Far-right National Rally denied victory in surprise France parliament election result

The second round results of France's parliamentary elections are in, and no single party or coalition has managed to secure enough seats to form an absolute majority in Parliament.

The first round of the election, which took place a week ago on Jun. 30, 2024, suggested that the far-right National Rally party would be able to form a government for the first time in French history.

However, it appears as though supporters of both the centrists led by President Emmanuel Macron and the leftists led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon have teamed up to deny the far-right a victory.

Two rounds

France has a two-round election system for its parliament, called the National Assembly.

In the first round, a candidate must get an absolute majority of valid votes and a vote total equal to 25 per cent of the registered electorate. If they meet these criteria, they are elected as Members.

If no candidate achieves this, a runoff election is held in the second round. Here, candidates who got at least 12.5 per cent of votes from the registered electorate compete against each other. The one who gets the most number of votes wins.

Any party or coalition needs to win 289 seats to form a majority in parliament.

In the recent first-round election, the National Rally, a hardline anti-immigration party which advocated stripping social security benefits from migrants, among other policies, was projected to take 30 per cent of the vote.

The far-left alliance of parties were projected to finish with 28 per cent, with Macron's centrists in third place at just 20 per cent.

Teaming up

After the surprise first-round result, the centrist and leftist parties made informal deals to drop out of races in seats with a National Rally candidate.

The idea was to avoid splitting the "anti-National Rally" vote, which would allow the far-right candidate to win.

Several prominent French citizens, such as football superstar Kylian Mbappé, called on French voters to "reject extremism" after the first-round results.

Their strategy seems to have worked out.

The National Rally and allied parties ultimately won only 143 seats, finishing in third place.

Macron's centrist Together alliance won 163 seats.

The surprise winner was the collection of leftist parties known as the New Popular Front, who won 182 seats.

While centrist prime minister Gabriel Attal has said he would resign in the wake of the defeat, it is unclear what France's government would ultimately look like, with protracted negotiations expected to take place.

Macron has also not indicated if he would step down, and can remain as president until 2027, overseeing foreign affairs and national defence.

National Rally leader Jordan Bardella said that the strategy to block his party from taking power was a "disgrace", but Marine Le Pen, the National Rally's likely presidential candidate for 2027, said that victory was simply "deferred".

Top image from Emmanuel Macron's Facebook page.