France is on course for a hung parliament in Sunday’s election, early projections suggest, with a leftist alliance unexpectedly taking the top spot ahead of the far right in a potential major upset that would bar Marine Le Pen’s National Rally from running the government.
The outcome, if confirmed, will leave parliament divided in three big groups, with hugely different platforms and no tradition at all of working together.
That could potentially herald a period of instability, unless the left manages to strike a deal with other parties to work together.
The leftist alliance was forecast to win between 172 and 215 seats out of 577, pollsters’ projections based on early results from a sample of polling stations showed. These projections are usually reliable.
The result would in any case be humiliating for French President Emmanuel Macron, whose centrist alliance, which he founded to underpin his first presidential run in 2017, was projected to be narrowly in second place and win 150 to 180 seats.
After right-leaning and far-right parties made major gains in the European parliamentary elections, French President Emmanuel Macron called a surprise snap election. Andrew Chang explains what the French president stands to lose — or possibly gain — from taking such a gamble.
But it will also be a major disappointment for Marine Le Pen’s nationalist, Euroskeptic National Rally (RN) party.
The RN, which had for weeks been projected to win the election, was seen getting 115 to 155 seats.
The RN is currently led by Jordan Bardella, who succeeded Le Pen as leader in November 2022.
Le Pen, daughter of the party’s founder, remains a party member and retained her seat in the National Assembly during the first-round of voting last weekend.
The first official results were expected later on Sunday, with the tallies from most, if not all, constituencies likely to be in by the end of the day or the early hours of Monday.
Voters have punished Macron and his ruling alliance for a cost-of-living crisis and failing public services, as well as over immigration and security.
Le Pen and her party have successfully tapped into those grievances, spreading their appeal way beyond their traditional strongholds along the Mediterranean coast and in the country’s northern rust belt.
But the left-wing alliance managed to edge them out of the first spot.
That was in part thanks to some limited co-operation by Macron’s centrist Together alliance and the left, designed to block the far right’s ascendancy to power. Le Pen’s rivals pulled more than 200 candidates out of three-way races in the second round in a bid to create a unified anti-RN vote.
The constitution says there can be no new parliamentary election for another year, so an immediate repeat vote is not an option.