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One week before the first round of the legislative elections in France, the extreme right leads the polls and seeks to reach an absolute majority, ahead of the left alliance and the official bloc.
National Meeting (RN, extreme right) and his allies, among them the president of the conservative Republican party Éric Ciotti, would obtain between 35.5 and 36% of the votes, according to two polls published today.
The RN and its allies are ahead of the New Popular Fronta coalition of left-wing parties (from 27 to 29.5%) and the president’s centrist alliance Emmanuel Macron (from 19.5 to 20%).
The president of RN, Jordan Bardellastrives to moderate the image of the party, like its leader, Marine Le Penwho wants to erase his father’s inheritance Jean-Marie Le Penknown for his racist and anti-Semitic comments.
“I want to reconcile the French and be the prime minister of all French people, without any distinction,” said Bardella in an interview with the Journal du dimanche (JDD).
Faced with the prospect of a far-right government, thousands of people demonstrated in Paris and other French cities to denounce the “danger” that the RN poses to women’s rights.
During the protest, feminist associations and unions criticized the “facade feminism” of the far-right party.
The newspaper Le Monde It also published a letter from 170 diplomats and former diplomats, in which they warn that a victory for the RN “would weaken France and Europe” at a time “when war is among us.”
Fear of an RN victory led the left-wing opposition to unite.
He New Popular Front It is a coalition led by socialists, environmentalists, communists and The Rebellious France (LFI, radical left), a coalition that has even been applauded by the former socialist president François Hollande, who has presented himself as a candidate in the elections.
The leader of LFI, Jean-Luc Melenchonassured that he is not seeking to “eliminate himself or impose himself” as a possible prime minister if the left wins the second round on July 7.
Macron’s alliance seeks to position itself as the alternative against the “extremes”, in reference to RN and LFI.
“Our country needs a third force, responsible and reasonable, capable of acting and reassuring,” said the president of the outgoing National Assembly (lower house), Yaël Braun-Pivet, in the newspaper The Tribune.
In the polls, Macron’s popularity is in free fall, although it does not reach the levels it had during the yellow vest crisis in 2018: it falls 4 points to stand at 28% in the Ipsos barometer for The Tribune.
It also falls according to the IFOP survey for the JDD, where it loses 5 points to 26%.
The unexpected decision of the French president to call early legislative elections after his failure in the European elections on June 9 against the extreme right, which obtained twice as many votes as his alliance, represented a “political earthquake” of uncertain consequences, according to the experts.
Macron, in power since 2017, has faced difficulties in carrying out his program since he lost the absolute majority in the National Assembly in the June 2022 legislative elections.
But he has defended the dissolution of the lower house as a necessary option to “clarify” the political panorama.
The head of the German government, the chancellor Olaf Scholztoday expressed his concern about the possibility of the extreme right coming to power.
“I hope that the parties that are not [Marine] Le Pen, so to speak, succeed in the elections. But that has to be decided by the French people,” he said on the ARD network.
Macron, whose term ends in 2027, ruled out resigning regardless of the outcome of these legislative elections.
But, in the event that the RN wins clearly, its “moral guilt will be absolutely immense,” considers Vincent Martigny, professor of Political Science at the University of Nice, and “we can imagine that the only honorable solution would be [su] resignation”.
THE NATION
