France has said no to the far right. The cordon sanitaire put in place by the left and the centre of President Emmanuel Macron has allowed the National Rally (RN) of Marine Le Pen to be soundly defeated in early general elections on Sunday, in which the surprise winner is the left-wing New Popular Front (NFP).
According to the Ifop institute’s estimates at the close of the polls, the NFP has won between 180 and 215 seats in the new National Assembly. In second place are the Macronists of Ensemble (Together), with a range of between 150 and 180 seats. And third is Le Pen’s RN, which after being the party with the most votes in the first round a week ago was the favourite, and is left with between 120 and 152 seats.
The result is a surprise. After the RN’s landslide victory in the European elections on 9 June, which led Macron to dissolve the Assembly and call early elections, and after the first round, some projections placed Le Pen’s party close to an absolute majority.
The Ifop data coincide with that of other polling institutes. The final data will be adjusted throughout the night and as the counting progresses. But the estimates at the close of the polls almost always coincide, with adjustments and variations, with the final results, to the point that the leaders and parties react based on these figures.
The numbers do not give an absolute majority for any bloc. But they would allow for the construction of a grand coalition between the left and Macronism with a sufficient number of deputies to form a stable and lasting government. The search for a consensus prime minister, possibly from the moderate left and with the ability to bring together centrists and the moderate right, will begin tonight.
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It will not be easy. The culture of coalition is not very well established in the presidentialist France of the Fifth Republic. The left and Macronism are far apart on economic policy. And there are also divisions between the radical left of Jean-Luc Mélenchon and the social democracy that is reborn in these elections.
But there are possible points of agreement between the more moderate left – socialists, environmentalists, even some communists – and Macronism. And voters have given a clear message: after two years of paralysis and polarisation in the National Assembly and on the streets, and a president who since his re-election two years ago had governed on the right, they wanted a government with more progressive policies.
Mobilization
The result, according to these projections, is far from what was expected. The prospect of a government in the hands of the extreme right set off alarm bells. The parties of the centre and the left mobilised. They withdrew their candidates from the second round in the districts where there were three finalists in order to concentrate the vote on the candidate with the best chance of defeating the RN. It worked.
Voters on the left and centre, and some on the moderate right as well, largely followed the lead and voted for candidates who were perhaps not to their liking, but who would help to rein in the far right. And so the so-called Republican Front, the French form of the cordon sanitaire, was activated again, as it had done in the presidential elections of 2017 and 2022 to give Macron victory over Le Pen.
Millions of French people saw these days as a possibility that Jordan Bardella, Le Pen’s successor, would become prime minister. They feared that a party like the RN, founded by xenophobes and anti-Semites, would take over France – a country that prides itself on being the homeland of human rights and the Enlightenment. This party has evolved over time, but it still has at its core an anti-immigration programme and distinguishes between categories of French people. And these French people said no, and contradicted the predictions and predictions.
The NFP left is the winner, although it is far from an absolute majority. The Macronists of Ensemble are holding their own. And the RN, although far from its expectations, has added dozens of deputies compared to the 88 it had since 2022 and the 8 it won in 2017. Objectively, and if we ignore the forecasts of recent weeks, it is a success, and it indicates that the far right is here to stay.
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