French elections could pave the way for a far-right government

France This Saturday is a day of reflection before legislative elections that promise to be historic due to the more than foreseeable victory of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN), which could open the door to the first far-right government in eight decades.

Once the electoral campaign was closed, which had to be organized quickly and quickly after the surprise call of the elections on June 9 by the president, Emmanuel Macron,voting begins today in the French territories of America and then Polynesia before the polling stations open on Sunday in the rest of the country.

Voters are due to vote in the French archipelago of Saint Pierre et Miquelon in the North Atlantic from 10:00 GMT, followed by those in Guyana, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Saint Barthélemy and Saint Martin in the Caribbean, and a few hours later those in French Polynesia and the archipelago of New Caledonia in the Pacific.

In the France metropolitan area, the right to vote can be exercised at the polls from 8:00 a.m. (6:00 GMT) and until 6:00 p.m. (16:00 GMT) in rural areas and until 8:00 p.m. (6:00 p.m. in large cities.

French people abroad were able to vote online between June 25 and 27 and they were much more numerous than in the last legislative elections in 2022: Ministry of Foreign Affairs has announced that there have been more than 410,000 votes, compared to 250,000 two years ago.

A high participation

In fact, it is assumed that participation will be much higher as predicted by the polls of the last week, which have anticipated that between 64% and 67% of voters will go to the polls. 49.34 million registered voters.

If those figures are confirmed, they would be almost 20 percentage points more than in 2022, when voters represented 47.51% of the electorate in the first round.

Proof of the strong mobilization is that more than 2 million requests for proxy voting have been submitted, a mechanism that allows another person to go and deposit an elector’s vote on his or her behalf at a polling station. This is double the number in 2022.

Those same polls anticipated a clear victory for RN with its conservative allies of Los Republicanos (LR) who, led by its president, Éric Ciotti, have blown up the classic right-wing party.

This coalition could gather between 34 and 37% of the votes, clearly ahead of the new Popular Front which brings together the four parties of the left –La France Insoumise (LFI), Socialist Party (PS), Ecologists and French Communist Party (PCF) – which would achieve 28-30%.

In third place, the outgoing majority bloc of Macron’s government would have to make do with around 20% of the votes, while the Republicans, who have not accepted the pact with RN, would be left with 6-7%.

What strategy for the second round

Once the results are known on Sunday evening, the question will be what strategy each side will adopt for the second round on July 7, because in the first round only a few dozen voters will probably be directly elected. deputies of the 577 seats that are at stake.

The projections of seats made so far by the polling institutes without these two elements are merely indicative, taking into account that these 577 seats in as many single-member constituencies are contested in a battle where national political issues are mixed with other local issues.

Some of these projections presented a range of deputies for RN and its conservative allies with which they could exceed the 289 that would give them an absolute majority, which is the condition that the far-right candidate for prime minister, Jordan, has set to form a Government. Bardella.