There are less than two weeks until the 2024 French elections, which will be held on June 30, with a run-off on July 7. The leading party according to political polls is Marine Le Pen’s National Rassemblement, but the New Popular Front of the left is a few points behind. Macron’s center detached.
Less than two weeks to go legislative elections in France, set for Sunday, June 30, 2024, with a runoff vote on July 7. The decision to call new elections came from President Emmanuel Macron after the result of the European elections, and now the list of parties in the running is complete. Voters will not vote for the new President of the Republic – Macron will remain in office until 2027 – but for the members of the National Assembly, the French Parliament, and consequently also for the next government.
Who are the parties running in the French elections?
In the electoral polls it seems the far-right Rassemblement national party was favored: the candidate to lead the government is not Marine Le Pen (who could aim for the Elysée in a few years), but President Jordan Bardella. The parties of left they gathered in the New Popular Front, which has Jean-Luc Mélenchon among its leaders. The deployment of center, that of Macron’s Renaissance party and which represents the current prime minister Giabriel Attal, brings together other moderate forces. Then there are the Republicans (former Gaullists of the conservative right, but historically opposed to the far right), and also Eric Zemmour’s far right, Reconquête, a party recently left by Marine Le Pen’s niece, Marion Maréchal.
The estimate from the published Ifop/LCI survey is that the turnout rate it will be decidedly higher than in the first round of the previous legislative elections in 2022: 62%, compared to 47.5% then. Historically, legislative elections have attracted less interest than presidential ones, but in this case Macron’s exceptional decision to dismiss the National Assembly early has put the spotlight on the vote.
What the first political polls say after the European elections
Who will get the most votes according to political polls
The first party, according to the survey, would be National gathering is given in first position with 33% of the votes. It would follow New popular front with 28%. The center coalition of Renaissance and the other parties would only reach 18%. Then follow the deployments that will most likely be smaller: i Republicans with 5% (if they present themselves independently, while their support would drop to 4% if they allied themselves with Rassemblement national); Reconquete, with 3%. 3% of voters would choose another left-wing candidate, 2% another right-wing candidate, 1.5% a far-left candidate and 0.5% one from the sovereign right.
The problem, however, will be how these votes will be transformed into seats. In fact, in France, for legislative elections the national territory is divided into 577 single-member constituencies: in each constituency only one candidate wins, the one who obtains at least 50% of the votes (if no one exceeds this threshold in the first round, the two most voted go to the ballot, which will be held on July 7). Therefore, the most important thing is not so much which party has the most votes at a national level, but how they are distributed and whoever manages to have a majority in multiple constituencies.
At the moment, it seems more likely that the candidates of the National Rassemblement on one side will enter the polls, and those of the New Popular Front on the other. However, it is more difficult for the candidates of the center coalition to succeed in a large number of constituencies. It seems unlikely, in the current situation, that Le Pen’s RN will be able to have an absolute majority of seats in the National Assembly (289), but it could get quite close. Much will depend on how the voters left without a candidate will vote in the runoff: on the one hand the supporters of the conservative right of the Republicans (who tried to expel their president Eric Ciotti for having announced an agreement with Le Pen, but in any case they are unlikely to vote for the left in the second round), and on the other the Macron voters.
