The National Rally party scored a landslide victory in the first round of voting in France’s National Assembly, according to early predictions, pushing its long-taboo nationalist and anti-immigration politics to power for the first time.
Polls are generally reliable and, based on preliminary results, forecasts suggest the party will get about 34% of the vote, well ahead of President Macron’s centrist Ennahda party and its allies, which received about 21% of the vote.
The results of the two-round election, which will lead to a run-off between the main parties in each constituency on July 7, do not provide a reliable prediction of the number of parliamentary seats each party will receive. But now it seems likely that the national assembly will become the biggest force in the House of Representatives, even if it doesn’t necessarily have an outright majority.
According to predictions, the “New Popular Front”, a left-wing alliance composed of moderate socialists and the far-left French Indomitable party, won about 29% of the vote. The turnout was very high, reflecting the importance voters attach to early elections, with turnout exceeding 65%, compared with 47.51% in the first round of the last congressional election in 2022.
The result represents a serious setback for Macron, who is in his seventh year as president, as he is betting that his party’s crushing defeat by national rallies in recent European Parliament elections will not be repeated.
In a statement issued immediately after the forecast was released, Mr. Macron said, “In the face of national rallies, now is the time for a second round of large, clear democratic and republican alliances.”
Whether that’s still possible at a time when rallies across the country are apparently on a tailwind is unclear.
National rally leader Marine Le Pen declared France’s vote “unambiguous and opens a new page in seven years of corrosive power”. She urged her supporters to ensure her protege Jordan Bardella, 28, becomes the next prime minister.
Macron’s decision to hold elections just weeks before the Paris Olympics surprised many French, especially his own prime minister, who had been kept in the dark. The decision reflects a top-down governing style that has further isolated the president.
Macron is under no obligation to plunge France into a summer of turmoil with a hasty vote, but he firmly believes it is his democratic responsibility to test French sentiment in a national vote.
He also believes that the dissolution of the National Assembly and the holding of elections will be inevitable by October, as his proposed deficit-cutting budget is expected to face insurmountable opposition.
“It would be better to hold the election now,” said an official close to Macron, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with French political protocol. “According to our polls, a solid majority of national rallies by October is inevitable.”
Of course, when the second round of voting is held a week later, the National Rally may end up with an absolute majority of 289 seats in the 577-seat parliament. Macron’s parties and allies have taken about 250 seats since the last parliamentary vote in 2022, but Macron’s efforts to achieve his agenda have been frustrated by the lack of an absolute majority and the inability to form a stable coalition.
In the run-up to the election, Macron tried every tactic of threats, including a potential “civil war”, warning people not to vote for what he called “extremists” – a national rally that views immigration as secondary – class and far-left France Unrelenting outbursts of anti-Semitism.
He told pensioners they would be left penniless. He said the national rally represented “the abandonment of everything that makes up the attractiveness of our country and retains investors”. He said the left would drain the vitality of the French economy and shut down nuclear power plants that provide about 70% of the country’s electricity.
“The most extreme thing is poverty in France,” Mr Macron said.
But these calls have fallen on deaf ears because, for all his achievements, including slashing unemployment, Macron has lost touch with the people he appeals to in rallies across the country. His centrist movement, once dominant, has suffered serious defeats.
These people across the country feel belittled by the president. They felt he didn’t understand their struggles. They felt he was pretending to listen, but no more. Looking for ways to express their anger, they chose a party that believed immigrants were the problem because aging France needed them. They chose the National Rally Party, whose leader did not go to elite schools.
The rise of national rallies has been steady and unstoppable. The group was founded more than half a century ago as the National Front by Ms Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, and Pierre Bosque, a member of the Waffen-SS’s French division during World War II. There have always been ironclad barriers to entry into government.
This is a source of shame for the French. During World War II, the collaborationist Vichy government deported more than 72,000 Jews to their deaths, and France was determined not to try again to establish a far-right nationalist government.
Ms Le Pen expelled her father from the party in 2015 over his insistence that Nazi gas chambers were “a detail of history”. She renamed the party and took the eloquent and hard-to-provoke Mr. Bardera as her protégé. She has also backed away from some of her most extreme positions, including a push to leave the European Union.
It worked even if some principles remained unchanged, including the party’s eurosceptic nationalism. Also unchanged is its willingness to discriminate against foreign residents and French citizens and its insistence that the country’s crime rates and other ills stem from too many immigrants, a claim that some research has challenged.
Three difficult years appear to be ahead for Macron, who is term-limited and must step down in 2027. The specific difficulty will not be known until the second round of voting. It appears that he may be viewed as a president who has allowed far-right elements into the highest offices of government. How he will govern with a party that represents what he has resisted and deplored throughout his political career is unclear. If the National Assembly gets the Prime Ministership, then Now that Mr. Bardera is in office, he will be able to set much of the domestic agenda.
Mr Macron has vowed not to resign under any circumstances and the president of the Fifth Republic generally has broad control over foreign and military policy. But national rallies have expressed a desire to limit Macron’s powers. There is no doubt that if the party gets an outright majority it will try.
Mr. Macron took a huge, discretionary risk. “No, to defeat. Yes, for the awakening of the Republic, for the leap of the Republic! He announced the decision shortly after making it. But as the first round of elections approached, the Republic looked hurt, Its divisions are tearing apart.
