Withdrawals by left-wing and Macronist candidates multiplied on Monday, the day after the National Rally’s unprecedented score in the first round, to prevent the far right from obtaining the absolute majority that Jordan Bardella has once again demanded by denouncing “alliances of dishonor.”
Some 155 candidates involved in three-way races have already withdrawn on Monday in order to counter the RN, according to a provisional count by AFP.
Among these, at this stage, there are a majority of representatives of the left-wing alliance New Popular Front, as well as three ministers (Sabrina Agresti-Roubache, Marie Guévenoux, Fadila Khattabi).
Candidates still in the running have until Tuesday 6:00 p.m. to decide whether to withdraw and thus drastically reduce the number of three-way races, which stood at more than 300 on Sunday evening due to the high turnout in the first round (66.7%).
On Sunday, the navy blue wave swept through with more than 10.6 million votes, or 33.1% of the vote, a historic level – excluding the second round of the 2022 presidential election.
The RN has already elected 39 deputies, starting with Marine Le Pen in Pas-de-Calais. The party with the flame, allied with Eric Ciotti, qualified in 443 of the 577 constituencies and is in the lead in 296 of them.
With 27.99%, the NFP already has 32 elected representatives. But it lost the communist Fabien Roussel, swept away by the RN tidal wave in the North. Another of its leading figures, François Ruffin, is in a difficult position in the Somme even with the withdrawal of the Macronist candidate.
The outgoing majority is taking stock after its defeat (20.8% of the vote). While Gabriel Attal is one of about ten ministers likely to win on Sunday, four others are off to a bad start.
– “Plural” assembly –
Emmanuel Macron told his ministers gathered at the Elysée that “not a single vote” should “go to the far right”, recalling that the left had mobilized against the RN in 2017 and in 2022, allowing its own accession to the Elysée, according to a participant.
However, he did not give any clear instructions to withdraw from the second round of elections, according to several ministerial sources.
While several Renaissance candidates who came third have already announced their withdrawal, such as Sylvie Casenave-Péré, who came third behind Marie-Caroline Le Pen in Sarthe, some intend to stay, believing they have more reserves of votes than the left, or that their withdrawal would favour the RN, such as Loïc Signor in Val-de-Marne.
The outgoing majority is struggling to speak with one voice when it comes to supporting a rebellious candidate between those who, like Edouard Philippe or Bruno Le Maire, want “neither the RN nor LFI”, those who take a “case-by-case” approach like the outgoing president of the Assembly Yaël Braun-Pivet and those who, on the left wing, do not set any conditions.
Anything rather than the RN’s “disastrous project”, this is the line defended by the Prime Minister, who spoke with the candidates by videoconference on Monday afternoon.
On TF1 on Monday evening, he called on the French to elect “a plural National Assembly” to “prevent the National Rally from having an absolute majority”, because “that would be catastrophic”.
– Grande coalition –
LFI coordinator Manuel Bompard deplored on France 2 “a form of cacophony” from the “Macronist camp”, believing that there were “still many cases that have not been resolved”.
The left-wing parties have instructed their candidate in third place not to take part in the second round. The rebellious candidate has thus withdrawn in favor of the former Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, second behind the RN in Calvados.
“It is an alliance of dishonour in both directions,” protested RN president Jordan Bardella, also on TF1, in the face of this outline of a republican front.
He again asked voters for an “absolute majority” in the second round. “I need the French people to remain mobilized, to grant me more than 289 deputies”, “to build the recovery of the country that I believe is urgent and necessary”, declared the candidate for Matignon. He nevertheless explained that if he were to miss a handful of elected representatives, he would consider relying on deputies from the right.
Before this wave of withdrawals, pollsters were predicting a large relative majority of at least 240 seats for Jordan Bardella’s troops, or even a narrow absolute majority of up to 295 seats.
The effect of the withdrawals “will rather work against the RN”, according to the deputy general director of Ipsos Brice Teinturier, who envisages a more relative than absolute majority.
Alternatively, several officials from the presidential camp, such as Yaël Braun-Pivet, called for a large “coalition” of communists in LR the day after July 7.
But PS leader Olivier Faure refused on Monday to be “the substitute for a majority in disarray”, setting out his conditions for a possible “majority of projects” of the “republican forces”, which Gabriel Attal called for on Sunday.
For his part, the LR president of Hauts-de-Seine Xavier Bertrand considered that rather than an “RN government or a backroom coalition”, it was necessary to consider “a government of national revival”, which he also called “provisional government of the Republic”, to “get the country out of the impasse into which Mr. Macron has plunged it”.
The legislative elections have a strong echo abroad. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has expressed concern about “a dangerous trend” for Europe, in the context of a rise of radical right-wing parties on the continent and Russian influence within these parties.
