The leftist New Popular Front (NPF) coalition won over 188 seats, French President Emmanuel Macron’s centrists and allies landed 161 seats, and far-right leader Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN), which had earlier predicted an “absolute majority,” trailed in third place with 142 seats in the results of the second round of the French parliamentary elections last weekend.
The radical leftist party France Unbowed (LFI), which plans to recognise a Palestinian state in two weeks, leads the NPF bloc and has already demanded that the left coalition in parliament form a government.
The snap poll was called by Macron following his party’s disastrous showing in the European Parliament elections, which handed 40 per cent of the vote to the far-right.
In the subsequent French elections, Macron, his centrist coalition, the centre-right parties, and the leftist parties worked in what was almost a unified effort to block the far-right RN from gaining a majority in the National Assembly.
As the sun set on Sunday after the polls closed, younger people, some wearing keffiyehs and raising Palestinian flags, lined the Place de la Republique in eastern Paris, anxiously awaiting the results of the elections.
A majority of French voters, 51 per cent, support a ban on arms sales to Israel that could further support the Israeli killing machine. At the same time, younger people between 18 and 24 years of age are more likely to be aware of Israeli efforts to undermine Palestinian rights, according to the latest poll by the Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy.
Olivier Schouteden, an assistant professor of history at the AUC in Cairo, said that “as much as the invasion of Gaza has fuelled political life in France ever since October 7 last year, it did not feature very heavily in this parliamentary campaign.”
“I suppose it was not very present in French people’s minds as they headed to the polling stations,” he added.
Director of the European Studies Unit at the Egyptian Centre for Strategic Studies (ECSS), a think tank, Tewfik Aclimandos said that “the war in Gaza played a big role in internal French politics, but not in this election.”
Nevertheless, demographic tensions, inflamed by the Israeli war on Gaza, played a major role in granting the LFI the highest number of seats in the Assembly.
Aclimandos said that “France Unbowed relies on the votes of immigrants and Muslims.” He described the voter base of the NPF as “not just Muslims but also certain groups of urbanised younger people.”
Schouteden said that “large urban areas generally and unsurprisingly voted for the president’s party and the left” in the elections.
Mistakes made by far-right candidates contributed to their defeat in the elections. One candidate, Ludivine Daoudi, withdrew from the race after pictures of her wearing Nazi symbols surfaced.
“It can be assumed that the amateurism of some of the RN candidates during this campaign turned part of the electorate away from the RN,” Schouteden said.
“Quite a few RN candidates appeared very unprepared and borderline incompetent, some indefensible.”
He deduced that “this made it look like the normalisation of the RN was not complete.”
Aclimandos also attributed some of the loss to the “gaffes” made by candidates from the far-right.
It “acted in a manner that strengthened all pre-existing fears,” he said.
The blunders by far-right candidates not only distanced voters from the far-right and the RN but also convinced many that it was crucial to prevent them from gaining power, even by voting for other candidates who may not have been their first choice.
“Voting in this election could have meant believing in the candidate or the desire to block a candidate,” Aclimandos said.
The results of the elections signify “a political and popular will to block the rise of the far-right and the possibility of a far-right government,” according to Schouteden.
Mobilisation and coordination inside the two coalitions to block the far-right also played an important role in convincing the electorate to vote in what was the highest turnout in any French parliamentary elections in more than two decades.
Marine Le Pen’s RN and the far-right received the most votes. However, in the second round of the elections, centrist and leftist candidates strategically withdrew from three and four-way races, consolidating their support behind a single candidate.
This approach aimed to ensure victory for that candidate, even if more people had voted for the far-right, Aclimandos said.
“The exhortation to not give in to xenophobia and hatred, the symbolic use of the historical ‘popular front’ to label the new alliance between left-wing and green parties, and the related capacity to form a coherent group, all contributed to the success of the left,” Schouteden said.
However, the far-right’s failing to get a majority in parliament did not vindicate Macron and centrism. The left does not have enough seats in the National Assembly to form a government on its own.
“This is hardly a triumph for anyone,” Schouteden said.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 11 July, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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