The National Rally (RN) and its allies The Republicans (LR), led by Éric Ciotti, obtained more than 10 million votes this Sunday, July 30. An unprecedented score in the legislative elections for the Lepéniste party which only did better in the second rounds of the presidential elections of 2017 and 2022.
A historic score. Nearly 11 million French people, more precisely 10,625,662, voted for candidates from the National Rally and their allies during the first round of the early legislative elections this Sunday, June 30. Which places them at the top of the ballot and gives Jordan Bardella’s party hope of an absolute majority on July 7.
However, if we do not count the votes obtained by the candidates supported by the president of the Republicans Éric Ciotti who are part of the alliance, the RN obtains “alone” 9,377,297 of the votes. More than a million French people therefore did not vote for the National Rally but for their LR allies.
7.7 million votes in the European elections
Such a navy wave has only had an equivalent so far in the presidential elections of 2017 and 2022. If in the first round of the 2017 presidential election, Marine Le Pen had only obtained 7,678,491 votes. votes, this figure had increased to 10,638,475 in the second round. In 2022, Marine Le Pen was credited with 8,133,828 votes in the first round and 13,288,686 in the second round.
The European elections of June 9 – which led Emmanuel Macron to dissolve the National Assembly and organize these elections – had already been perceived as an earthquake. The National Rally list carried by Jordan Bardella obtained 7.7 million votes. That is almost two million votes less than in this first round of the legislative elections.
The 2022 score multiplied by 2.5
Likewise, never before had the National Rally, nor its predecessor the National Front, obtained so many votes in legislative elections. The far-right party multiplied by 2.5 its score for 2022 where it was credited with 4,248,626 votes in the first round and 3,589,269 in the second, winning 89 seats.
It should be noted that Reconquête had a greater success then than this Sunday, June 30. Éric Zemmour’s party gathered only 0.6% of the votes this time compared to 3.61% in the first round of the legislative elections in 2022. Similarly, in the European elections, Reconquête had obtained 5.5% of the votes. Enough to suggest that the RN won some of their votes this Sunday.
When the National Front, which became the National Rally in 2018, formed a parliamentary group in the Assembly for the first time in 1986 – due to the exceptional proportional voting system – the party obtained 2,760,880 votes and 35 deputies. A parliamentary group lost two years later when the two-round majority vote returned.
From 3,158,232 votes in the first round of the 1993 legislative elections, under the title of National Front, to 2,990,454 votes in the first round in 2017, the National Rally did not take off before 2022. Year in which the formation of Jordan Bardella reconstituted a parliamentary group for the first time since 1986.
As historian and political scientist Samuel Hayat – CNRS research fellow at CEVIPOF – explains on X, “what has changed (and what changes everything) is that the extreme right has completely swallowed up the votes of the right”.
