France will begin an electoral process this Sunday that was not expected to begin until 2027. It will renew its National Assemblyin some early legislative elections which are attended by a weak governing majority and which can end up consolidating the advance of the extreme rightwhich entertains the possibility of governing with Jordan Bardella.

The political earthquake broke out on the same night of June 9, when the mere release of the exit polls, which already anticipated a comfortable victory for the National Group of Bardella was enough for the president, Emmanuel Macron, to address the nation and announce the dissolution of the National Assembly. “I have heard your message,” she said.

“There is nothing more republican than giving the floor to the sovereign people,” he declared with a serious face, aware that redistributing the cards could lead to the feared ‘cohabitation’. Not in vain, in the following days he made it clear that he did not plan to resign and that, therefore, he would accept coexistence with the Government formed from the parliamentary majority.

France has been forced into ‘cohabitation’ on three occasions during the Fifth Republic, the last of which was between 1997 and 2002, and now polls predict that a fourth will come. The ‘Macron effect’ that propelled him to the Elysée in 2017 was already showing signs of wear and tear in the face of an extreme right that has adapted its speeches and its image to more generalist canons and to a left that has survived in recent elections thanks to unity.

Macron’s Renaissance presents itself as a moderate, centrist path, in contrast to two other large blocks, the first of which is headed by National Group. He far-right party founded by Jean Marie Le Pen under the name of National Frontly inherited by his daughter Marine now has as its main banner a young MEP, Jordan Bardella, who seeks to be prime minister.

He has clarified, however, that he will only take office if he has an absolute majority in his favor, in a campaign in which he has given clear clues about the measures he will apply if he comes to power. Tackling immigration with “urgency” is one of his great mottos, as well as thoroughly reviewing public finances classified as “irresponsible.”

The Republicans have joined the right-wing blocat the cost of an internal split. The party leader, Eric Ciotti, has broken with the traditional red line that separated his group from the far right and has come up against an internal rebellion, including attempts to remove him, in which the courts ended up intervening. The National Rally and Les Républiques have agreed not to annul each other in dozens of constituencies and Ciotti has the chance to be a minister in a potential Bardella government.

The left, united

On the left flank the New Popular Frontan alliance whose main pillars are: Socialist Partythird in the last European after a few years relegated, already The Rebellious France (LFI) of former presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon. This bloc, which its rivals have categorized as extreme left mainly due to the presence of LFI, has not yet clarified who would lead its Executive if it comes to power.

The two televised debates were held by representatives of the New Popular Front, Manuel Bombard, of the LFI, and the leader of the Socialist Party (PS), Olivier Faure, although their rivals had requested that Mélenchon occupy the chair, arguing that he is the hidden candidate for the position of head of government.

Mélenchon has suggested that it is time to pass the baton to new, younger figures, while Faure has gone so far as to say that the former presidential candidate “cannot be prime minister” at a time when whoever occupies this position must precisely “appease” and tend bridges.

However, the pro-Macron front has made it clear who its candidate is, which aspires to keep Gabriel Attal, the main person responsible for the electoral campaign, as prime minister. Macron’s potential political dolphin, Attal was chosen by the president himself to try to relaunch a Government that, without an absolute majority in the National Assembly, has been forced to resort on numerous occasions to a constitutional prerogative to force the approval of laws key, at the risk of tempting fate with successive motions of censure.

Attal has warned of the risk of “jumping into the void”, understanding that only his list represents the centrism and moderation that France would need at this time. The prime minister considers that the economic program that he champions is the only serious one and the Minister of Finance, Bruno Le Maire, has gone so far as to publicly mock Bardella’s lack of concreteness in key reforms such as pensions.

First round

The June 30 round is only the first round of a two-round system, with July 7 as the key dateThe French National Assembly is made up of 577 deputies, elected by as many constituencies: in each of these, there is only one winner in the first round if someone obtains more than 50 percent of the votes cast and these also represent 25 percent of the total electorate.

Contrary to what happens in presidential elections, only two candidates do not have to go to the second round, but All those who obtain more than 12.5 percent of the votes will pass the first round.. It is in this final appointment when the candidates and parties must test their options and determine possible support for a rival candidacy, in a kind of damage containment that involves opting for the lesser evil.

The importance of alliances is therefore key to trying not to lose votes in the first round – for example by distributing constituencies within each block – while in the second round it will be key to where the votes of the eliminated candidates or those without options end up. Traditionally, the ‘republican front’ woven by the moderate formations invited in these second rounds to unite votes against the far right.

Macron, at the end of a campaign marked by ambiguity, has promised “maximum clarity” for that final round in terms of voting instructions, without clarifying whether he would ask for the vote for the New Popular Front in the event that one of his candidates had options against the extreme right.

In any case, it will be on the night of July 7th that all the unknowns will be cleared up, or not. Polls place the conservative alliance ahead of its rivalswith an intention to vote that is around 30 percent, but it is not clear that they can achieve the absolute majority that Bardella demands to govern without external dependencies.

The outgoing legislature made evident the risk of this fragility, since the Attal Government, previously led by Elisabeth Borne, barely had 245 supports. A situation of flagrant ungovernability could arise, which would force France to hold out for at least a year: the Constitution establishes in its article 12 that there cannot be a new dissolution of Parliament in twelve months.

Polarization complicates the possibility of a technocratic government, while The Elysée has clarified that Macron does not contemplate resorting to article 16 of the Constitution and granting himself exceptional powers to avoid a power vacuum.r, a nuclear button that has only been pressed once during the Fifth Republic, in 1961 in response to the coup in Algiers.