The left-wing alliance the New Popular Front has come first in French legislative elections, but failed to obtain a majority of lawmakers needed to control the National Assembly, according to an exit poll. Across France, 76 candidates secured seats in the first round, including 39 from Le Pen’s National Rally, 32 from the leftist New Popular Front alliance, and two candidates from Macron’s centrist list. The captain of France’s national team, Kylian Mbappé, had urged young people to vote and warned against “extremes” at a time when the far right seeks to take power in the parliamentary elections.
A woman casts her ballot in the second round of the legislative elections, Sunday, July 7, 2024 in Rennes, western France. A man picks up ballots in a the voting station during the second round of the legislative elections, Sunday, July 7, 2024 in Olwisheim , eastern France. A woman picks up ballots at a polling station to vote in the second round of the legislative elections, in Lyon, central France, Sunday, July 7, 2024. A voter casts his ballot during the second round of the legislative elections, in Lyon, central France, Sunday, July 7, 2024. A woman casts her ballot in the second round of the legislative elections, Sunday, July 7, 2024 in Strasbourg, eastern France. A voter casts her ballot during the second round of the legislative elections, Sunday, July 7, 2024 in Paris.
How did such a defining political moment arise from nowhere?
Political custom dictates the president should pick a prime minister from the party or coalition with the most seats in the parliament. The left alliance, dubbed the New Popular Front, was projected to get 145 to 175 seats, with Macron’s centrist coalition lagging behind at 118 to 148 seats (compared to 250 in the outgoing chamber). Hundreds of candidates across the 577 electoral constituencies in France withdrew from the races this week to prevent a split in the anti-RN vote.
- Debout la France only contested 107 constituencies, backing candidates supported by the RN elsewhere, and party leader Nicolas Dupont-Aignan expressed his support for the alliance between Éric Ciotti and the RN.
- Of those, 130 were on the left, and 82 came from the Macron-led centrist alliance Ensemble.
- It’s happened before, with domestic policy in the hands of the prime minister and foreign and defence policy in the hands of the president.
- Under the constitution it is Mr Macron who decides who leads the next government.
- The left alliance, dubbed the New Popular Front, was projected to get 145 to 175 seats, with Macron’s centrist coalition lagging behind at 118 to 148 seats (compared to 250 in the outgoing chamber).
- Only a week ago all the talk had been of a possible absolute majority, and Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella were still talking up their chances a couple of days before the vote.
- In anticipation of potential violence after the second round, Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin announced that 30,000 police would be deployed across the country on the evening of 7 July.
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LFI reacted by suspending negotiations, demanding that all parties agree upon on a single candidacy for the presidency of the National Assembly, and refusing the possibility of a civil society figure being appointed prime minister, after which the PS, LE, and PCF pushed for discussions to resume and proposed appointing a civil society figure as prime minister, Laurence Tubiana, a hypothesis publicly rejected by LFI figureheads as too “Macron-compatible.” Tubiana dismissed the possibility of becoming prime minister on 22 July. Huguette Bello emerged as a possible name for prime minister on 12 July, proposed by Roussel but resisted by the PS, which failed to approve Bello’s candidacy on 13 July and called for further discussions. Tondelier declined to rule out the possibility of participating in a coalition but indicated her desire not to do so and her opposition to a Macron-aligned prime minister. In an interview on 1 July, Aurore Bergé signaled openness to a coalition with members of other parties, including “the Republicans who didn’t want to corrupt themselves with Éric Ciotti and with the RN, with certain members of the Socialist Party, the ecologists, the communists,” a view shared by the leader of alliance partner Horizons Édouard Philippe.
This marked the first time since 1973 that four-way runoffs, also referred to as quadrangulaires, were necessary in any French legislative election. Although Macron can call a second snap election, he is unable to do so until at least a year after the 2024 election, as stipulated by the constitution. Macron is not eligible to run for a third consecutive term. Due to the National Front assistants affair and her ensuing embezzlement conviction, Marine Le Pen was barred from running for public office for five years on 31 March 2025. President Macron has attacked the group as being “totally immigrationist” and allowing people to change gender at their town hall, an accusation that has prompted allegations of transphobia. The New Popular Front is an unlikely alliance of Socialists, Greens, Communists and France Unbowed.
- Prime Minister Gabriel Attal of Macron’s Renaissance party announced that he would step down.
- According to the classifications of Le Monde, 89 three-way and 2 four-way runoffs remained after the publicly announced withdrawals of 134 NFP-supported and 82 Ensemble-supported candidates.
- Unless otherwise noted, all polls listed below are compliant with the regulations of the national polling commission and utilize the quota method.
- Alluding to the possibility of Emmanuel Macron sending ground forces to Ukraine, Le Pen deemed Macron’s title of “commander-in-chief of the armed forces” as “honorary” given the need for both the heads and state and government to make most defence decisions, though constitutional law experts noted that the president’s approval was still required for the usage of nuclear weapons.
- Even Donald Trump complimented the French leader’s pair of blue aviators.
