The 2024 French election results shocked the nation, where the left and centrist alliance managed to contain the Far Right National Front party.
The Leftist alliance, The Popular Front finished with the most votes, followed by President Macron’s Together party, with the National Front finishing third.
The National Front far-right party were bitterly disappointed after finishing third, however, they still made significant gains from what they had before.
The Wire’s contributor Jahan Rezakhanlou asked Bertrand Bourgeois, senior lecturer of French Studies at the University of Melbourne about the French elections, how the National Front were contained, and the future of French politics.
Jahan Rezakhanlou: Thank you for joining us, Bertrand.
Bertrand Bourgeois: Thank you Jahan. A pleasure.
Jahan Rezakhanlou: And so why were the polls and expectations so high for the National Front?
Bertrand Bourgeois: Well, so I guess the National Rally had a very strong score at the European election. So I think that’s what triggered Macron to call for this legislative elections. And following that, the polls were mimicking what happened with the European elections, the two round system, when you vote by districts. So people vote in the kind of city or department in which they live. They are candidates for the members of the French parliament. So it makes all, um, less reliable. The other thing, I guess we would feel in France in the last few years, a sort of strong disbelief in Macron’s politics in regards to social unrest and economy, which we saw with the result they had at the European election.
Jahan Rezakhanlou: So the National Rally lost unexpectedly. How were they stopped?
Bertrand Bourgeois: I hate to be a bit skeptical. BUt rather than stop, I would rather say contained in the sense that they were not the first in terms of result. And we can, of course, be very happy about this result and they finished in third position. But as a single party, you could still say that with 20% of registered voters who still voted for the National Rally in the second round. That’s quite a big score. When other parties united, especially on the left side, to create coalition against the National Rally, which helped to contain and stop their results, they now have only 125 members of parliament, the presidential majority together. So from Macron has 150 and all the left together 178. But that means none of them has the absolute majority in a way means you can’t be the Prime Minister. It will make things quite difficult. So the other thing that really helped to contain the National Rally is the fact that it’s a two rounds election. So at the second round, when there were more than two candidates, often a candidate for the center or the center left. One of them withdrew. There were some alliances saying, we will be against the National Rally. So there was only one candidate against the National Rally candidate, which helped them to secure more votes. Finally, in legislative elections, you get a very strong abstention rate. For instance, in 2022, there were 57% of voters who abstained. We didn’t go vote, whereas this time 67% of French people registered to vote when to vote. So I guess there was a strong sense important to go vote and to go vote against the National Rally. So I believe that really it’s not really a failure of the National Rally. As I said, when they succeeded to get 125 members of Parliament when they only had 80 something, so they had 36 more members of the parliament now elected. So they’re clearly the third political party at the Assembly. And in France in general.
Jahan Rezakhanlou: So does France maintain a post-World War II attitude of anyone is better than the far right?
Bertrand Bourgeois: Somehow, yes. During the short campaign leading to that, we saw a lot of protests in France, literally created barriers against stand in the way of the National Rally party, especially from some portion of young people in France. So similar to what we saw in the past with Chirac at the presidential election 20 years from now. But in a way, with the percentage percentage we’re seeing, I’m a bit worried that it’s not working as well as it used to work in the past.
Jahan Rezakhanlou: What do you think is the future of France under this current political setup?
Bertrand Bourgeois: For the short term? The big question now is how to govern in the next two years. So no political party has the absolute majority at assembly. So unless Macron is able to kind of create some alliance with the moderate left and the they succeed to voting laws together. It seems a bit with this sort of parliamentary situation. Basically there is no agreement on voting laws and so on. The longer term, for me, what’s more worrying is what will happen in 27 with the presidential elections. So again, the National Rally will be present on the political agenda in France. Will the left succeed to unite and and propose, uh, a candidate? Uh, on the right side? It seems as kind of the right at the moment. It’s either part of the right is leaning towards the the National Rally, but the rest is a very small political party. Now, I think there is a lot of uncertainty.