Uncertainty in France about governability marks the final stretch of a hasty campaign

The vertigo is accentuated in the face of the most crucial and hasty elections in recent French history. One week before the first round of the legislative elections, there is total uncertainty about the future governability of France. The extreme right is at the doors of power, but it is not clear that it can open them wide. According to the polls, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) will be left without the absolute majority in seats that she demands to give a definitive turn to the country, and for many, a dangerous one. But it will be located very close to it.

The tension over the possibility of an extreme right-wing government is palpable in the two blocks that seek to avoid it, but that, at the same time, refuse to ally with each other in Parliament: the left-wing alliance New Popular Front (NFP) and Ensemble (Together), the conglomerate of parties around the president, Emmanuel Macron, who called the elections after losing to the RN in the European elections, and which polls place in third place.

The NFP, in second place in terms of voting intentions, but far from the majority that would allow it to govern, is striving to clear up the doubts of the most moderate electorate. Above all, he rejects the predominant position of the radical left of France Insoumise (LFI) and its controversial leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

The head of the unsubmissive He emerged over the weekend from the relative silence he maintained during the first days of the campaign to once again make his ambitions clear, including that of being prime minister in the event of a victory for the left. The response has been overwhelming. “If you want to be useful to the New Popular Front, you should step aside and keep quiet,” former socialist president François Hollande replied this Sunday. Hollande’s support for the NFP, including his candidacy for a seat, is considered one of the guarantees that the left-wing electoral alliance will not allow itself to be dragged down by the unsubmissive by Melenchon. “The idea of ​​nominating Mélenchon as prime minister (…) has never been agreed upon among the forces of the Popular Front,” said the secretary of the Communist Party, Fabien Roussel.

On Ensemble’s side, criticism of Macron’s decision to call early elections does not cease among his closest former allies. He reveals the bitterness of a party relegated to third position in the future National Assembly. After the former Macronist Prime Minister Édouard Philippe accused the president of having “killed the presidential majority”, the current holder of the position, Gabriel Attal, has recognized that things will have to be done “better” in the future if they manage to regain power , something increasingly less likely.

The polls published this Sunday agree on one thing: the RN, which thanks to Le Pen has made constant progress in recent years, continues to lead the voting intentions of the French. The survey carried out by the Elabe institute for Sunday The Tribune du Dimanche and the BFMTV channel places the RN even on the verge of an absolute majority of seats. The voting intention of the first round (the second will be on July 7) for the lepenists It would be up to 36% if the votes of a part of the conservative party Los Republicanos are added, which has been dragged to join the extreme right by its nominal president, Éric Ciotti. An alliance that would give them, according to Elabe’s projections, between 250 and 280 deputies.

The absolute majority in the National Assembly, of a total of 577 seats, is 289 deputies. The Sunday newspaper speaks of, “at least, a solid relative majority” for RN, whose candidate for prime minister, Jordan Bardella, has insisted all week, however, that he will only form a government if he has an absolute majority.

Although with a somewhat lower strength, the predominance of RN is clear in all surveys. That of Ifop-Fiducial for the newspaper The Figaro and the LCI and Sud Radio channels give the “union of the right”, that is, RN and Ciotti, 35% of the voting intention, which would translate, according to the first projections, between 200 and 240 deputies. That of Ipsos for Le Parisian and Radio France, which does not estimate seats because it considers it premature, gives the extreme right a total voting intention of 35.5% (31.5% RN and 4% the allied Republicans).

The left-wing alliance New Popular Front is, according to Elabe, in second place, with 27% of voting intention and between 150 and 170 seats, which other polls, which give the left around 29% of the votes, increase up to between 180 and 210. In third place is the Macronist Ensemble, with an average of 20% of the vote that would leave them between 80 and 110 deputies, far from the 250 they had in the recently dissolved National Assembly.

There is another coincident forecast in the polls: the probable high participation in the elections, around 62%, well above the 47.5% in 2022. It would be almost the 64% that was achieved in other crucial elections, the legislative elections of 2002. , held shortly after the shock of the arrival of the then leader of the extreme right, Jean-Marie Le Pen, to the second round of that year’s presidential elections. It was the first time that the then National Front, now converted into RN by the hand of his daughter Marine, went so far.

The fear of an arrival of the extreme right, 22 years later, is clearly less, although it continues to distress part of the population. Up to 170 diplomats sign this Sunday in Le Monde a platform in which they warn of the danger of a RN government, historically very close to Russia, at a time when Europe has a war caused by Moscow at its doors.

“We cannot allow a victory of the extreme right to weaken France and Europe at a time when the war is here,” warn the diplomats who, because they are still on duty, write on condition of anonymity. “Our adversaries will read in a victory of the extreme right a French weakening and an invitation: to interference in our national politics, to aggressiveness against Europe and, militarily, to the economic vassalage of France and the continent,”

Those who do sign with their first and last name in the same newspaper are the 800 scientists and researchers who also warn against allowing themselves to be “invaded by obscurantism.” Without expressly citing the extreme right, their position is clear when they warn that the “guarantee of a responsible, mature and lasting democracy” are principles such as “openness to the world and the free movement of individuals.” They also ask to “strengthen and not endanger” the European Union, warn of the “immense danger” posed by “climate denialism” and make it clear that “xenophobia, racism, anti-Semitism or the exclusion of someone due to their membership in a group” are red lines.

The rejection of the extreme right has brought many citizens to the streets throughout France this Sunday, summoned by feminist organizations and unions that denounce the “façade feminism” of the RN and the “real danger” that its coming to power would pose for the Women rights.

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