Marine Le Pen lost. That doesn’t mean France won.
For weeks, pundits have been speculating that France’s snap legislative election could blow up in President Emmanuel Macron’s face—and boy did it. Only it’s blown up in a way nobody expected. Instead of the much-feared far right victory, the election will probably force the centrist president into an awkward coalition with the left, an exercise likely to leave both sides badly bruised.
Macron had called the snap poll long before he was legally mandated to, following the far right’s surprise win in last month’s European election. Then, Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigrant National Rally had stunned Paris by coming first in France, with 31% of the vote. Macron reacted by dissolving the legislature three years ahead of schedule and calling a snap poll, seemingly to shock French voters into rethinking.
France’s one-of-a-kind two-round legislative election—which whittles down the field between rounds, but can still leave many candidates competing in the final run-off—is hard to forecast. After the far right again topped the first round on June 30, many of Macron’s own centrists felt forced into a tactical alliance with the left to try to block the National Rally, with some centrist candidates who had come in third agreeing to drop out in favor of the left, and some third-place left candidates doing the same reciprocally for the center. The tactic worked, and the result—foreseen by no one—was a legislature with the left as the largest group, the centrists second, and the far right languishing in third place.
But how presentable is this left bloc that will presumably now get to govern France in coalition with the ever-so-presentable—though obviously past his sell-by-date—centrist president?
Mélenchon wants France out of NATO.
