The National Rally party won a landslide victory in the first round of voting for France’s National Assembly, according to early projections, bringing its long-taboo nationalist and anti-immigrant policies to the threshold of power for the first time.
Poll projections, which are normally reliable and based on preliminary results, suggest the party would win around 34 percent of the vote, far ahead of the centrist Renaissance party of President Emmanuel Macron and its allies, which won around 21 percent.
The results of a two-round election that will culminate in a runoff on July 7 between the leading parties in each constituency do not provide a reliable projection of the number of parliamentary seats each party will obtain. But the National Rally now appears very likely to be the most important force in the lower house, even if it does not necessarily have an absolute majority.
A coalition of left-wing parties, called the New Popular Front and ranging from moderate socialists to the far-left France Insoumise party, won about 29 percent of the vote, according to projections. The turnout rate was very high, reflecting the importance given by voters to early elections, at more than 65 percent, compared to 47.51 percent in the first round of the last legislative elections in 2022.
For Mr Macron, now in his seventh year as president, the result represents a serious setback after betting that his party’s crushing defeat to the National Rally in recent European Parliament elections would not be repeated.
In a statement released immediately after the projections were published, Mr Macron said that “in the face of the National Rally, the time has come for a broad, clearly democratic and republican alliance for the second round.”
It remains to be seen whether this was still possible at a time when the National Rally is clearly on the rise.
Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Rally, said France had voted “unambiguously, turning the page on seven years of corrosive power”. She urged her supporters to ensure that her protégé, Jordan Bardella, 28, becomes the next prime minister.
Mr Macron’s decision to hold the election now, just weeks before the Paris Olympics, surprised many in France, including his own prime minister, who was kept in the dark. The move reflects a top-down style of government that has left the president more isolated.
There was no obligation to plunge France into summer turmoil with a rushed vote, but Mr Macron was convinced it was his democratic duty to test French sentiment in a national vote.
He was also convinced that a dissolution of the National Assembly and elections would have become inevitable by October, as his proposed deficit-reduction budget risked encountering insurmountable opposition.
“It was better to hold the elections now,” said a source close to Mr. Macron, who spoke on condition of anonymity in keeping with French political protocol. “By October, an absolute majority for the National Rally was inevitable, according to our polls.”
Of course, the National Rally could end up with an absolute majority of 289 seats in the 577-seat parliament in the second round of voting in a week. Mr Macron, whose party and its allies hold about 250 seats since the last parliamentary vote in 2022, has been frustrated in his attempts to implement his programme because of his lack of an absolute majority and his inability to form stable coalitions.
In the run-up to the election, Mr Macron has tried every threatening spectre, including a potential “civil war”, to warn people not to vote for what he has called “the extremes” – the National Rally with its vision of immigrants as a second-class party and the far-left France Insoumise with its anti-Semitic excesses.
He said pensioners would be left penniless. He said the National Rally represented “the abandonment of everything that makes our country attractive and attracts investors”. He said the left would tax the vitality of the French economy and close the nuclear power plants that provide about 70% of the country’s electricity.
“The extremes are the impoverishment of France,” Mr Macron said.
But those appeals fell on deaf ears because, for all his achievements, including reducing unemployment, Mr Macron had lost touch with the people to whom the National Rally appealed. His once-dominant centrist movement suffered a severe defeat.
These people, across the country, felt demeaned by the president. They felt like he didn’t understand their struggles. They had the impression that he was pretending to listen, but no more. Looking for a way to express their anger, they clung to the party that said immigrants were the problem because aging France needed them. They chose the party, the National Rally, whose leaders did not attend elite schools.
The rise of the National Rally has been steady and inexorable. Founded just over half a century ago as the National Front by Ms Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, and Pierre Bosquet, who was a member of a French division of the Waffen-SS during World War II, it has for decades faced an iron barrier that has prevented it from gaining access to government.
It has its roots in French shame. The collaborationist Vichy government during World War II had deported more than 72,000 Jews to their deaths, and France was determined never again to experience a far-right nationalist government.
Ms Le Pen expelled her father from the party in 2015 after he insisted that the Nazi gas chambers were a “detail of history”. She renamed the party and adopted Mr Bardella, who is soft-spoken and hard to rile, as her protégé. She also abandoned some of her more extreme positions, including support for leaving the European Union.
It worked, although some principles remained unchanged, notably the party’s Eurosceptic nationalism. He also retained his propensity to make distinctions between foreign residents and French citizens, and his insistence that the country’s crime levels and other ills stem from too many immigrants. a claim that some studies have disputed.
For Mr. Macron, whose term is limited and is due to leave office in 2027, three difficult years appear to lie ahead of him. We won’t know exactly how difficult it will be until after the second round of voting. He might, it seems, be remembered as the president who gave the far right access to the highest offices in government.
It is unclear how he would govern with a party that represents everything he has resisted and deplored throughout his political career. If the National Rally wins the prime ministership, for which Mr. Bardella is running, it will be able to set much of the national agenda.
Mr. Macron has vowed not to resign under any circumstances, and the president of the Fifth Republic has generally exercised broad control over foreign and military policy. But the National Rally has already indicated that it would like to limit Mr. Macron’s power. There is no doubt that the party will try its luck if it obtains an absolute majority.
Mr. Macron took an enormous and discretionary risk. “No to defeat. Yes to the awakening, to the resurgence of the Republic!” he declared shortly after making his decision. But as the second round approaches, the Republic seems wounded, its divisions lacerated.
Aurélien Breeden contributed report.
