Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN) party made unprecedented advances, winning the first round of France’s snap parliamentary elections with 33% of the vote along with its allies, according to France’s interior ministry on Monday.
The leftwing alliance garnered only 28%, and President Emmanuel Macron’s centrists plummeted to only 20%.
The result was a major loss for Macron, who had called the early election after the RN had defeated his ticket in the European Parliament elections last month.
Although Le Pen declared that the president’s “Macronist bloc has been all but wiped out,” the final result will not be determined until after a bout of alliance-building ahead of next week’s round two vote.
A win of the RN is expected to bring RN President Jordan Bardella, Le Pen’s protege and candidate for prime minister, to the head of Matignon to become the next Prime Minister of the French Republic, succeeding Gabriel Attal. Bardella asserted that the second round would be “the most important in the history of the French Fifth Republic.”
Whether the anti-immigrant, euro-sceptic RN can form a government will be determined by next week’s crucial round and the ability of other parties to defeat Le Pen by rallying around the best-placed opponent candidates in seats around France.
Leaders of both the leftwing New Popular Front and Macron’s centrist coalition stated on Sunday night that they would withdraw their candidates from districts if another candidate was better positioned to defeat the RN in next Sunday’s runoff.
On Monday, RN parliamentarians asked center-right members in the Republicans (LR), which had won less than 7% of the first-round vote, to retire from districts where doing so would benefit the RN.
The RN, a longstanding pariah for many in France, is now closer to power than ever before. Le Pen has attempted to clean up the image of a party notorious for racism and antisemitism, a strategy that has been effective in the face of public outrage at Macron, high living costs, and mounting immigration fears.
Given its opposition to deeper EU integration, an RN-led government would raise serious issues about the European Union’s future direction. Economists have also questioned whether its spending ambitions are sufficiently funded.
Interestingly, the euro rose to a two-week high during Asian trading on Monday, as markets were actually relieved that the RN had not performed better.