French election: Far-right RN projected to win first round

DW presents a visualization and a recap on the popular vote standings after the first round of voting in France. The projections and exit polls of the major broadcasters vary slightly, but only by tiny margins. All point to the same trends.

Broadcaster TF1 anticipates 34.2% support for National Rally (RN), 29.1% for the left-wing New Popular Front (NFP), and 21.5% for Macron's "Together" alliance (Ensemble or ENS). 

Center-right party Les Republicains, once a powerhouse in French politics with past presidents like Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy, was a distant fourth with 10%. 

 

Centrist President Emmanuel Macron tried to set up a "suffocating choice" between himself and the RN, leftist Jean-Luc Melenchon said on Sunday evening.

Melenchon is the head of La France Insoumise which is a part of the New Popular Front (NFP), a broad alliance of left-wing parties. The bloc is projected to win 28.5% of the vote and place second after the far-right RN, but ahead of Macron's Ensemble.

Commenting on the voting outcome, Melenchon said it was clear that the current head of government Gabriel Attal "will no longer be prime minister."

He said the vote "inflicted a heavy and indisputable defeat on the president."

At the same time, the 72-year-old leftist signaled he was ready to work with Macron to keep RN from winning runoff races.

The leader of France's far-right National Rally party, Jordan Bardella, said he was ready to be the "prime minister of all French people" if his party wins an absolute majority in the second round of elections.

"I will be a 'cohabitation' Prime Minister, respectful of the constitution and of the office of President of the Republic, but uncompromising about the policies we will implement," Bardella said.

"The French people have handed down a clear verdict," Bardella said after his party appeared to have won the first round of the early parliamentary elections.

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen is urging voters to give her National Rally an "absolute majority" in parliament after estimates showed her party won 34% of the vote.

“Nothing has been won yet and the second round will be decisive, to avoid the country falling into the hands of the [NPF] alliance, from an extreme left with a tendency to violence," Le Pen said, using the alliance's former name in her direct quote. 

The second round will be decisive in giving Jordan [Bardella, her candidate for prime minister] an absolute majority in the National Assembly, to next week begin reestablishing unity and national consensus in France.

Le Pen said her party "needs" an absolute majority "for Jordan Bardella to be appointed prime minister by Emmanuel Macron in eight days."

She also said President Emmanuel Macron's camp was "almost wiped out" in the first round of French legislative elections.

If the National Rally does not command an absolute majority, the likelihood does seem high that Macron would seek a unity government involving other forces in parliament.

With France's next parliament set to be decided in the runoff vote next Sunday, leftist Jean-Luc Melenchon said his New Popular Front (NFP) is ready to tactically drop election races if it helps beat far-right RN.

"In the event of a three-way fight, if the National Rally is in the lead and we are third, we will withdraw our candidacies," he said after the first round of voting concluded on Sunday evening.

Under French election rules, any candidate with at least 12.5% of the vote is qualified to run in the second round, where the candidate with the highest number of votes wins. However, those candidates are free to give up the race.

While signaling his willingness to help other parties against RN, Melenchon also noted that his NFP is also a force to be reckoned with as it is facing many races "with no real competition."

"Our instructions are simple, direct and clear: not one vote, not one more seat for the RN," he said.

Melenchon may be hoping that Macron displays a similar willingness to cooperate, given Macron's calls for a broad alliance against RN.

French President Emmanuel Macron is urging voters to block the far-right in the crucial second round of parliamentary elections after the National Rally party won the first round, according to estimates.

"Faced with National Rally, the time has come for a broad, clearly democratic and republican alliance for the second round," he said in a statement.

Macron also said that the high turnout in the first round illustrated "the importance of this vote for all our compatriots and the desire to clarify the political situation."

The second round is scheduled for next Sunday, July 7.

The far-right National Rally (RN) party made gains in the first round of France's legislative elections, according to early projections released after polls closed.

According to Ipsos Talan projections, RN is set to win the largest share of the national vote, at 34%. 

The left-wing and center-left NPF bloc was second, with 28.1%. 

