Despite the fact that the Le Pen party received the most votes, the results of the French election demonstrated that President Emmanuel Macron’s “alliance of dishonor” with the far left effectively prevented the populist National Rally from winning a majority.
In the second round of Sunday’s snap legislative elections, National Rally (RN) received more votes than any other party, totaling over 8.7 million, or 32.05% of the vote, according to the French Interior Ministry.
The right wing would reach over 10 million and 37.05 percent of the vote if they teamed up with their electoral alliance allies from the contested Les Républicains president Eric Ciotti, who received about 1.4 million votes, or 5% of the total.
By contrast, Emmanuel Macron’s centrist coalition got 6.3 million votes, or 23.15 percent of the vote, while New Popular Front alliance, which consists of communists, and environmentalists under the radical leftist leadership of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, only managed to garner about seven million votes, or roughly 25.7% of the total.
Le Monde now projects that the New Popular Front will receive 182 seats, the most of any party, but garner 1.7 million fewer votes than the RN. Macron’s alliance secured an approximate total of 168 seats, while the RN and its allies secured the third-highest number of seats, estimated at 143, despite leading in the vote share.
A behind-closed-door agreement between the New Popular Front and President Macron, wherein each party committed to withdrawing in favor of the candidate who had the best chance of defeating the populist party in more than 200 districts, is what caused the inequality in votes and seats in the National Assembly.
Many questioned Macron’s willingness to support the leftist bloc after the National Rally witnessed a surge in the first round of voting. Just days before forming the agreement to thwart Le Pen, Macron did warn that voting for either the New Popular Front or the National Rally would spark a “civil war.”
