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Marine Le Pen, French far-right leader and far-right Rassemblement National (National Rally - RN) party candidate, reacts on stage after partial results in the first round of the early French parliamentary elections in Henin-Beaumont, France, June 30, 2024.
Can Le Pen rewrite French politics next week?
Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party, aka RN, topped the first round of voting on Sunday, winning about a third of the French vote – the best showing in the party’s half-century history. But in next Sunday’s round two, will she be able to win a majority?
Non: Macron’s Ensemble party, which placed third with about 20%, is hobbled, but the left and center right are also closing ranks against Le Pen. In hundreds of races, they’re withdrawing third-place candidates to consolidate direct challenges to RN. Respected pollsters predict about 270 seats for Le Pen, 19 shy of a majority.
That would mean a chaotic, hung parliament and a caretaker government overseen by a technocrat. President Emmanuel Macron would be a lame duck for the last three years of his presidency. Count France out of any major EU initiatives during that time.
Oui: If collapsing most races into two-way contests alienates voters and suppresses turnout, the RN benefits from greater motivation among its base. And of course, pollsters have historically had trouble accurately predicting RN’s appeal.
The loser: In calling these snap elections after Le Pen surged in European Parliament elections, Macron gambled that, as in the past, the French people would have little appetite for far-right rule at home. No matter what happens next Sunday he – and the liberal centrist movement he has built – have lost that bet.
French President Emmanuel Macron speaks next to NATO Secretary General after a meeting at the Elysee Presidential Palace in Paris on June 24, 2024.
Macron’s election gambit looks doomed to fail
France faces a nail-biter snap election this Sunday. Barring one of the biggest polling errors in French history, President Emmanuel Macron is set to lose his parliamentary majority.
Where are the polls? The far-right National Rally, aka RN, party led by Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella is ahead with 35-38% of the vote, far exceeding Macron’s party, which is polling around 20% and falling. But an unlikely alliance of leftist parties calling itself the New Popular Front, or NFP, is garnering 28-31% of the vote, and given France’s unpredictable two-round voting system, the final result is anyone’s guess.
The worst-case scenario for Macron: Voters who fear the far right flock to the NFP, while those who fear the left go to RN in a mutual attempt to block the other’s chances of forming a government — squeezing Macron’s centrists out.
There’s a chance RN can pull off a slim majority, which would make Bardella Macron’s new prime minister – hardly a recipe for productive governance. Bardella says he won’t form a minority government and risk a rapid ejection by a coalition of centrists and left-wingers.
The left, meanwhile, is less likely to get a majority, and even if they did, they can’t agree on who would get to be PM.
What about a deadlock? This might be Macron’s best bet. He could then attempt to form a national unity government with a technocratic moderate as PM. Failing that, he could keep the current government with reduced powers in a caretaker capacity for one year before holding new elections — but that’s an unpopular option, and Macron is already deeply unpopular.
Macron’s decision to call snap elections may be one he lives to regret. France will struggle with gridlock and partisanship in virtually all these potential outcomes, which will be detrimental to France – and to Macron’s domestic and geopolitical ambitions.
“It would be ironic,” Ian Bremmerwrote yesterday, “if the man most devoted to building a strong France, Europe, and Ukraine ended up being responsible for weakening all three.”French far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party leader Marine Le Pen and party President Jordan Bardella address militants listens after French President announced he is calling for new general elections on June 30, during an evening gathering on the final day of the European Parliament election, at the Pavillon Chesnaie du Roy in Paris, on June 9, 2024.
Left in the dust: European voters swing right
Europe took a hard right turn in European Parliament elections this weekend, dealing a substantial blow to key EU leaders German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron, prompting the latter to call early elections.
In France, Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party surged to 31.5% support – more than twice as much as Macron’s Renaissance coalition, with 14.5%. Close behind are the Socialists and their lead candidate Raphaël Glucksmann with 14%.
A sober-looking Macron took to French television to dissolve parliament and called for elections on June 30, with a second round on July 7. The outcome of the EU elections, he said, was “not a good result for parties who defend Europe.” This is a gamble for Macron: A similar far-right wave in the French parliamentary election could see his party lose its majority.
In Germany, projections show the far-right Alternative for Germany set to secure second place with 16.5% of the vote, a record high. Support for Scholz’s Social Democratic Party and coalition partner Free Democratic Party declined, securing 14% and 5% of the vote, respectively. And Germany’s Greens took the biggest hit, dropping a whopping 8.5 percentage points to 12%, as cash-strapped voters spurned costly environmental policies.
Coalition time: Post-election, European political parties realign in blocs in the EU Parliament. The largest, the center-right European People’s Party, has recently shifted right on issues of security, climate, and migration, and could swing further to the right if joined by Giorgia Meloni’s far-right Brothers of Italy. Another scenario would see Meloni’s group and other far-right parties such as Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party stay with the more hard-line European Conservatives and Reformists group, or become part of a new hard-right group that could form the wake of the elections. We’ll be watching the horse trading as coalitions take shape.Disgraced AfD leader Maximilian Krah.
Euro Parliament group expels AfD
Even the far right has its limits. The European Parliament’s “Identity and Democracy” group of populist right-wing parties – including the Alternative for Germany, France’s National Rally, and Italy’s League, among others – expelled all nine AfD members on Thursday.
The move comes just weeks ahead of European Parliament elections on June 9 in which the far right is expected to make serious gains. It also comes a day after Maximilian Krah, head of AfD, said he’d step down over two scandals – one involving a senior staffer being charged with spying for China, and another stemming from Krah telling an Italian newspaper that not all members of the Nazi SS were war criminals. But sacrificing Krah wasn’t enough – and National Rally leader Marine Le Pensaid her party needed a “clean break” from AfD.
The expulsion was a bold move, given the AfD’s popularity. As recently as January, it was Germany’s second most popular party, polling at 22%, though it has since dropped six percentage points to tie for second place with the Social Democrat Party.
Polls have predicted the Identity and Democracy group’s number of seats in the European Parliament could rise from 59 to about 84 (some predicted a high of 93 before AfD’s recent scandals). National Rally, meanwhile, is surging in the polls.
What does this mean? Apart from hurting its reputation, expulsion means AfD loses access to the group’s shared resources, collective voice in parliament, and possibly some funding. But it doesn’t mean AfD members can’t run. In fact, party leaders said Thursday that they remained optimistic about the election. “We are confident we will continue to have reliable partners at our side in the new legislative period,” they said.