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Marine Le Pen’s right-wing National Rally (RN) party took the lead in the first round of France’s parliamentary elections on Sunday, putting the party closer to the gates of power than ever before.
According to final results published by the Interior Ministry on Monday, after an unusually high turnout, the RN bloc won 33.15% of the vote, while the left-wing New Popular Front (NFP) alliance came second with 27.99% and President Emmanuel Macron’s Ensemble coalition came third with 20.76%.
Although the RN appears poised to win the most seats in the National Assembly, it may fall short of the 289 seats needed for an absolute majority, suggesting France is heading toward a hung parliament and more political uncertainty.
Projections suggest that after a second round of voting next Sunday, the RN will win between 230 and 280 seats in the 577-seat lower house – a staggering increase from the 88 seats it had in the outgoing parliament. The NFP was projected to secure between 125 and 165 seats, while Ensemble trailed with 70 to 100 seats.
According to results published on Monday, a total of 76 candidates were elected to the French parliament in the first round of voting, of whom 39 represented the RN and its allies, 32 were from the NFP, and only two from Macron’s coalition.
Macron called the election after his party was soundly defeated by the RN in European Parliament elections earlier this month. The election could force him to spend the remaining three years of his presidential term in an uneasy partnership with a prime minister from an opposition party.
There were celebrations at the RN election party in the northern town of Henin Beaumont as the result was announced – but Marine Le Pen was quick to stress that next Sunday’s vote would be crucial.
“Democracy has spoken, and the French people have put the National Rally and its allies in first place – and have virtually wiped out the Macronist bloc”, he told the cheering crowd, adding: “Nothing has been won – and the second round will be decisive.”
In a speech at the RN’s headquarters in Paris, the party’s 28-year-old leader, Jordan Bardella, echoed Le Pen’s message.
“The vote next Sunday is one of the most decisive in the entire history of the Fifth Republic,” Bardella said.
In one of his fiery speeches ahead of the first round, Bardella said he would refuse to run a minority government, in which the RN would need the votes of allies to pass legislation. If the RN does not win an absolute majority and Bardella sticks to his word, Macron may have to look for a hard-left prime minister, or go elsewhere to form a technocratic government.
After news of the results emerged Sunday night, far-right protests broke out in Paris and Lyon, with about 5,500 people gathering at the capital’s Place de la République, according to CNN affiliate BFMTV.
Reuters later released a video showing protesters setting off fireworks as they marched in Paris, while BFMTV reported that 200 police had been deployed in Lyon to deal with the protests.
With an unprecedented number of seats going into a three-cornered contest, a week of political bargaining will now continue as centrist and left-wing parties decide whether to back down on individual seats to prevent the nationalist and anti-immigrant RN – long an outcast in French politics – from winning a majority.
When the RN – under its former name, the National Front – has made a strong showing in the first round of voting in the past, left-wing and centrist parties have united to prevent them from coming to power earlier, adopting a principle known as the “cordon sanitaire”.
After Jean-Marie Le Pen — Marine’s father and the National Front’s leader for decades — unexpectedly defeated Socialist candidate Lionel Jospin in the 2002 presidential election, the Socialists threw their support behind center-right candidate Jacques Chirac, giving him a landslide victory in the second round.
In an effort to deny the RN a majority, the NFP – a left-wing coalition that formed earlier this month – promised to withdraw all of its candidates who came third in the first round.
“Our instructions are clear – not a single vote, not a single seat for the National Rally,” Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the NFP’s largest party, France Unbowed, told supporters on Sunday.
“There is a long week ahead, everyone will make their own decisions, which will determine in the long term the future of our country and the destiny of all of us,” Mélenchon said.
Marine Tondelier, leader of the Green Party (a more moderate part of the NFP), personally requested Macron to step down from some seats to deny the RN a majority.
He said, “We’re counting on you: withdraw your name if you come in third in a three-way contest, and tell your supporters to vote for a candidate who supports Republican values if you don’t qualify for the second round.”
Macron’s allies have also called on his supporters to prevent the far-right from coming to power but warned against casting their vote for the extremist Mélenchon.
Macron’s protege and outgoing Prime Minister Gabriel Attal urged voters to prevent the RN from winning a majority, but said Mélenchon’s France Unbowed party was “preventing a credible alternative” to a far-right government.
Former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, another Macron ally, said: “No votes should be cast for the candidates of the National Rally, but also for the candidates of France Unbowed, with whom we have differences on fundamental principles.”
It is unclear whether tactical voting can prevent the RN from winning a majority. In Sunday’s vote, the RN won support in places that were unthinkable until recently. In the Nord department’s 20th constituency, an industrial stronghold, Communist Party leader Fabien Roussel was defeated in the first round by an RN candidate with no prior political experience. The seat had been held by the Communists since 1962.
Macron’s decision to call a snap election – France’s first since 1997 – caught the country and even his closest allies by surprise. Sunday’s vote came three years earlier than necessary and just three weeks after Macron’s Renaissance party was defeated by the RN in European Parliament elections.
Macron has pledged to serve out the remainder of his final presidential term, which runs until 2027, but he now faces the prospect of appointing a prime minister from an opposition party – a rare arrangement known as “cohabitation”.
The French government has no trouble passing laws when the president and the majority in parliament are from the same party. When this is not the case, things can grind to a halt. While the president sets the country’s foreign, Europe, and defense policy, the parliamentary majority is responsible for passing domestic laws such as pensions and taxation.
But these obligations can overlap, leading to a constitutional crisis in France. For example, Bardella has ruled out sending troops to help Ukraine resist Russian aggression — an idea floated by Macron — and said he would not allow Kiev to use French military equipment to attack targets inside Russia. It is unclear whose will will prevail in such disputes, where the line between domestic and foreign policy is blurred.
A far-right government could create both a financial and constitutional crisis. The RN has made huge spending pledges – from rolling back Macron’s pension reforms to cutting taxes on fuel, gas and electricity – at a time when France’s budget could be brutally slashed by Brussels.
France, one of the biggest deficit-ridden countries in the eurozone, may need to begin a period of austerity to avoid falling foul of the European Commission’s new fiscal rules. But, if implemented, RN’s spending plans would send France’s deficit soaring – a prospect that has worried bond markets and prompted warnings of a “Liz Truss-style financial crisis”, a reference to the shortest-serving prime minister in British history.
In a brief statement on Sunday evening, Macron said the high turnout reflected French voters’ “will to clarify their political position” and called on his supporters to remain united for the second round.
“Given the national rally, the time has come for a broad, unambiguous Democratic and Republican rally for a second round,” he said.
Correction: This story has been updated to correct the National Rally Party’s vote share.
