French Election: Gaul Is Divided into Three Parts

Whatever France’s President Macron wanted to achieve by calling parliamentary elections, this was probably not it. Stung by the success of Marine Le Pen’s RN in elections to the EU parliament in June, when the RN took nearly 32 percent of the vote, Macron called for snap elections. The first round of voting, on an unusually high turnout, saw the RN increase its share to 33 percent, while the left/far-left coalition known as New Popular Front (NFP) took 28 percent and Macron’s Ensemble Alliance stood at 20 percent.

It looked as if the RN might be on the brink of power, with a chance of winning the 289 seats needed to have a majority in the 577-seat National Assembly. But a second round of voting was still ahead. To win a parliamentary seat in the first round takes an absolute majority, and the RN had won few of those. There was all to play for in the second round of voting, held yesterday. The initial reaction was that RN might slip through the cracks opened up by three-way fights in the second round, but, in the end, around 200 Ensemble and NFP candidates stood down to give whoever had the better chance of beating the RN candidate that chance. There was to be a “Republican Front” against the RN, and, on the day, it worked.

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Andrew Stuttaford

Andrew Stuttaford is the editor of National Review's Capital Matters.

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Whatever France’s President Macron wanted to achieve by calling parliamentary elections, this was probably not it. Stung by the success of Marine Le Pen’s RN in elections to the EU parliament in June, when the RN took nearly 32 percent of the vote, Macron called for snap elections. The first round of voting, on an unusually high turnout, saw the RN increase its share to 33 percent, while the left/far-left coalition known as New Popular Front (NFP) took 28 percent and Macron’s Ensemble Alliance stood at 20 percent.

It looked as if the RN might be on the brink of power, with a chance of winning the 289 seats needed to have a majority in the 577-seat National Assembly. But a second round of voting was still ahead. To win a parliamentary seat in the first round takes an absolute majority, and the RN had won few of those. There was all to play for in the second round of voting, held yesterday. The initial reaction was that RN might slip through the cracks opened up by three-way fights in the second round, but, in the end, around 200 Ensemble and NFP candidates stood down to give whoever had the better chance of beating the RN candidate that chance. There was to be a “Republican Front” against the RN, and, on the day, it worked.