The first round of the legislative elections in France in 2024 has ended with the victory of Marine Le Pen’s far-right party, National Rally (RN), and with the collapse of Emmanuel Macron’s formation. However, since there is no absolute majority, that is, more than 50% of the votes with at least 25% of registered votersthe French country will undergo a second round next Sunday, July 7.

But how do elections work in France and why is the victory of the far right not definitive? The National Rally has achieved a resounding and unprecedented victory in this round, but insufficient since it has obtained 33.15% of the votes together with his conservative allies. This is far from the 50% that is requested and it remains to be seen what will happen in the second round.

For its part, the left-wing coalition of the New Popular Front (NFP) has achieved 27.99% of the votes and thus constitutes the second great political force, ahead of the outgoing majority of the president, Emmanuel Macron, which is the big loser of the elections with 20.04%. The Republicans, the party of the classic right, which has been blown up by the pact of its president, Eric Ciotti, with RN, was left with 6.57% alone and 10.23% if the votes of other right-wing candidates are added.

What will happen in the second round of the elections in France?

The strategy to stop the far-right in France for the second round focuses on withdrawing the candidates with the fewest votes in case it benefits other candidates from formations with more votes. And the National Group seeks that desired absolute majority and the rest will try to stop it, as the left-wing and center parties have stated. While RN and his associates are going to dispute 485 constituencies of the 577 that there is, when its candidates finished in first place in the first round in 297 of them.

For its part, the left-wing coalition has managed to get its candidates to qualify for the second round in 446 constituenciesalthough in first position only in 157 of them.

Despite being a wish, the truth is that the idea of ​​the potential of the extreme right to be the first political group in the next National Assembly is what all the demographic institutes point to. However, it remains an open question to achieve an absolute majority, that is, with at least 289 seats, This is the condition that Le Pen and her candidate for prime minister have set, Jordan Bardella, to form Government. Polls suggest that Le Pen’s party could reach that absolute majority.

How do elections work in France?

The French elect in the legislative elections the 577 deputies who will represent them in the National Assembly in as many single-member constituencies. In the first round, those candidates who are elected are those who are They get more than 50% of the votes in their constituencyprovided that this represents at least 25% of those registered in the census.

If no one wins the election in the first round, The first two and eventually the third or fourth candidates advance to the second, provided that they receive a number of votes equivalent to at least 12.5% ​​of the voters.

The question will then be whether some of these unlikely contenders will choose to withdraw from the race in order to avoid the victory of the one considered to be the great adversary. Everything suggests, after the statements of the leader of La France Insoumise (LFI), for example, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who will choose to withdraw candidates where they have come in third place. This means that the triangular ones would mainly benefit the far-right National Group.

And in the second round, the candidate who obtains the most votes wins the seat. That is why it is common for a candidate, even if he has qualified for the second round, to withdraw if he believes that he has little chance of preventing a candidate whose victory he wants to avoid at all costs from being a deputy. It is a strategy that has been used in the past against the extreme right.

What is the National Rally and what is the ideology of Le Pen’s party?

Le Pen’s party is a far-right party Eurosceptic and nationalist. The name of the National Group is the one adopted by the party after the refoundation in 2018 led by Marine Le Pen, daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, one of the founders of the FN and for decades its emblematic face. At its founding, on October 5, 1972, different far-right groups gathered their forces to create a strong party. Within it, former collaborators with the Nazi regime or the Vichy regime and xenophobic sectors They formed a united entity that put Le Pen at the forefront, but for years it was nothing more than a small group.

Now it is the first force and aspires to govern France in the coming years if it wins the second round. A success that he achieved after her daughter Marine Le Pen took power and excluded her father. She continued betting on topics such as immigration or national identity, but with innovative language. The party accepted the institutional game, abandoned the banner of leaving the European Union and the fights against abortion or homosexual marriage were no longer central.

Last week the game presented his political priorities in case of coming to power after the legislative elections and which include, among other measures, tackling immigration “urgently” and undertaking “a big bang of authority” within the educational system, as well as thoroughly reviewing the current financial system to clean up accounts that it considers “irresponsible.”

The leader of the National Rally, Jordan Bardella, aspires to be prime minister of a future government of “national unity” and, under a slogan that alludes to “alternation”, has outlined the programme accompanied by his partner Marine Le Pen and the president of the Republicans, Eric Ciotti, who has brought his party into this bloc at the cost of a real internal earthquake.

Immigration “control” is one of the central themes of the programme, as according to Bardella it is not an issue that “divides” the French but rather “unites” them. As concrete measures, the National Rally proposes eliminating the right to nationality for those born in France, reintroducing the crime of “illegal residence” and extending the periods of administrative detention to over three months.

He hopes to “convince” Macron to hold a referendum on migration issues, given the limitations of the future National Assembly to undertake major reforms, particularly those that could involve changes to the Constitution.