And President Emmanuel Macron's "Together" alliance was in third, on 20.3%.

However, only a small number of seats are likely to be decided outright in tonight's first round. Voting habits may change in the second round when voters have more limited choices. Historically, this system has made it difficult for RN to cash in on its superiority in the first round.

It's 8 p.m. in France and most voting stations have either closed or are in the process of closing. 

The first television projections and exit polls should follow very shortly. Stay tuned.

As French voters flock to the polls in greater numbers, DW correspondent Lisa Louis says it is difficult to say who will benefit from the high turnout.

"You think that when more and more people turn out, the turnout may block the far right from coming to power. That was the case in the past with the so-called 'vote barrage' [meant] to create a dam against the far right coming to power," Louis said.

But she said a recent poll suggested that this increased turnout was no longer primarily against the far right — with firebrand leftist Jean-Luc Melenchon also apparently a turnoff for many less committed French voters.

"People now try to block the far left from coming to power, then they want to block Macron from staying in power, and in the third place comes the National Rally," Louis explained.

"It remains to be seen what the final result will be," she added.

Voter turnout in the first round of the French legislative elections reached 59.39% at 5 p.m. local time, compared to 39.4% at the same time in 2022.

"This is the highest level since the 1986 legislative elections and already higher than the 2012, 2017, and 2022 elections," Mathieu Gallard, research director at the Ipsos polling institute, said on X, formerly Twitter.

Polling stations in mainland France are scheduled to close at 8 p.m. local time.

Polling stations on the mainland are due to close by 8 p.m. local time (1800 UTC) on Sunday.

Immediately after polling ends, French media outlets will publish their projections from the first round of the legislative election, which normally have a high degree of accuracy.

Early official results are expected later on Sunday night.

The office of French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said that he would make a statement about the outcome of the first round on Sunday evening.

Under election rules in France, any lawmaker who receives more than half of the votes cast in their district wins a seat in the National Assembly outright in the first round. But this must also correspond to at least a quarter of the registered voters in the constituency.

In practice, very few candidates will manage this feat in round one, so it may be difficult to draw any conclusions from Sunday's results.

After the first round, several candidates in each district are then expected to drop out of the race to help other more popular contenders in the runoff and block victories by far-right candidates.

The runoff next Sunday, July 7, will be where most seats will be allocated. After those results are in, President Emmanuel Macron should then, in theory, choose the country's next prime minister from the strongest party in the Assembly.

If, as is expected, either the leftist coalition or the far-right RN takes the most seats, Macron would be forced into a period of cohabitation, which would see his power limited to foreign policy, the military and EU affairs.

Leftist New Popular Front (NFP) leader Jean-Luc Melenchon has cast his ballot in round one of France's legislative election.

The 72-year-old Melenchon voted at a polling station in Paris.

Melenchon is a veteran French politician who previously held ministerial posts when he was a member of the Socialist Party. He ran for president in 2012, 2017 and 2022, improving his score each time.

In 2022, Melenchon came third, just behind far-right leader Marine Le Pen in the election that Emmanuel Macron won.

For this election, he is leading a broad alliance of leftwing parties — some moderate, and others like his own La France Insoumise being more hard-left — brought together to try to counter France's lurch to the right.

Opinion polls have suggested the NPF will come in second place at 28-31% in the first round, behind Marine Le Pen's far-right National Rally (RN) and ahead of Macron's centrist alliance.

Melenchon is one of the most divisive figures in French politics, enthusing and horrifying voters with his unrestrained tax-and-spend proposals, class war rhetoric and controversial foreign policy positions, probably most notably his longstanding call for France to pull out of NATO.

He has also made several remarks that have been labeled antisemitic and is more critical than Macron of Israel.

French President Emmanuel Macron, whose decision to call Sunday's snap election has caused much political consternation in France and beyond, has cast his vote along with his wife, Brigitte Macron, in Le Touquet in northern France.

Earlier in the day, Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National Rally (RN), which is favored to take most of the votes in the poll, also cast her ballot in her party's stronghold in northern France.

