On Sunday, France voted in the first round of its National Assembly elections, which were called by President Emmanuel Macron earlier this month, three years before they were scheduled. The result was that the far-right National Rally—the party of the former Presidential candidate Marine Le Pen—scored approximately thirty-four per cent of the vote, followed by an alliance of left parties, with around twenty-eight per cent of the vote, and Macron’s centrist coalition in third place, with twenty-one per cent of the vote. The specific seat-by-seat results are not yet known, but the far right appears to be on the verge of either a legislative majority—which would mean that the National Rally would likely get to choose the next Prime Minister—or a hung Parliament, with the far right in control of the most seats. (The second and final round of the election, consisting of runoffs in individual constituencies, will take place on July 7th.)
Macron’s shocking decision to call the vote—the first snap elections since 1997—came immediately after the far right exceeded expectations in European Parliamentary elections, and was intended to blunt the far right’s rise, which Macron has deemed a threat to the future of France. Macron insisted the French come out to vote, and indeed they did—turnout was almost one and a half times as high as during the last National Assembly election—but the results merely showed the far right’s strength. (The next Presidential election is scheduled for 2027; Macron will not be able to run again.)
To discuss the results, I spoke by phone with Cécile Alduy, a professor of French studies at Stanford and a specialist on the French far right. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed why Macron took such a huge gamble, how the relationship of the French people to the far right has changed in the past decade, and whether the center and left can unite on July 7th and in the future.
What is your main takeaway from the first-round results?
Macron made this huge gamble that a snap election could restore a majority for his coalition, and that the opposition would not have time to prepare and rally their own troops, and he has lost his gamble. But actually the unequivocal lesson is that Macron’s alliance has taken a huge hit. They could lose almost two hundred seats. This is huge, and the only reason that there was this election is that Macron decided to have it.
And then there is the fact that the turnout was tremendous, which means that the results that we get in percentage points correlate to extremely high numbers of people voting. And so the thirty-four per cent for the National Rally, which is in and of itself unprecedented, corresponds to about twelve million individuals going to cast a National Rally ballot. That’s a huge mobilization, and almost as much as Marine Le Pen got in the final round of the Presidential election in 2022. That’s staggering.
Macron had essentially said when he called the snap election that this was a hinge moment for the future of the French Republic and that people needed to show up. And so I think there was some hope that, if turnout was this high, it would mean that voters had come out to reject the far right.
That’s exactly what I’m trying to say. The expectation was that turnout would be much higher than in 2022, the last time we also had elections for the National Assembly, and people thought this would mean that people were mobilizing against the far right. But actually what happened is everyone mobilized their troops. So the far right managed to gather even more momentum than three weeks ago during the European Parliamentary elections, and gain in numbers of votes, in percentage points, and in millions of people going to cast a ballot for them.
For a long time, political scientists and commentators were of the opinion that a large part of the reason people voted for the far right was to express their protest against the establishment. It was a quiet anger and frustration. So it was a choice by default. But you can’t say that anymore. Many people believe in what the National Rally is proposing, and they’re gathering toward it. It is in favor of a specific agenda. So I think it’s mind-blowing in terms of not just the results but what it means in the change in the French population, in what they view as desirable for the future of France, honestly.
I can imagine American readers saying that thirty-four per cent doesn’t seem like that much. Donald Trump won forty-seven per cent of the vote in 2020. But it does seem, at least from my limited knowledge of France, that, given the multiparty nature of the system, parties will often advance to the second round in Presidential elections with votes in the twenties. So thirty-four per cent is incredible.
Tremendous. Yeah, even very established governing parties like the French Republican Party, or the Socialist Party, fifteen years ago, if they got thirty per cent in the first round, they would have be so happy.
These are the center-right and center-left parties, respectively—the sort of traditional center-right and center-left parties, which have really fallen since then.
