“The tide is rising,” Marine Le Pen told supporters after France’s final round of voting on Sunday. “It didn’t rise high enough this time, but it’s still rising. And as a result, our victory, in reality, is only delayed.”
Her National Rally had been the favorite. Projections a week earlier suggested it might even take an outright majority. Instead the party finished third, with around 142 seats. That is still a record for the party, and at least 53 more than it won in 2022.
A left-wing surge nobody forecast
First place went to the New Popular Front (NFP), a left-wing alliance, with around 178 seats. At least 47 of those are gains over its 2022 result. Within the bloc, Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s France Unbowed won the most seats. Some experts are calling it the French left’s most surprising win since François Mitterrand took the presidency in 1981.
President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist Ensemble coalition came second with around 150 seats, about 95 fewer than last time. An Ifop poll published the month before put Macron’s own approval rating at 26 percent, after he called the snap vote on June 9. He stays in office until 2027.
Turnout was the other story. It was the highest since 1981, and Foreign Policy reported that this surge of voters is what lifted the left past the far right.
Why the far right fell short
Left-wing and centrist parties had cooperated in the tight three-way races. Together they pulled more than 200 candidates out of those contests, hoping to keep votes from splitting and to hurt the far right. Some experts believe the National Rally would have come first without that arrangement.
No majority, no obvious government
No party or bloc reached an absolute majority. The result is a hung parliament, and none of the three main blocs has a clear route to forming a government. Modern France has not seen that before.
To pass laws, the centrists and the left will probably have to work together. That is not how French politics usually runs. The country has little history of rival camps building coalition governments, and some of Macron’s allies have ruled out working with parts of the left alliance.
Mélenchon himself is a complication. Many in Ensemble dislike him for his far-left positions, and so do some people inside his own bloc. He wants to undo many of Macron’s reforms, fund a public spending program partly through tax increases, and take a harder line on Israel over the war in Gaza.
On Sunday Mélenchon urged Macron to name a new prime minister from the NFP, saying the president has a “duty” to do so. Without an absolute majority, though, the alliance has no practical way to force that choice. Macron is holding off. On Monday he turned down Prime Minister Gabriel Attal’s offer to resign, saying he wanted to “ensure the stability of the country.”
Socialist Party leader Olivier Faure said what the next few days of talks need to produce. “We need someone who offers consensus,” he said. Whether anyone like that exists, the negotiations expected this week will show.
Sources
- French Parliament Risks Gridlock After a Surprising Left-Wing Victory
- French election: Surprise left-wing victory creates political uncertainty
