{"id":524113,"date":"2024-07-09T17:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-07-09T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leregardlibre.com\/?p=524113"},"modified":"2025-12-13T22:54:16","modified_gmt":"2025-12-13T21:54:16","slug":"legislatives-2024-analysis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/leregardlibre.com\/en\/policy\/france\/legislatives-2024-analysis\/","title":{"rendered":"The left is only the relative winner of the French election"},"content":{"rendered":"

The New Popular Front, which came first in Sunday's second round of early legislative elections, does not have an absolute majority in the Assembly. France is right-wing, and Emmanuel Macron will have to take this into account when appointing the Prime Minister.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Has the Fifth Republic reached the end of its life? Under this system, the French head of state can preside over the country with the support of a majority of his or her camp in Parliament. Emmanuel Macron's centrist group already lacked an absolute majority (set at 289 seats) since 2022, and has now been relegated to second place since Sunday's second round. Contrary to what the polls were saying, it was not the Rassemblement National (RN), which came third, but the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP), an alliance of leftists set up to block the RN, which won a relative majority with 178 seats. The presidential camp took 150 and the RN 142.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first lesson to be drawn from this result is that the voting instructions given by the left and the Macronists worked so well that it was the NFP that came out on top, even though the RN had come out on top in the first round a week earlier, following its success in the European elections on June 9. This was the last straw for the presidential movement, which had been hammering home the message that there was no risk in voting for the left against an RN candidate, since Jean-Luc M\u00e9lenchon and his friends would never reach the gates of power. The speech by the radical left-wing leader, who was the first to speak on behalf of the left on Sunday evening, shows that he doesn't see things the same way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A left illegitimate to govern<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

According to M\u00e9lenchon, it is up to the NFP to become Prime Minister and implement its program, without any concessions to other parties. A strange vision for the representative of a political force whose only interesting measure in its program is the transition to a Sixth Republic, with the introduction of proportional representation and effective decentralization of tasks. At a time when the system's current crisis calls for a Helvetian-style experiment in compromise, the populist tribune doesn't even bother to hide his love of a single power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n