The presidential movement Ensemble is neck and neck with the left-wing alliance NUPES, with 25.75% and 25.66% of the vote, respectively, as the first round of legislative elections drew to a close on Sunday. It is now not certain that Macron’s party will secure an absolute majority after next Sunday’s second round.
The far-right party Rassemblement National (RN) came third with 18.68%, followed by Les Républicains (LR) with 10.42%.
[Europe Elects]
The campaign had been sluggish for several weeks, marked only very recently by controversy over police violence.
In a televised address on Sunday evening, Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, herself a candidate in the Calvados region, called for a “strong and clear majority” to “respond to the emergencies that weigh on the daily lives of French people”.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the NUPES coalition, argued that “the presidential party was defeated”. He called on voters to vote massively in the second round to block the government’s future actions.
The election is marked by a record-high abstention rate (52.49%), up 2% compared to the 2017 legislative elections and significantly higher than the 2012 42.78% rate – a growing trend suggesting the disillusionment of French people with political institutions.
For Macron’s party, uncertainty now hangs over next week’s voting as, according to IPSOS France, a pollster, Ensemble could secure anywhere between 255 and 295 seats – the absolute majority in the National Assembly is 289 seats.
As for NUPES, it could secure between 150 and 210 seats. It would ultimately make the left-wing coalition the leading opposition force in the National Assembly.
However, Mélenchon’s claim that he will be made prime minister following the second round’s outcome is now almost completely ruled out.
Despite its electoral performance, the NUPES’s final score is lower than the sum of the coalition parties’ results in the presidential election last April (30.61%).
The same goes for Macron’s party, which had secured 27.85% of the vote in the first round of the presidential elections, and 28.21% in the first round of the 2017 legislative elections.
With 18.73% of the vote share, the RN, which came third, is doing better than in 2017 but struggles to get similar results to the 2022 presidential elections, when party leader Marine Le Pen had secured 23.15% of the vote.
Anywhere between 15 and 45 far-right MPs could get elected next week, which would allow them to create a parliamentary group. No far-right party had performed so well since 1986.
With 10.42% of the vote, the right-wing party Les Républicains (LR) shows resilience in the polls, despite their historic 4.8% defeat in the presidential elections. It loses its position as the primary opposition party but confirms the reliability of its local and regional electoral base.
However, conservative MPs could play a decisive role if Macron failed to secure an absolute majority, with the possibility of concluding a coalition agreement with the president’s party.
Source: euractiv.com