Even figures with a significant national profile like former party president Laurent Wauquiez, threatened by the possibility of an RN wave, sought to stay out of the national spotlight and focused on avoiding being subsumed by the tripolarisation of the electorate. On 12 June, The Republicans’ political committee voted unanimously to remove Ciotti as its president and expel him from the party. Outgoing Ensemble deputies expressed exasperation with Macron, with one remarking that “I wish he’d shut up and let us get out of the mess he’s gotten us into;” François Bayrou, leader of alliance member MoDem, deemed it necessary to “de-Macronise the campaign;” and candidates became “fed up” with Macron’s refusal to abide by his promise to stay out of the campaign. Macron publicly denounced the NFP’s “totally immigrationist” stance and decried proposals which would make it easier for transgender people to change their civil status by allowing them to do so at their local town hall as “completely grotesque,” and his former prime minister Élisabeth Borne decried the alliance as being one of “separatist wokists who support Islamism and communitarianism” with a nonsensical programme and disastrous economic policies. Most – but not all – constitutional experts rejected the possibility of Macron resigning in order to avoid potential legislative deadlock in the event of an unclear election outcome (with legislative elections prohibited within a year of the preceding one), considering that article 6 of the constitution explicitly prohibits presidents from serving more than two consecutive terms, and such a scenario would entail him seeking a third given that his current term would consider to have ended after such a resignation.
His trade99 review party came third and he said it was time for France’s people and politicians “who do not recognise themselves in the extremist fever” to build a new coalition. The final list of candidates who will stand in the second round runoff will be known on Tuesday evening. There could be a significant number of constituencies facing a runoff between three or more candidates on 7 July. The far-right leader Marine Le Pen is hoping to be elected in her northern constituency in the first-round and hopes several of her outgoing MPs will do the same.
French President Emmanuel Macron calls for snap elections
Leftist leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon calls the results an “immense relief for a majority of people in our country.” He wants the prime minister to resign. And any cobbled-together majority risks being vulnerable to no-confidence votes that could cause it to fall. Supporters of the far-left France Unbowed party celebrate. Supporters of the far-right National Rally party react after the release of the polling agencies projections for the second round of the legislative election, Sunday, July 7, 2024 at their election night headquarters in Paris. People thinkmarkets review react to the projection of results during the second round of the legislative elections, near Republique Plaza in Paris, France. French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal delivers a speech after the second round of the legislative elections, Sunday, July 7, 2024 in Paris.
Opinion polling for the 2024 French legislative election
This time, however, the Socialists are a far more powerful partner following the successful campaign of Socialist-backed candidate Raphaël Glucksmann in the European election. With unexpected speed, France’s left-wing parties have put aside their squabbles and united ahead of the vote. That’s both a blessing and a curse for Macron’s liberals and the left wing alliance. High turn-out means three candidates are likely to go through to the second round in up to 170 constituencies, according to recent projections, an increase from only… 8 in 2022. Current projections have Ensemble MPs falling to less than 110 seats in the 577-strong assembly, squeezed by both the left and the far right. While Ensemble currently controls a workable 250 seats in the parliament, it faces devastating losses in the election.
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Ensemble, the coalition backing the French president, includes his Renaissance party, the centrist Modem and the center-right Horizons party. But it would still need to get support from other LR MPs or from the Reconquest party, which is also on the far right but whose leader is hostile to Le Pen, to get close to an absolute majority. If the far right gets a majority in the parliament, the French president would have to enter into a “cohabitation” arrangement with the National Rally and appoint a far-right prime minister. Since Macron’s bombshell announcement, the political landscape in France has been changing at lightning speed, with new alliances emerging overnight and nasty break-ups playing out in public.
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To counter the far right, the Socialists, a mainstream left-wing party that has governed France in the past, has thinkmarkets review allied with the Greens and fringe leftist groups, including the Communists and the France Unbowed party. Many politicians and voters are thinking hard about tactics as the political center faces major challenges from both the far left and right. The third paragraph of Article 49 allows the government to pass a bill immediately without a vote in the National Assembly. Alternatively, centrists could form a minority government by uniting moderates from the left and right and operate on compromise, Murray told Al Jazeera. To win an outright majority, a party or coalition needs to secure at least 289 of the National Assembly’s 577 seats. But around 215 successful candidates stepped down over the course of the week, as the “Republican Front” sought to avoid splitting the anti-far-right vote in constituencies where three or more people made it through.
Macron is expected to vote later in the seaside town of La Touquet, while Le Pen is not voting after winning her district in northern France outright last week. French PM Attal casts vote in pivotal runoff election that could propel the far-right to power “Will it be a technical government or a coalition government made up of (different) political forces? He voted at a school where, as at all French schools, the national motto “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” was displayed prominently. Voters at a Paris polling station were acutely aware of the elections’ far-reaching consequences for France and beyond.
If no candidate reaches this threshold, a runoff election is held between the top two candidates plus any other candidate who received a vote total greater than 12.5% of registered voters. Post-election negotiations between NFP alliance partners exposed renewed tensions, with party leaders taking until 23 July to agree upon a name for prime minister – the 37-year-old director of finance and purchasing for the city of Paris, Lucie Castets. Macron initially refused Gabriel Attal’s resignation on 8 July, but accepted the resignation of the government on 16 July, allowing ministers to vote for the president of the National Assembly while remaining in place as a caretaker government. On the basis of these results, a record 306 constituencies were headed to three-way runoffs and 5 to four-way runoffs, but 134 NFP and 82 Ensemble candidates withdrew despite qualifying for the run-off in order to reduce the RN’s chances of winning an absolute majority of seats. If a candidate receives an absolute majority (50%+1, including blank and void ballots), the election ends after the first round and the second round does not occur. An RN victory could open the door to almost three years of “cohabitation”, or power-sharing, when the president of one party heads the state and another party runs the government.
The overall turnout is on track to be the highest in four decades. It’s the highest turnout since 1981 at this time in the voting day. Jessica Saada is 31 and says “I think young people have not woken up yet. Nawel Marrouchi is 15 and wishes she was old enough to vote. Some French youth are astonished by the number of people supporting the far-right National Rally. An aide to the president says Prime Minister Gabriel Attal is there.