Macron and French left race to respond to Le Pen election win

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French centrist and leftwing parties are racing to decide whether to pull candidates out of run-offs in hundreds of electoral districts as they try to keep the far-right Rassemblement National out of power.

Marine Le Pen’s party won the first round of Sunday’s snap parliamentary elections, taking 33.2 per cent of the national vote ahead of the leftist Nouveau Front Populaire coalition on 28 per cent and President Emmanuel Macron’s Ensemble alliance on 22.4 per cent.

Projections suggest the RN and its allies are on track to win the most seats in the National Assembly and potentially an outright majority — an outcome that would put the far right into the French government for the first time since the second world war and reverberate across Europe.

Ensemble and NFP candidates who finished third in their district are now under intense pressure to withdraw and avoid splitting the vote against the RN in a second round of voting on July 7.

The first round produced more than 300 three-way run-offs, according to Financial Times calculations, an unprecedented number, although the final figure will depend on how many candidates drop out. The second round line-up must be decided by Tuesday.

Macron’s Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, who faces being ousted from his post, said in an address in front of his office: “The lesson tonight is that the extreme right is on the verge of taking power. Our objective is clear: stopping the RN from having an absolute majority in the second round and governing the country with its disastrous project.”

According to FT calculations, with nearly all districts counted the RN finished first in 296 constituencies out of 577, while the NFP led in 150 and Ensemble in 60. There will be about 65 constituencies with the RN and NFP in two-way run-offs. A party needs 289 seats for a majority.

By Sunday night all the parties in the leftwing NFP — from the far-left La France Insoumise to the more moderate Socialists, Greens and Communists — said they would drop out of races where their candidate was in third place.

However parties in Macron’s Ensemble alliance issued slightly different guidance, creating confusion.

Macron’s Renaissance party said it would make case-by-case decisions based on whether a remaining leftwing candidate was “compatible with republican values”, but did not specifically exclude LFI. 

Former prime minister Édouard Philippe said his Horizons party would instruct its third-place candidates to withdraw only in contests with no LFI representative. “I consider that no vote should be given to candidates of the RN or LFI, with whom we differ, not only on programmes but on fundamental values,” Philippe said.

In previous second-round elections, French voters have often acted to create a so-called front républicain — backing candidates they would otherwise reject to lock out the RN. But it remains to be seen whether such voting customs still work with the far right in the ascendancy.

Socialist party chief Olivier Faure criticised Macron and recalled that leftist voters had twice helped him beat the RN to the presidency. “It remains confused, too confused from a president who has benefited from your votes in 2017 and 2022,” Faure told a NFP rally.

In a sign that Macron’s camp was trying to woo new allies, Attal announced that he would suspend a reform of the unemployment system due to take effect on Monday. It had been rejected by the left because it cut the time during which claimants could get benefits.

If the RN wins a majority, Macron would be forced into an uncomfortable power-sharing arrangement, with Le Pen’s 28-year-old protégé Jordan Bardella as prime minister. 

There have been three instances of such a “cohabitation” in France since 1958 but never involving parties and leaders with such diametrically opposed views. The RN would run the government, domestic affairs and set the budget, while Macron would remain chief of the armed forces and lead foreign policy. 

Mathieu Gallard, a researcher from polling group Ipsos, said whether the RN won an outright majority would depend mainly on the strength of the front républicain and how many leftwing and centrist voters made it a priority to counter Le Pen’s party.

“Things remain quite open,” he said. “There could be an outright majority for the RN or a weaker result that would not allow them to form a government.”

Steeve Briois, a senior RN official, dismissed the idea that tactical manoeuvres or voting advice would stop them from winning.

“[That] the other parties should call for an anti-RN front — it actually just annoys people and motivates them to vote for us,” he told the FT at Le Pen’s campaign party in Hénin-Beaumont, within her constituency in northern France. “The glass ceiling, the idea of a front républicain — that does not work any more.”