French voters have spoken, and they have said that they were not (as yet) ready or willing to be governed by the far-right.
The National Rally, which stood at the gate of power after a triumphal first round held last week, ends up in third position in a hung parliament that offers few clues as to whom might become in charge of France’s next government.
The National Rally, however, emerges first in terms of votes. According to the French home ministry’s official numbers, the NR secured 32% of the votes in the 501 constituencies that were in play in the second round (76 MPs were elected in the first round, including 37 NR candidates). The New Popular Front comes second, with 26% of the votes and 178 MPs in total, the largest block in the new Assembly. President Emmanuel Macron’s formation, Ensemble (Together), trails in third position (23%) but managed to secure more seats than the National Rally (150). The three blocks share nearly 80% of the seats, the rest being divided between smaller parties and dissident candidates from the three blocks.
Candidates’ withdrawals in the second round and effective vote transfers between democratic party supporters partly explain the reversal of parties’ positions between the two rounds.
Over the past week, 220 candidates who qualified for the second round withdrew from their races to facilitate the defeat of the far-right candidate in their respective constituencies. That left 89 triangular contests (and two quadrangular contests), which normally favour the far-right.
However, the far-right won only 10 of the 29 triangular contests in which it participated, indicating that it has become entrenched enough in many constituencies to win in bipolar configurations.
The National Rally got 10.6 million votes in the first round. In the second round, they received 10.1 million votes. Since the second round was contested in fewer seats (501/577), it means that they succeeded in attracting additional voters after their first-round performance. The geography of the results indicates that the National Rally consolidated its presence in its traditional strongholds in the North, Northeast, and South East, and succeeded in winning seats in other regions for the first time.
The far-right’s accelerated growth
A timeline of the National Rally’s performance helps measure the extent of the progression of the far-right in France. Compared to 2017, it nearly quadrupled its vote share in the second round, due to its much larger number of qualified candidates. In 2024, one voter out of three opted for the National Rally in both rounds in a context of increased turnout.
Regarding seats, the institutional and political barriers that held the far-right outside the National Assembly have been breached, as the National Rally’s seats won 115 of its 125 seats in bipolar contests. Interpreting the results as another victory of the Republican Front against the extremes fails to acknowledge the degree of normalisation that the far-right in France has achieved.
While we rightly celebrate the failure of the far-right to access power, one should also recognise that France stands more divided than ever between democratic and non-democratic political forces. Regardless of the government’s configuration, the far-right will be the main opposition and, therefore, the center of all attention.
The difficult art of compromise
What happens now that no party or block has a clear majority? In most democracies, parties would negotiate to form a coalition arrangement, parliamentary or otherwise. However, coalitions are foreign to France’s political culture and vocabulary. Both the left and the centre are currently camping on maximalist positions and have declared themselves unwilling to compromise on their respective agendas.
If that is any indication, yesterday’s messy spectacle on French television gave us a sneak preview of the challenges ahead. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of France Unbowed and a major figure of the New Popular Front, demanded that President Macron appoint the next Prime Minister from the Left’s ranks. Partisans of the President continued to castigate France Unbowed as an extremist party. Both the Socialists and Unbowed France claimed to be the leading victors within their formation (France Unbowed and the Socialist Party currently won 78 and 65 seats, respectively; the Greens and the Communists won 35 and 9 seats). This does not augur well for post-poll negotiations. Unlike India, inter-party cooperation in France is not exactly defined by pragmatism.
Conforming to tradition, the Prime Minister offered his resignation and will probably remain at the head of a caretaker government until some arrangement is found between parties. President Macron could be tempted to appoint a new Prime Minister from his party and seek the support of sections of the New Popular Front other than France Unbowed, in an attempt to split this new alliance. This would immensely frustrate the millions of voters who have reluctantly voted for Macron since 2017 to defeat the far-right.
Also read: The Past, Present and Future of France’s Self-Inflicted Far-Right Surge
Lessons to draw
There are a few positive takeaways from this election and a few notes of caution.
The first lesson to draw is that a large majority of the French electorate still considers the National Rally a danger to democracy. Given the tight electoral schedule following the dissolution, most of the RN candidates had escaped scrutiny before the first round. A closer look at these candidates between the two rounds quickly revealed that the National Rally remains a party that harbors many racists, antisemites, and xenophobic candidates. The party president, Jordan Bardella, himself, admitted that a fast-track selection process led to ‘a few black sheep’ slipping through the nets.
The second observation is that the French political landscape is more fragmented than ever, following a period of concentration of power into the President’s hands. In 2017, Emmanuel Macron was backed by a majority composed of centrist elements and his own party (Republique En Marche). The previous majority, composed of socialists, greens, and some centrists, fell apart when Macron succeeded François Hollande.
President Macron lost his majority in 2022 and formed a minority government, which used exceptional constitutional provisions to force legislation through a gridlocked parliament. President Macron concentrated power to the measure that he lost support and the ability to reach out to parties other than his own. It is this model of a minority government that plays on the fear of a rising far-right to force its agenda through presidential decrees that has reached its limits. France’s political elites will have to learn the difficult art of sharing power, which involves making compromises and sacrifices.
The third observation is that these elections create an opportunity to revive parliamentarism in France, a country where the constitution concentrates much power in the hands of the President (except in a cohabitation situation). Robust debate, the negotiation of commonly acceptable legislation, and a functioning parliament can go a long way to reduce the ideological polarisation that divides the French party system and, by extension, its population. Again, this would require learning new ways of doing politics, with accommodations more typical of federal systems like Belgium or Germany.
Such changes are necessary as increased fragmentation in majoritarian electoral systems will likely throw more hung verdicts in the future, in France and in other countries with similar systems. What is at stake is nothing less than the capacity to demonstrate that democratic forces can put aside some of their differences and find modes of working together to preserve democracy, despite their differences and divisions.
However, the growing strength of the National Rally might disturb this scenario. As millions of voters flocked to the far-right, the temptation to seek them back by appealing to the reasons that let them choose the far-right in the first place increases. The far-right does not get normalised when it dilutes its positions and views. It becomes normalised when rightwing, centre-right, and sometimes centrist parties adopt diluted versions of their positions and views. The next few weeks will be critical to get a sense of what awaits France ahead of its next presidential elections, just two years ahead from now.
Gilles Verniers is Karl Loewenstein Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science at Amherst College. Views are personal.
