright majority, Jordan Bardella would be the obvious choice for the party’s own nomination. RN campaign posters proclaim him Prime Minister, and the 28-year-old is a big figure on TikTok and has been a member of the European Parliament since 2019.

But Mr Bardera himself ruled out becoming prime minister if the RN failed to secure an absolute majority: “I don’t want to be an assistant to the president.”

He said a relative majority would prevent him from taking action: “I will not sell the French people measures or actions that I cannot implement.”

For more than 20 years, presidential elections have followed congressional elections, and voting preferences do not change much in the interim.

There have been three periods of cohabitation in the past:

1997-2002 Socialist Lionel Jospin was prime minister under centre-right President Jacques Chirac

1993-95 Center-right Prime Minister Edouard Balladur teams up with Socialist President François Mitterrand in his second term

1986-88 Jacques Chirac was Prime Minister under President Francois Mitterrand

But France is not really prepared for a possible cohabitation after July 7, with both the far right and the far left trying to get along with a centrist president.

Marine Le Pen has been trying for years to “de-demonize” or detoxify her party from the anti-Semitic and extremist roots of her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, and its National Front founder, whom she has reshaped Named “National Assembly”.

However, its strict anti-immigration policies remain in place, and a ruling earlier this year by France’s highest administrative court, the Council of State, confirmed that the policies could be considered “far right”.

France football captain Kylian Mbappe has warned his compatriots that “extremes have reached the gates of power” and that France is “at a very important moment in the history of our country”. Jordan Bardella was quick to fire back, criticizing the multi-millionaire for “a lesson that sports figures teach those who are struggling to make ends meet.”

Registered nurses have long called for a ban on Muslim headscarves in public, although Bardera now says it won’t be a priority until the next presidential election.

National rallies have taken money from Russia, while Marine Le Pen has been pro-Kremlin, anti-NATO and anti-EU. However, many of their extreme positions on withdrawing from NATO unified command and strengthening ties with Russia have been quietly abandoned.

Leaving the EU has not been on the agenda since 2022.

The New Popular Front is an unlikely alliance of socialists, Greens, Communists and an unyielding French.

They promise to repeal Macron’s pension and immigration reforms, and their platform is based on the idea that “if it’s not the far right, it’s us”.

President Macron attacked the group as “totally immigrationist” and allowed people to change gender at town halls, sparking accusations of transphobia.

The Popular Front has pledged to fight anti-Semitism, despite including far-left candidates accused of making anti-Semitic remarks.