French voters will cast their ballots on Sunday in the first of two rounds to elect 577 members of the National Assembly, as the country appears to be heading into a new political era.
The elections come after French President Emmanuel Macron called for an early vote following the crushing defeat of Marine Le Pen's far-right National Rally (NR) party in the June 9 European Parliament elections.
Polls suggest that the upcoming elections will confirm the trend. NR leads strongly with 36 percent of the vote, followed by the left-wing Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) bloc with 28.5 percent, followed by Macron's centrist alliance – Ensemble – with 21 percent.
If the results match those of the polls, Macron may have to cohabit with an antagonistic prime minister, regardless of who is elected.
How do French elections work?
Voting opens at 06:00 GMT and is expected to end at 16:00 GMT in most of the country, but polling stations in Paris and other major cities will remain open until 18:00 GMT.
To achieve a majority in the National Assembly, a party or alliance needs 289 seats, just over half of the Chamber. Macron's outgoing coalition fell short of that figure, limiting its ability to advance its legislative agenda.
For the verdict on any of the 577 seats to be known on Sunday, July 30, two conditions must be met. First, voter turnout must be at least 25 percent. Second, a candidate must obtain an absolute majority of the votes cast.
In a multi-party system like France's, that typically means that many, if not most, races move on to a second round of voting, this time scheduled for July 7.
Only those candidates who obtain at least 12.5 percent of the votes in the first round will be able to run in the second round, effectively narrowing the field of contenders.
Why are these elections so different?
Traditionally, elections to the National Assembly are held immediately after the presidential elections, so they reflect the same popular mood. The result is a prime minister from the same political party as the president, who can implement policies with a strong mandate.
But those power dynamics have now changed and, for the first time in 22 years, France will have a state of cohabitation: a deeply unpopular president ruling alongside a government elected as a vote of dissatisfaction against Macron himself.
“This will mark the beginning of a new way of governing and the end of the presidential agenda,” said Emmanuel Dupuy, president of the Institute for European Perspective and Security Studies, a think tank on diplomacy and political analysis. “Macronism is already practically collapsed and will emerge from the elections completely annihilated,” he stated.
How did we get here?
Macron swept to power in 2017, riding a wave of support, promising to create a centrist bloc uniting the moderate left and right. But it wasn’t long before his language began to sound too distant to suburban ears (he was nicknamed Jupiter). His economic reforms were too right-wing for the liberals who had previously supported him, and his way of governing was seen as too despotic by many voters on both the right and the left.
Now, elections could mark the end of Jupiter's solo show, as France looks set to enter a new political era.
“He runs the country like a CEO of a company,” said Samantha de Bendern, a research associate at Chatham House. “But a country is not a company and Macron has failed to build alliances with his partners – he is a loner,” de Bendern said.
One of the clearest signs of their isolation was the yellow vest movement, a period of violent protests in 2018. What began as lower-middle-income workers enraged by planned increases in diesel taxes grew into a movement broader against the president's perceived bias in favor. of the elite. His second term was marked by a highly controversial bill in 2023 to increase the country's pension by two years, which became another huge domestic challenge as he faced widespread opposition.
And while she won a second term in 2022 – largely by scaring, rather than attracting, voters at the prospect of the far right taking over the presidency – the tactic appears to have tired many. “There is a feeling of anger: people are fed up with showing fear of Le Pen while being forced to vote for Macron to keep the far right out,” de Bendern said.
What is the 'de-demonisation' of Le Pen?
Meanwhile, Le Pen has meticulously crafted the so-called de-demonisation strategy over the past two decades, aimed at broadening the party's base while at the same time moderating its radical discourse to distance itself from many references that had made the NR too toxic for many voters.
The party has long been associated with notorious racists and xenophobic and anti-Semitic slurs. Her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, once convicted of hate speech for saying the Nazi gas chambers were “a detail of history,” was expelled from the party in 2015. Le Pen convinced the moderate right that she He was not a threat to democracy and conquered areas traditionally close to the extreme left, especially in the Communist Party, promising social welfare policies and strict restrictions on immigrants.
“Many [by voting NR] “They are expressing their opposition to a system that they say is depriving them of what they deserve in favor of people, mostly foreigners, who are receiving benefits that are not theirs,” said Baptiste Roger-Lacan, a historian and political analyst specializing in far-right parties in Europe.
Today, the party’s candidate for prime minister of the country is Jordan Bardella, an impeccably dressed 28-year-old who looks like a cross between the Wolf of Wall Street and Superman’s alter ego Clark Kent. Yet he comes from the suburbs and speaks to his tens of thousands of followers not only on the street but also on TikTok. He has no experience in governing.
On the other hand, the center-left parties have united under the New Popular Front. Their most vocal cause has been their support for the Palestinian cause amid the war in Gaza, a position that has earned the group popularity among young voters and the Muslim community.
In contrast, the NR has strongly supported Israel by condemning “pogroms on Israeli soil” and attacking the leader of the far-left La France Insoumise party, Jean-Luc Melenchon, for not calling Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October “terrorism”, something that has caused friction within the bloc itself.
What would a victory for the far right mean?
The most serious repercussion of an NR victory will occur on the home front. Although the party now says anti-Semitism is a left-wing party problem, it has shifted its attention to immigrants and Muslims. France is home to the largest Muslim community in Europe, with families settled there for several generations.
While Bardella did not specify what “specific legislation” he would push to fight “Islamist ideologies,” he said that in the past the party would work to ban the wearing of the Islamic veil in public spaces and facilitate the closure of mosques.
The RN has also made the adoption of strict border controls, the elimination of birthright citizenship (a practice that for centuries has granted citizenship to those born in France to foreign parents) and the introduction by constitutional referendum of “national preference ”, a system by which someone would be excluded from the benefits of social security rights unless they had a French passport.
“Clearly, the NR is still xenophobic, so any foreigner has something to lose; any foreigner who does not have a European heritage would have to lose something if the NR were elected,” Roger-Lacan said.
And what about foreign policy?
With his sights set on power, Bardella has softened or reversed some of the party's traditional positions. He did a U-turn on Ukraine and said he was committed to continuing to provide military support to kyiv, while rejecting critics' accusations about some party members' ties to the Kremlin.
Still, given Macron's unwavering stance on Ukraine and France's role as a pillar of the European Union, a Bardella-led government less committed to the European project would mark a change.
During a press conference on Monday, Bardella said he opposes sending French troops and weaponry capable of attacking targets on Russian soil.
“It is in a phase where it is trying to reassure non-NR voters and possibly future EU partners, but clearly the fact that the party gains power would add a lot of tension between France and the rest of the EU,” said Roger-Lacan, who is also former deputy editor-in-chief of the Le Grand Continent think tank.
Unlike Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who had transitioned towards more Atlantic, pro-NATO and pro-EU positions years before her electoral victory in 2022, Roger-Lacan explains, the NR conversion “sounds extremely contextual.” ”.
However, observers note that if the far-right wins the election, it may end up refraining from creating too much of a stir as the group is playing the long game. His final goal: take over the presidency in 2027.
