Reality has just hit the French government and elites in the face. Furious at those running France for so many years, the French population sent a clear message to those elites: “Le Pen’s party is the only party we haven’t tried yet; We’ll try it this time!”
Just to make sure the message would be understood, the voter turnout was massive compared to previous years: 66.7% of the registered voters cast ballots yesterday, nearly 20% more than the 47.5% in previous legislative elections in 2022. Le Pen’s National Assembly party (RN) and its ally in the right wing, Eric Ciotti, got a whopping 33.1% of the vote and its candidates came in first in 297 races. The second round on July 7 will decide how many of those will be actually elected.
Nobody knows at this point how the seats in parliament will be divided. The added difficulty is that in a significant number of those elections, the second round will be fought by three and sometimes four candidates, since parties that won more than 10% of the vote can participate in the second round. The United Left and some right-wing candidates who can maintain themselves made a deal yesterday against the RN, in which the third party will pull out of the election in order to let the “left” or “right” wing candidate who came in second win against the RN. That means, while in principle, the RN could have a full majority at the National Assembly, i.e., 289 deputies, this scheme will reduce their results to a plurality, in which case, the RN’s Jordan Bardella has announced that he would not agree to be Prime Minister in a coalition government with Emmanuel Macron, opening up a new crisis for Macron.
