By Mimosa Spencer
PARIS (Reuters) – French voters started voting on Sunday in the first round of early parliamentary elections. These elections could lead to the country’s first far-right government since World War II. This could mean a major change at the heart of the European Union.
President Emmanuel Macron stunned the country when he called the vote after his centrist alliance was crushed in this month’s European elections by Marine Le-Pen‘s National Rally (RN). Her Eurosceptic, anti-immigrant party, long a pariah, is now closer to power than ever before.
Polling stations opened at 06:00 GMT and closed at 16:00 GMT in small towns and cities, finishing at 18:00 GMT in larger cities, when the first exit polls for the night and seat projections for the decisive second round a week later are expected.
However, the electoral system may make it difficult to estimate the precise distribution of seats in the 577-seat National Assembly, and the final outcome will not be known until the end of voting on July 7.
“We are going to get an absolute majority,” Le Pen said in a newspaper interview on Wednesday, predicting that her protégé, the 28-year-old Jordan Bardella prime minister. Her party has a high-spending economic program and aims to reduce immigration.
If the RN wins an absolute majority, French diplomacy could enter an unprecedented period of turbulence: with Macron – who has said he will continue his presidency until the end of his term in 2027 – and Bardella battling for the right to on behalf of France.
At a polling station in Sèvres, on the outskirts of Paris, the company’s 70-year-old former director, Didier Delacroix, said he had voted for Macron’s alliance.
“Otherwise it will be a complete mess,” he said.
France has known three periods of “coexistence” in its post-war history – when the president and government came from opposing political camps – but none with such radically different worldviews competing with each other at the top of the state.
Bardella has already signaled that he would challenge Macron on global issues. France could wobble from a pillar of the EU to a thorn in its side, demanding a cut in France’s contribution to the EU budget, clashing with Brussels over jobs at the European Commission and rolling back Macron’s calls for greater EU unity and assertiveness on defense.
A clear RN victory would also bring uncertainty about France’s position in the war between Russia and Ukraine. Le Pen has a history of pro-Russian sentiment and while the party now says it would help Ukraine defend itself against Russian invaders, it has also set red lines, such as refusing long-range missiles.
‘SPLIT VOTING FAVORS RN’
Opinion polls show the RN with a comfortable lead of 33-36% of the vote. A quickly assembled left-wing coalition, the New Popular Front, is in second place with 28-31% and Macron’s centrist alliance in third place with 20-23%.
The New Popular Front includes a wide range of parties, from the moderate center-left to the far-left, Eurosceptic, anti-NATO party France Unbowed, led by one of Macron’s most vicious opponents, Jean-Luc Melenchon.
How the poll numbers will translate into seats in the National Assembly is difficult to predict because of the way elections work, said Vincent Martigny, a professor of political science at the University of Nice and the Ecole Polytechnique.
Candidates can be elected in the first round if they receive an absolute majority of votes in their constituency, but this is rare. Most constituencies require a runoff involving all candidates who received votes from at least 12.5% of registered voters in the first round. The top scorer wins.
“If you have a very high level of participation, you may have a third or fourth party entering the fray. So then of course there is the risk of a divided vote and we know that the divided vote is in favour of the National Rally,” Martigny said.
For decades, the far right grew in popularity, and voters and parties that did not support it united against it as it moved closer to national power. But that may not be the case this time.
Martigny said no one knew whether candidates from Macron’s camp would consider dropping out of the second round to give rivals from the left a chance to defeat the RN, or vice versa.
Le Pen and Bardella have tried to make their party’s image more acceptable to the mainstream, for example by denouncing anti-Semitism. Le Pen’s father Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder and long-time leader of the RN’s predecessor, had a history of openly anti-Semitic comments.
But critics say the RN’s courtship of Jews is merely a cover, allowing it to deny accusations of racism while continuing to stigmatise Muslims and foreigners.
(Additional reporting by Paris bureauWriting by Estelle ShirbonEditing by Frances Kerry and Gareth Jones)
