(Paris) The campaign for the first round of the legislative elections saw its final fires on Friday throughout France, before being completely extinguished at midnight. And in the face of the comfortable lead given to the far-right National Rally party by the polls, the possible transfer of votes from the second round has mobilized minds.
As the campaign ends this Friday at midnight (6 p.m. Eastern time), all the polls give a very comfortable lead to the RN, credited with 35 to 37% of voting intentions and which thus largely distances the left (27.5% to 29%) while the outgoing majority is relegated to third place (20% to 21%).
The leader of the Socialist Party in the European elections, Raphaël Glucksmann, expressed his concern about “this impression that a wave is forming and that on Sunday evening, the whole country will have a hangover”.
“Macron dissolved the assembly, much too quickly, he will have lost everything, it’s over,” said Alain, 75, one of the 2,000 people who demonstrated Friday against the far right in Lyon.
The leader of the RN Jordan Bardella, 28, will nevertheless have to attract more voters if he wants to obtain an absolute majority in the National Assembly at the end of the second round on July 7, a condition that he himself even asked to accept the post of Prime Minister.
PHOTO DIMITAR DILKOFF, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
RN leader Jordan Bardella
On Thursday evening, on the sidelines of a European summit in Brussels, Emmanuel Macron promised “great clarity” in the voting instructions for the second round in the event of a duel between the RN and the left.
And, while the executive has in recent weeks put the RN and La France insoumise (LFI, radical left) on an equal footing “and those who follow them” – to designate the New Popular Front (NFP), a coalition of left which also includes the Socialist Party, the Ecologists and the Communist Party – Mr. Macron seemed to qualify this position Thursday evening in Brussels.
The socialist mayor of Lille and former minister Martine Aubry challenged him on X: “You cannot refuse the republican withdrawal which allowed you to be elected for your 2 terms. You are deliberately running the risk of an absolute majority for the RN.”
“I obviously want to prevent the extremes, and in particular the extreme right, from winning these elections,” Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said on Friday on BFMTV/RMC media.
Strong participation expected
Mr. Macron also denounced the “arrogance” of the RN, which intends to impose a harsh cohabitation on him in the event of victory and has “already divided up” all the government posts.
The party figure Marine Le Pen has in fact recently assured that the function of “head of the armed forces” of the President of the Republic was only a simple “honorary title”. From this prerogative of head of the Armed Forces, enshrined in the Constitution, flow powers in matters of foreign policy and defense that the presidents have retained during previous cohabitations.
PHOTO SARAH MEYSSONNIER, REUTERS
RN leader Marine Le Pen
On Friday, she also indicated that if Jordan Bardella were to become prime minister, he would oppose the reappointment of Thierry Breton as European commissioner, announced on Thursday by Emmanuel Macron to his partners.
A high turnout, which could be the highest in 25 years, is expected on Sunday: nearly two out of three voters plan to vote, compared to less than one in two in the 2022 legislative elections.
With the predictable consequence, “certainly some elected officials from the first round”, predicted to AFP the deputy general director of Ipsos Brice Teinturier, but also “a lot of triangulars”, “200 to 240”, according to the pollster.
The NFP said its third-placed candidates would withdraw.
“Uninhibited racism”
Gabriel Attal, for his part, accused the president of the RN of supporting “around a hundred candidates” who had made “racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic” remarks. His entourage distributed “a map of shame” where we find the controversial comments of 112 RN candidates.
Among them, the outgoing MP Roger Chudeau, who considered that a member of the government could not be binational because this posed a “problem of dual loyalty”, taking the example of the former socialist Minister of Education Najat Vallaud -Belkacem, a Franco-Moroccan whose appointment was “a mistake”, he declared.
Comments which sparked heated controversy. “We must fight with force and we must be outraged by these things,” declared Emmanuel Macron. For the outgoing President of the Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet, the party shows its “true face”, that of “uninhibited racism”.
This “personal opinion” from Roger Chudeau is “totally contrary to the RN project,” assured Marine Le Pen on Friday.
The rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris, Chems-eddine Hafiz, urged voters not to let “irrational hatred divide us”.