The French Interior Ministry has said the turnout at midday stood at 25.9%, higher than at the same time in the 2022 legislative election, when just 18.43% of eligible voters had cast their ballots.

The vote is taking place during the traditional first week of summer vacation in France. This is probably one explanation for why absentee ballot requests were at least five times higher than in the 2022 elections.

France's public finances are likely to suffer whatever bloc wins the snap election, according to France's AFP news agency.

The agency has summarized each contending bloc's spending promises, which it says are short on detail and often ignore mathematical realities.

FAR-RIGHT NATIONAL RALLY

If the National Rally (RN) wins, it wants to cut value-added (VAT) sales tax on energy, partly financing the move, which it plans to initiate as early as July, by contributing €2 billion less to the EU budget, even though the bloc's 2021-2027 budget has already been voted through.

The savings would anyway not compensate for the loss in public revenue,  which the bloc says would mean €7 billion less for the public coffers for the rest of this year and €12 billion in a full year.

The party also, however, wants to raise a levy on exceptional profits from power producers and make shipowners pay normal corporate tax rather than the current tonnage tax.

Other costly future plans are to index pensions to inflation, reduce the retirement age to 60 for people who started work at 20 or before, exempt some workers under the age of 30 from income tax and raise teachers' and nurses' wages.

The RN would also get rid of a 2023 increase in the retirement age to 64 from 62, replacing it with a more progressive system that remains to be specified.  

LEFT-WING NEW POPULAR FRONT

The New Popular Front (NFP) alliance says it intends to raise pay for civil servants by 10%, provide free school lunches, supplies and transport and raise housing subsidies by 10%.

It says that it can finance this by introducing a tax on superprofits and reinstating a wealth tax on financial assets, each of which moves will raise €15 billion, according to the bloc.

The group also wants to freeze prices of basic food items and energy while raising the minimum wage by 14% with subsidies for small firms that cannot cope with the hike.

Other costly planned measures are hiring more teachers and health care workers and providing subsidies for home insulation, which the bloc wants to finance by closing tax loopholes, making income tax much more progressive and allowing families to inherit a maximum of €12 million.

The NFP would also scrap the 2023 increase in the retirement age and wants to eventually reduce it to 60.  

Unlike the RN, it does not plan to reduce the budget deficit in line with France's commitments to EU partners.
and rejects the EU's fiscal rules.

CENTRIST 'TOGETHER' ALLIANCE

Macron's party has said it is committed to cutting the budget deficit to the EU ceiling of 3% of GDP by 2027, but the possibility of achieving this has been called into doubt by institutions from the national auditor to the International Monetary Fund.

The party has also pledged to cut power bills by 15% from 2025 and to link pension hikes to increases in inflation.

In addition, it says that it will raise public sector wages, without, however, indicating by how much.

The party says it will introduce no broad tax hikes and will increase the amount parents can gift children tax-free.

 

Voters across mainland France have begun casting their ballots in the country's snap election, with polling stations opening at 8 a.m. (0600 GMT/UTC).

First projections of results are expected at 8 p.m. (1800 GMT/UTC), which is when the final polling stations are scheduled to close.

Preliminary official results are then expected later on Sunday evening.

Voters in France's overseas territories cast ballots earlier in the weekend.

Some 49 million people are eligible to vote.

The election was called by President Emmanuel Macron after his party suffered a resounding defeat at the hands of the far-right National Rally (RN) in European Parliament elections early in June.

Polls suggest that the National Rally has a chance at winning a parliamentary majority, which would put France under the control of far-right forces for the first time since the Nazi era.

The election is also being contested by a new leftist alliance, the New Popular Front (NPF), recently established to contest the elections.

The Ensemble (Together) grouping led by Macron's Renaissance party was trailing in third place in preelection surveys, ahead of the conservative Republicans (LR). 

Macron has a presidential mandate until 2027 and has said he won't step down before the end of his term, even if he has to contend with a prime minister who holds radically different ideas from his own.