President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to call a snap legislative election on June 9 has resulted in a fractured National Assembly, with no single bloc securing a governing majority. The move came immediately after exit polls revealed his party’s poor performance in the European Parliament election.
Macron dissolved the National Assembly that evening, setting new elections for three weeks later. The gamble was intended to force voters to consider the consequences of handing the far right control over domestic policy, rather than just European representation. The first round of voting on June 30, however, produced the strongest result ever for Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN). The RN and its allies from Éric Ciotti’s breakaway Republicans secured 33.21 percent of the vote.
The left-wing New Popular Front coalition placed second with 28.14 percent, while Macron’s own Ensemble alliance finished third at 21.28 percent. Turnout reached 66.71 percent, the highest for a first-round legislative election since 1997, indicating a deeply engaged electorate.
Following the first round, 306 constituencies were set for three-way runoff contests, with five more headed to four-way runoffs—a record number. Under France’s two-round system, any candidate exceeding 12.5 percent of registered voters in the first round can advance to the second. This situation put the RN in a position to win many seats even without an outright majority.
In response, other parties coordinated tactical withdrawals between the rounds. A total of 134 candidates from the New Popular Front and 82 from Ensemble stepped aside in specific constituencies where another non-RN candidate had a better chance of winning.
No coalition government or grand alliance was formed; candidates simply withdrew to avoid splitting the anti-RN vote. The second round on July 7 filled all 577 seats of the 17th National Assembly of the Fifth Republic. The coordinated withdrawals prevented the RN from winning an absolute majority, but they did not give Macron a clear path either.
The Assembly emerged fractured, with the far-right party holding more seats than ever before. The high turnout in both rounds reflected a country deeply divided.
The strategic withdrawals demonstrated that other parties feared an RN majority enough to sacrifice their own candidates. Macron called the snap election after his Besoin d’Europe list lost seats in the European Parliament vote, where the RN had made substantial gains. The results leave France without a governing majority and without an obvious way to build one.
Macron’s alliance is weakened, the left is the largest opposition force but not unified, and the RN is the biggest single party in first-round votes but was blocked from translating that into a majority. The 17th National Assembly begins its term in uncertainty, the product of a gamble that did not pay off as planned.
