The historic score of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in the first round of French legislative elections last Sunday has created great anticipation that Le Pen’s party might finally gain some degree of power after the second round of elections this weekend, with Le Pen’s young protégé, party Chair Jordan Bardella, becoming Prime Minister. As the head of Government, Bardella would then share power with the Head of State, President Emmanuel Macron, in an arrangement that the French call “cohabitation” when the two leaders come from different political parties or tendencies.
But the electoral maths is not in fact so favourable to Le Pen and her party as it might appear at first glance. The below graph shows the results of the first round of voting broken down by the percentage of votes cast for candidates from each of the different electoral alliances or parties.
As can be seen, the National Rally (RN) and its allies came away with the largest haul of votes, winning nearly a third of all the votes cast. The allies consist of a breakaway faction of the mainstream conservative party “The Republicans”. The breakaway faction is led by Eric Ciotti, who remains for the moment the Chair of the “The Republicans” despite efforts of other party leaders to oust him for having rallied to Le Pen’s National Rally.
A “Left-wing” alliance calling itself the “New Popular Front” garnered 28% of the votes, the second-best result. The centrepiece of the New Popular Front is Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise (LFI) – which could be roughly translated as “Rebel France”. The remnants of the French Socialist Party, whose support has been sapped by Macron’s En Marche (“On the Move”) movement, and the Greens are also members of the alliance. But it also includes – despite the separate presence of the “far Left” in the tally – parties which would ordinarily be considered as about as far to the Left as one could get: like the French Communist Party and the Nouveau Parti Anti-Capitaliste or “New Anti-Capitalist Party”.
Mélenchon (seen in the above photo with Emmanuel Macron) finished third in the first round of voting in the 2022 French Presidential election behind Macron and Le Pen. He has been widely accused of coquetting with antisemitism in the aftermath of the October 7th attacks in Israel, in order to attract the votes of Arab immigrants in France’s troubled urban ghettos or “banlieues”. Even thoroughly mainstream French political figures, like former Prime Minister Manuel Valls, share this assessment.
Macron’s Ensemble – “Together” – alliance garnered barely 20% of the votes and the remnants of “The Republicans”, without the Ciotti faction, 10%.
A closer look at the tally makes clear that there is very little reservoir of votes on which National Rally candidates can draw in the second-round run-offs next Sunday. Even if the entirety of the electorate of “The Republicans” should prove less fastidious than the party leadership and be willing to support RN candidates, this would only get the RN to 43%, and smaller “Right” and “far-Right” groupings have hardly any votes to offer.
With 130 candidates from Mélenchon’s “New Popular Front” and 82 from Macron’s “Together” alliance having already withdrawn from so-called “triangular” three-way run-offs in a tacit electoral pact and to avoid splitting the vote, this means that it will be nearly impossible for the National Rally to obtain the 289 seats in the National Assembly which it would need to have an outright majority.
“New Popular Front” candidates who have qualified for second-round run-offs include:
- Philippe Poutou of the New Anti-Capitalist Party, which issued a statement in response to the October 7th attacks expressing its “support for the Palestinians and the means of struggle they have chosen to resist”;
- Raphaël Arnault, a young militant in the often violent, self-styled “antifa” (anti-fascist) movement who, it turns out, is himself, like numerous suspected terrorists, classified as a security threat (“fiché S”) by French security services;
- Mohamed Awad, who is accused of having been an official in a Muslim Brotherhood youth group, the Jeunes musulmans de France (Young Muslims of France); and
- David Guiraud, who describes Israel as a “colonial state undertaking ethnic cleansing” and who has been accused of relativising Hamas’s crimes during a talk he gave in Tunis, in which he said, among other things, “the baby in the oven, that was in fact done, by Israel; the mother whose belly was cut open, that was done, it’s true, by Israel”.
The New Anti-Capitalist Party is under investigation for “apology for terrorism”. Violette Spillebout, an outgoing member of the National Assembly from Macron’s party, has called for a similar investigation to be opened against David Guiraud. Nonetheless, Tarik Mekki, the “Macronist” candidate who was narrowly eliminated in the first round of voting, has thrown his support behind Guiraud.
According to the latest adjusted projections of France’s CNews news channel, Le Pen’s National Rally could obtain 250 to 265 seats in the new National Assembly, Mélenchon’s “New Popular Front” 160 to 175, Macron’s alliance 95 to 105, and the Republicans 30 or so.
The National Rally’s aspirations would thus yet again be defeated by what is called the politics of “the Republican Front” in France – or, in other words, everyone but Le Pen. Even if this “everyone” includes antisemites, Islamists, “antifa” and terror apologists.
Postscript:
Based on new polling data from the OpinionWay market research institute, CNews has further revised its projections, with the seats to be obtained by Le Pen’s National Rally falling and those to be obtained by Macron’s “Together” presidential alliance rising in roughly the same measure. This presumably reflects the fact that, as noted above, far more “New Popular Front” candidates have withdrawn from second round run-offs than “Macronist” candidates and Macronist candidates, as a rule, do better in head-to-head contests with National Rally candidates than “New Popular Front” candidates.
According to the new projections, Le Pen’s National Rally will obtain just 205 to 230 seats, Mélenchon’s “New Popular Front” 150 to 180, Macron’s presidential alliance 125 to 155, and The Republicans 38 to 50. The National Rally will thus be far from having the numbers required to form a Government, and Macron – thanks to the tacit support of Mélenchon and his rag-tag band of radicals of different stripes – will be something of a “comeback kid”.
Robert Kogon is the pen name of a widely-published journalist covering European affairs. Subscribe to his Substack.
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