Yes. And that was a huge victory, because we are in a two-round system. It’s not a bipolar model, as in the U.S. You have a number of candidates. That means that the votes are dispersed around in the first round. In the second round, you could still have two or three or sometimes even four candidates, but this is where you’re going to win that seat. And to come to the second round with so much momentum is mind-blowing.
So why did Macron do this?
There are the official reasons, and there are the electoral reasons, and then there are the psychological reasons. I think the official reason was, O.K., the European elections showed a strong rejection of the President’s coalition, which landed at fourteen per cent, which is abysmal. And there was this risk that the current government would not be able to pass new laws, because they don’t have an absolute majority in congress. And so they had to force through retirement reform, and immigration reform. And it was becoming really difficult to pass legislation and therefore have any concrete action in government. So he wanted to reshuffle everything and have voters face their responsibilities of deciding what direction they wanted the country to go toward.
The electoral reason was that the snap election was so quickly organized—it’s the shortest campaign in France since 1958. Three weeks to organize administratively, officially, make alliances, find candidates, etc. And the calculus was that the majority parties were already very organized and united. The left was in shambles and divided. And the National Rally is not very organized and would not be able to make any alliance because they had been ostracized for so long. But the left organized in four days and created this new coalition. And the National Rally managed to find allies in the ranks of the Republican Party. And that changed the entire outcome.
And the third reason for the snap election, and it’s not me psychologizing Macron, but reports from how the decision was made and from insiders, is that he has always wanted to present himself as the savior against the risk of Marine Le Pen in the Presidential election, the savior when COVID-19 hit France—and he decided there was a war against COVID—the savior of the political system in 2017, and a disruptor.
And so this attitude of being the person that can change history, disrupt history, and save it from itself has been his own personal narrative, his own storytelling. And he started to feel he did not have any more room to maneuver, to act, to be the proactive President who writes history because of this kind of relative majority he had. And he wanted to reshuffle the thing and create something historical. I think the result is not exactly what he had in mind, but there is a psychological element of someone who is imbued by a sense of his own might and power to change history. And he did not consult with many people. This was a very solitary decision. So there is the psychological element of a personality who’s very narcissistic, in the way he exerts power with very little counsel from others, very little desire to consult different branches of government, for instance, like the leader of the Senate, as he was supposed to do, according to the constitution.
Let me just play devil’s advocate for a second. In the European Parliamentary elections, the far right got thirty-one per cent of the vote, and they moved up to thirty-four per cent here. And in the New York Times, a Macron ally floated the idea that one of the reasons Macron called the election now is the sense that the far right was actually rising and they would rise further after Macron announced more economic measures that were unpopular. And so even if this is going to look really bad, it was actually better to do this sooner rather than later.
Yeah, that’s really very shallow reasoning. The next election was supposed to be in 2027, after the Presidential election when Macron has to step down. I think Macron was already predicting that Marine Le Pen would win in 2027, and in this case she would have the elections for the National Assembly just afterward and run with an absolute majority. But this is really calling defeat three years in advance. In 2027, people would be aware that there are elections. So the right and the left, the traditional right and left, would have more of a chance to organize to try to put forward a new candidate, since Macron cannot be a candidate.
He is also ignoring the possibility of changing politics. If you think the policies you’re establishing are unpopular and are making the National Rally rise, maybe that’s a sign that you need to change course and start to listen to the discontent in the streets. If your analysis is that the policies that you are putting forward are making the National Rally stronger, and your only option is to decide, Well, let’s have a vote now so that it doesn’t even become stronger because of what I’m doing, this is like conceding defeat and giving power to the National Rally instead of doing what you’ve been elected to do, which is to prevent the National Rally rising.
Mélenchon, the leader of the far left, said after the vote that there would be total deference to second-place candidates, even if they were not of the left, so there would be one candidate running against the far right in these districts. How optimistic are you that in the next week the left and center can form a united front?
