By Paul Kirby, BBC News, Paris
AFPFrance votes on Sunday in parliamentary elections that could make history, with the far right closer to power than it has ever been in modern times.
The National Rally (RN) of Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella is well ahead in the polls, three weeks to the day after their victory in the European elections and the reaction of President Emmanuel Macron by calling for a national referendum.
More than 2.6 million people of France’s 49 million voters registered to vote by proxy, an indication of the high turnout expected for such a crucial election.
It is a two-round election, and most of the 577 seats in the National Assembly will not be awarded until the second round next Sunday.
The campaign lasted only 20 days, which also benefited the RN, which quickly refined its existing promises on immigration, insecurity as well as tax cuts to combat the cost of living crisis .
Jordan Bardella wants to become the first Prime Minister of the RN, and his party is confident of winning dozens of constituencies in the first round.
But he says he will only accept the post if the party obtains an absolute parliamentary majority of 289 seats. The alternative would be a Parliament without a majority and a deadlock.
As soon as the first results are known on Sunday evening, opponents of the National Rally will have to decide who to support in the second round across France, to ensure that an absolute majority does not obtain.
THOMAS SAMSON/PISCINE/AFP If the polls are right, many runoffs will pit the National Rally against a hastily assembled left-wing alliance called the New Popular Front, which believes it could even win the election.
In previous elections, parties of all stripes united to keep the far right out and voters held their noses to do so.
But RN leaders have worked hard for years to shed their extremist image. Alongside policies to give French citizens “national preference” for employment and housing, they want to reduce VAT on energy and allow those under 30 to escape income tax.
In Franconville, north of Paris, a teacher, Agnès, complains about the deterioration of discipline in French schools and appreciates Jordan Bardella’s project to “shake authority” in education. “I will vote either to the right or to the extreme right. I love Bardella’s charisma,” she says.
She also has no problem with RN’s plans to abolish birthrightthe automatic right to French nationality for children born to foreign parents if these children have spent five years in France – from the age of 11 until the age of 18, when they have the right to apply for French nationality.
President Macron’s Ensemble alliance is widely expected to hemorrhage seats, and Gabriel Attal’s days as prime minister appear numbered, even though polls suggest he remains France’s most popular politician.
“The Macron era is over,” François Hollande declared before the vote.
Mr Hollande, the former French president who was Mr Macron’s patron and mentor, is running again in the legislative elections, this time as the candidate of the New Popular Front.
However, even Macron’s allies are unhappy with his early election gamble.
France was not due for another election for three years, and it had far better ways to spend the summer than running an abbreviated and intense election campaign.
The national football team faces Belgium in the round of 16 of Euro 2024 on Monday, and all of France is preparing for the Paris Olympic Games which begin on July 26.
Metro stations such as Concorde have been closed and restrictions are in place near all Games venues.
The police and army were already overwhelmed and the interior minister warned of possible violence after the second round.
Mr. Macron is due to meet his Prime Minister and other members of the government on Monday to decide on the next steps.
So far, their mantra has been ” neither nor ” – support neither the RN nor the New Left Popular Front, due to the involvement of France Insoumise (LFI), condemned by its opponents as being far left and some members of which have been accused of anti-Semitism.
President Macron said only his Ensemble alliance had the power to block both the “extreme right and the extreme left.” According to him, the far right classifies people according to their religion or their origin, while the left judges them according to the community to which they belong.
Last week, on a hot evening in Meaux, east of Paris, one of the LFI’s most senior figures, Mathilde Panot, told her supporters that they were “the only center of resistance” remaining to the rise of the far right, accusing the Macron alliance of opening the doors of power to the RN.
“We are not extreme, what is extreme is Mr Macron’s extreme liberalism which has caused the rise of the far right,” she told the BBC.
The New Popular Front also includes more moderate parties, including the Socialists and the Greens, whose leader Marine Tondelier has called for a unified position to prevent Mr Bardella from becoming prime minister.
Some of France’s best-known young stars have urged voters to avoid extremes, from NBA sensation Victor Wembanyama to soccer captain Kylian Mbappé to YouTube influencer Squeezie.
But the divisions between the parties are deep and the time extremely short for concerted action aimed at keeping the RN at bay.
“I worry about our country,” said Aurélie, in front of a market in Plessis Bouchard, north of Paris. She is not impressed by the nationalist politics of the RN. “Patriotism is not nationalism, it is not the same thing. »
