Paris, France – France is preparing to go to the polls again for a second round of voting in the National Assembly.
After his party’s defeat against the far right in the last elections European Parliament During the vote, President Emmanuel Macron dissolved parliament and called for two rounds of voting. early elections.
In the first, the far-right National Rally (RN) party emerged victorious with more than 29% of the vote.
Protests have erupted again across the country, with demonstrators calling on voters to go to the polls on Sunday against the party formerly known as the National Front.
In Paris, protesters marched on Wednesday from Place de la République to the headquarters of the National Rally in the French capital.
“The mood is quite dramatic and intense,” said Philippe Marlière, professor of French and European politics at University College London. “It’s a mood of mobilisation on the part of all those who don’t want the National Rally to get a majority or even win the election.”
Macron’s Renaissance party only won about 20% of the vote in the first round. A coalition of left-wing parties, called the New Popular Front, scored higher with 28%. The coalition aims to unite voters against the nationalist and anti-immigrant RN party, led by Marine Le Pen.
Danielle Barron moved to France from the United States more than 20 years ago, just after Jacques Chirac defeated Jean-Marie Le Pen, Marine’s father, in the second round of the presidential election.
His children were born in France and the family obtained French citizenship four years ago. Barron has been voting in France ever since.
“I immigrated to France six months after the 2002 US election, full of hope and convinced that I was fleeing a broken democracy, rooted in institutionalized racism and rapidly moving toward far-right rule. I never imagined that 22 years later, I would be facing the same fears in my adopted country,” Barron told Al Jazeera.
Even if the results of the first round are not surprising, left-wing voters fear running out of options against the RN.
“Mobilizing the left, forming a coalition and bringing out voters is no longer enough. The far right still won, it’s a bit depressing,” Baptiste Colin, a 29-year-old theater producer from Lyon, told Al Jazeera. “I’m always happy to see that the Popular Front and the parties that have united or the candidates who have resigned are not splitting the vote.”
The turnout in the first round was high: nearly 68%, compared to 47.5% in the 2022 legislative elections. More than 70 candidates who obtained an absolute majority were elected in the first round. The others will find themselves in the second round with the top two or three parties in each constituency.
“Faced with the National Rally, the time has come for a broad, clearly democratic and republican alliance for the second round,” Macron declared in a statement after the results of the first round.
But many of those who support Macron’s Renaissance party are not prepared to back a Popular Front candidate in the second round, even if the president’s party is lagging behind.
“Macron voters could determine the outcome of the election. They have the opportunity to block the RN, but I fear it is too late and Macron voters are not ready to vote for the left. There is still rhetoric equating the left with the far right in terms of extremist policies,” Colin said.
In the second round, the centre could join the existing left coalition to avoid a three-way race that would split the non-RN vote.
“Withdrawals are essential. Without withdrawals, if you have three candidates, voters don’t vote strategically. They tend to stay loyal to their candidate,” Marlière said. “But it’s not about voting for an opponent. It’s about using that vote to defeat the National Rally.”
“When you give power to the extreme right, you never know when they will give it back”
Although the results of the first round do not allow us to predict the final distribution of the 577 seats to be filled in Parliament, the RN seems well on its way to winning a relative majority in the National Assembly. Such a result would bring the far-right party to power for the first time in French history, 80 years after the alliance of the collaborationist Vichy regime with the Nazis during the war.
“We have never been so close to seeing a party come to power that was funded on xenophobia, racism, and linked from its origins to Nazi collaborators. This second round is crucial because it will set the direction of this country for the next two years, and even for the next generation,” Rim-Sarah Alouane, a French researcher in comparative law at Toulouse Capitole University, told Al Jazeera.
“I am not exaggerating when I say that the very foundations of our Republic are very fragile,” she said. “The far right is not a normal party. When you give power to the far right, you never know when it will give it back.”
If the RN wins an absolute majority, Jordan Bardella, Le Pen’s protégé, could become Prime Minister.
With Bardella’s help, the far right has won over a significant proportion of young voters: 25% of 18-24 year-olds voted for the RN in the first round, according to a recent poll, more than double the figure two years ago.
“There’s a buzz around the RN. Bardella is young and on TikTok, and there’s this idea that it’s cool to vote for the RN, whereas before it was considered old-fashioned,” Colin said.
Daniel Szabo, a 48-year-old French-Hungarian professor of English literature and translation in Brittany, explains: “People don’t even vote for the candidate. They vote for Bardella as prime minister, hoping that their vote will give him an absolute majority. But most of the local candidates are not good.”
Locally, Szabo has observed the far right gaining momentum this election cycle.
“Brittany has always been more open and voted less for the RN,” he said. “But for the first time, the RN came first in many constituencies. I think it’s Macron’s fault. He was too arrogant. He’s very intelligent, but he didn’t do a good job.”
In France, it is the prime minister who drives the domestic agenda, meaning Bardella could have plenty of opportunities to translate much of the RN’s hard-line agenda into policy.
“They would be able to pass virtually any type of law,” Marlière said.
Bardella’s proposals include denying prisoners access to public housing, ending free medical care for undocumented immigrants except in emergencies, ending automatic citizenship rights at age 18 for children born in France to non-French parents and cutting France’s contributions to the European Union by 2 billion euros ($2.16 billion).
“The RN makes all the promises that people want to hear with the easy political trick of putting the blame “On immigrants, especially Arab immigrants,” Szabo said.
Ondine Debré, 44, who divides her time between the Loire Valley and Paris, says she is worried about the state of the country if the RN wins a majority close to this.
“Many people in France doubted that the far right would come to power, but we now realize that many people do not feel heard in the current political system. I hope that the left and center parties will also be aware of this. We need coherent humanist and democratic values,” she said. “The RN is a threat to many civil liberties, not only for citizens of multinationals, but for all French people.”