After the vote, there was also a very clear declaration by Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, who is the head of the current centrist majority, that said, in any district where there’s a possibility that the far right candidate could win, if the centrists come third in that district, they would not run in the second round, in the service of this Republican front, to make sure that there is a choice only between two candidates and there’s a chance for the alternative from the left to win. That was very clear. And also not entirely expected, because, during the first-round campaign, the centrist alliance was dragging its feet when asked whether they would call on people to vote against the National Rally in the second round, if they’re not placed in a position to win. The left had already decided to form a Republican front against the National Rally and the government, and so the centrist majority has decided exactly the same tonight. So there’s a good chance that, in the end, the National Rally won’t have as many candidates as the figures of the first round would lead us to expect. But that’s still going to be marginal in terms of what happened. The figures are incredible.
With respect to the Republicans, the center-right party, there had been some tension within their ranks about whether they would be willing to form an alliance with the far right. Where are they today, and do their voters matter for the final round?
The French Republican Party has effectively split because of this election. The head of the Party had decided to do the alliance with the National Rally and has been ousted from the Party. However, the base and the voters, depending where you were in France, had already been almost interchangeable, had already thought that the National Rally and the Republicans were interchangeable. So there’s a huge porosity of the electorate already. So the fact that the heads of the Party are in a conflict right now about what direction to go doesn’t mean much in terms of voters, because locally voters have already started to vote either National Rally or Republicans depending on the elections and the candidates in front of them.
It seems like what you’re saying is that there may be a short-term alliance in this election for the left and the far left, and the center is represented by Macron and even, maybe, parts of the center right, to oppose the National Rally. But, to bring up your earlier point, is anyone thinking broadly about what politics should be developed over the next few years to present an alternative?
Right. So it’s basically, there’s a dam, it’s leaking, and we’re just patching it and it’s an emergency coalition, with people saying, “O.K., I’m not going to run against you if I’m diminishing your chances of making sure the National Rally is not elected.” So it’s not an alliance. It’s just a purely electoral rationale to make sure there’s as few National Rally representatives as possible. I think the most important thing to understand is that everyone who didn’t vote for the National Rally tonight is appalled, afraid, angry, in tears, and there is this huge sense of urgency, and the sense of a historical turning point that could lead to the worst. The platform of the National Rally would undermine French democracy as we know it, and even the Constitutional Council, the equivalent of the Supreme Court, has already said the main measure in their platform is anti-constitutional.
Which measure is this?
It’s a “national preference” that would attribute jobs, lodging, welfare, a number of different state-funded fellowships to French nationals, and at the same time reduce who can become French to only people who have so-called French blood in their veins. So a racial definition of citizenship. It’s really a historical turning point.
It seems like what Macron fundamentally did was destroy the center right and center left and deliver France into an era when there is no stability at all in terms of party politics.
Exactly.
But, at the same time, he hasn’t been able to govern in a way that’s brought his own centrist movement enough support, and so there’s just no—
Absolutely. So his agenda in 2017 was to create a central movement that would be quote-unquote “both right and left.” And the objective was to undermine the traditional left parties and the traditional right parties to create a huge center that would govern in a more pragmatic, friendly way and avoid division. What this has created is what he had planned, which is, it has completely sabotaged the traditional right and left, and they have almost disappeared, as if the Republican Party and the Democratic Party in the U.S. disappeared tomorrow. And instead it has fuelled the National Rally, because of a politics that has been business-friendly but also not very friendly to the employed or to rural areas. It has undermined public services. So it has created a huge resentment among a widening segment of the population. And since the other parties are now in trouble, the only place to turn to if you’re not Macron or in favor of his politics is the National Rally.
So he has created this void around himself, but when he was strong that was O.K. in a way, because people were flocking to his ranks. But now that there’s so much dissatisfaction, the left is gone, the right is gone, and he is starting to fall apart as well. And so voters are going to the National Rally. He has continuously presented the situation as himself or Le Pen, and therefore, when people are against him, they look to Le Pen. ♦