In the first round of elections, France’s right-wing National Rally party scored significant gains on Sunday, which alarmed moderate President Emmanuel Macron and his allies. Based on preliminary estimates, it appears that Marine Le Pen’s National Rally has a strong possibility of becoming the dominant party in the lower house of parliament for the first time. With around one-third of the vote in the first round, they will almost double their 18% share from the last election in 2022.
According to French pollsters, Macron’s coalition of centrist parties would place a surprisingly low third in the first round of voting. According to their forecasts, Macron’s team was behind the National Rally as well as a recently formed left-wing alliance of parties that banded together to prevent Le Pen’s anti-immigration party from perhaps creating the most conservative administration since the Second World War.
The election’s final result is still up in the air, and the crucial vote will take place on Sunday, July 7.
After the National Rally crushed his party in the European Parliament election earlier this month, Macron dissolved the legislature and called for an unexpected poll. It was viewed as a bold but dangerous bet that French voters, smug about the outcome of the European election, would be inspired to support centrist candidates in order to prevent the National Rally from winning.
Many French citizens are dissatisfied with Macron’s leadership because they perceive him as conceited and out of touch, as well as inflation and other economic issues. Using websites such as TikTok, Le Pen’s anti-immigration National Rally party has successfully capitalized on this unhappiness and has emerged victorious in pre-election surveys.
As the nation has become increasingly split between the right- and left-wing blocs, with a very unpopular and weak president at the middle of the political spectrum, voters in Paris were considering concerns ranging from immigration to the growing cost of living.
Le Pen urged people to elect the National Rally with a “absolute majority” in the legislature. A majority for the National Rally, she claimed, would allow the right to build a new government headed by party president Jordan Bardella as prime minister, with the goal of advancing France’s “recovery.”
“France today reaffirmed the drastic shift we are seeing in Europe away from the failed left-wing playbook in favor of a common-sense conservative agenda centered around lower taxes, a crackdown on illegal immigration, and support for freedom of speech,” said Matt Mowers, founding board member of the EU-US Forum and a former State Department official, to Fox News Digital. This comes after historic victories for conservatives in the EU elections a few weeks ago. “Today’s results serve as another major message to bureaucrats in Brussels – Europeans want conservative policies and leaders.”
Three hours before voting closed on Sunday, turnout was an exceptionally high 59%, 20 percentage points more than the same time in the previous first-round election in 2022.
After the last polling places closed, the first polling projections were released. Later on Sunday, early official results were anticipated.
There will be more clarity in the second vote round on Sunday, but concerns about Macron’s ability to share power with a prime minister who opposes the majority of his programs will persist.
Macron is poised to choose Jordan Bardella, the party’s 28-year-old president, as prime minister in the event of a National Rally victory, under the awkward power-sharing arrangement known as “cohabitation.” Cohabitation would make Macron less powerful domestically and internationally, even if he has stated he won’t resign before his time as president ends in 2027.
The first round’s results will paint a vivid image of voter opinion, but they may not reflect the composition of the new National Assembly as a whole. Because of the intricate voting process and the fact that parties will collaborate in between rounds to form alliances in certain areas or withdraw from others, predictions are challenging.
Without any prior experience leading, Bardella declared he would use his prime ministerial authority to prevent Macron from continuing to arm Ukraine with long-range weapons for the conflict with Russia.
