France’s far-right National Rally (RN) party has won a landslide victory in the first round of the country’s snap parliamentary elections.
According to official results released by the Interior Ministry, Marine Le Pen’s RN and allies won nearly 33 percent of the vote. The left-wing New Popular Front (NFP) coalition came in second with about 28 percent of the vote, and President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist Ensemble coalition got about 20 percent.
The results put the RN in a position where it can hope to form a government. However, the rest of the political parties have indicated they will cooperate to stop the far-right party in a second round of voting on July 7.
Macron surprised the country by calling a snap election after the RN surged ahead in European Parliament elections last month, believing the anti-immigration party with historical ties to anti-Semitism would be unable to replicate that success at the national level.
Supporters in party leader Le Pen’s Henin-Beaumont constituency in northern France waved French flags and sang the national anthem La Marseillaise.
“France has shown its willingness to turn the page on a despised and destructive power,” he told the cheering crowd.
RN president Jordan Bardella, a Le Pen disciple and prime ministerial candidate, said the second round would be “the most important in the history of the French Fifth Republic”.
He said Macron’s party had been wiped out and accused the far-left of creating an “existential crisis” that posed a “real danger to France and all the French people”.
In Sunday’s vote, 78 of the 577 seats in the National Assembly were won by candidates who received more than 50 percent of the vote in their district, according to an analysis of interior ministry data by the French newspaper Libération. Of these, 38 candidates were from the National Rally, including Le Pen herself.
Earlier, based on an exit poll, pollster Elabe projected that the RN and its allies would win 260–310 parliamentary seats in the second voting round on 7 July, while Ipsos in a poll for France TV projected 230–280 seats for the RN and its allies.
Le Pen and Bardella have said their party is seeking an absolute majority – a total of 289 seats – in the National Assembly, the lower house of France’s parliament.
Macron calls for ‘broad democratic coalition’
The RN’s chances of winning power and forming a government depend on the political bargaining its rivals do in the coming days. In the past, center-right and center-left parties have worked together to keep the far-right from power.
Macron called for a “broad” democratic alliance against the far right.
“Facing a national rally, the time has come to build a broad, clearly democratic and republican coalition for a second round,” he said in a statement.
He said the heavy voter turnout in the first phase reflects “the importance of this vote for all our countrymen and the desire to clarify the political situation”.
Prime Minister Gabriel Attal warned that the far-right was “at the gates of power”, and that “no vote should go to the National Rally”.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who leads the left-wing New Popular Front, said he would withdraw candidates who placed third in the first round of the parliamentary elections, to ensure a two-horse race to defeat the largest number of right-wing RN candidates in the upcoming election.
When no candidate reaches 50 percent in the first round, the top two contenders automatically qualify for the second round, as well as all candidates who have 12.5 percent of registered voters. In the run-off, the one who wins the most votes wins the constituency.
“In line with our principles and our stance in all previous elections, we will never allow the National Rally to win,” Mélenchon said.
Laurent Berger, former general secretary of the French Democratic Confederation of Labour and current president of the European Trade Union Confederation, urged a “blockade” in a post on X.
“This evening, our democracy and our republican values are at stake before a national rally on the threshold of power,” Berger said.
“Facing the threat… it is essential to stop the extreme right.”
High voter turnout
The election saw a voter turnout of around 68 per cent, the highest since 1997.
For years the RN was a political outcast in France, but after taking control from her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, Le Pen attempted to rebrand the party and has now brought it closer to power than ever before.
According to Rim-Sarah Aloune, an academic at Toulouse Capitol University, Le Pen has “undergone plastic surgery on her party”.
“But is it still the same rotten, xenophobic, anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim, anti-minority party… we know what the far right stands for,” Aloune told Al Jazeera.
He said the vote was also a rejection of Macron’s policies, with the president seen as “arrogant” and a flatterer of the wealthy.
“I personally know cases of people who voted for the far right because of the policies Macron made, especially on the economic level,” Aloune said.
The results led to protests in the streets of Paris, Lyon, Nantes and other major cities.
A few thousand anti-RN protesters gathered at a rally of the left-wing coalition at Place de la République in Paris on Sunday night.
Teacher Najia Khaldi, 33, said she felt “disgusted, sad and horrified” by the RN’s positive results.
“I am not used to performing. I think I came here to reassure myself that I don’t feel alone,” she said.
Critics fear that if the RN manages to secure an absolute majority in the second round, it would lead to a tense period of “coexistence” with Macron – a situation where the president is from a different party than the one with the majority of MPs – who has pledged to complete his term until 2027.
An alternative outcome could be protracted negotiations to form a stable government.
Risk analysis firm Eurasia Group said the RN was now “likely” to fall short of an absolute majority. It said France faced “at least 12 months of a viciously blocked National Assembly and – in the best case – a technocratic government of ‘national unity’ with limited governing capacity”.
