France’s conservative National Rally party drops to third place in latest legislative elections after leftist coalition and Macron’s liberal party form alliance

07/10/2024 / By Laura Harris

Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) has secured the highest number of votes in the recent French legislative elections but was awarded fewer seats than anticipated due to unexpected alliances of its rivals.

Running on a platform of social stability and controlling rampant illegal immigration, RN initially secured 33.2 percent of the vote in the first round of France’s legislative elections on July 7.

RN outpaced President Emmanuel Macron’s liberal Ensemble coalition (21.28 percent) and the left-wing New Popular Front (NFP) coalition (28.21 percent). Furthermore, RN and its allies won 38 seats in the first round after their candidates won more than 50 percent of the vote in their constituencies. Another 485 RN candidates advanced to the second round of voting in the 501 seats that remained where no one candidate won a majority of votes.

RN’s success position the party very close to the 289 seats needed for a majority in France’s parliament, the National Assembly. (Related: Conservative National Rally slaughters Macron in first round of French election.)

But Macron shocked the nation by announcing an informal alliance with the NFP to block RN from securing an outright majority in the parliament. Macron urged candidates in his coalition who qualified for the second round of voting but placed third to withdraw from the race to improve the chances of other candidates to defeat RN’s own candidates.

Meanwhile, leaders within the NFP – including Jean-Luc Melenchon of the La France Insoumise party, the largest party within the NFP – similarly urged their own candidates who placed third to pull out.

This strategic agreement effectively curbed RN’s ability to convert its vote share into seat counts. RN only ended up with 125 seats despite accounting for 32 percent of the vote in the second round of voting. Le Pen’s allies in the more mainstream conservative The Republicans under the faction of party president Eric Ciotti won another 17 seats and five percent of the vote, giving RN and its allies a total of 37 percent vote share and 142 seats. This placed them only third in the National Assembly.

Meanwhile, the NFP was able to secure 180 seats despite only having 25.8 percent of the vote – approximately three million votes less than what RN and its allies received. Macron’s Ensemble coalition followed closely behind with 159 seats and only 24.53 percent of the vote – nearly 3.5 million votes less than what RN and its allies got.

Leaders of the National Rally view election results as an astounding success

Despite the setback, Le Pen remained optimistic about the current growth of the RN in the National Assembly. “Two years ago we had just seven MPs. Tonight RN is the first party in France in terms of MP [member of parliament] numbers,” Le Pen noted.

Moreover, RN is likely to benefit from its current position in the next presidential election in 2027, especially as the country continues to struggle to deal with multiple crises, including a challenging and ballooning national debt. Furthermore, Macron will be ineligible to run in 2027 due to term limits, a situation that will likely weaken the liberal and centrist coalition’s influence.

Meanwhile, RN President Jordan Bardella criticized the alliance between Macron and the leftists as an “alliance of dishonor.” He also accused Macron of collaborating with the far-left to block RN.

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