Victory no certainty for Marine Le Pen as France faces second vote

Marine Le Pen speaking as the results came in from the first round of voting in the snap election - Francois Lo Presti/AFP

There is no doubt that the outcome of the first round of voting in France’s general election is a huge slap in the face for Emmanuel Macron.

The French president’s party is languishing in third place and his political gamble – to call a snap vote after being trounced in European elections – now appears a misguided act of pique.

Sunday night was also a major victory for Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN), which clearly came first in terms of votes, at around 33-34 per cent, an all-time record.

However, round two of this lightning contest – on July 7 – is still far from an electoral slam dunk for the hard Right.

Firstly, the Left-wing New Popular Front (NFP) alliance – a mix of hard-Leftists, Socialists, Greens and Communists – fared strongly on Sunday, approaching 30 per cent, while Mr Macron’s Together coalition was way back in third place, on around 20 per cent.

And while some pollsters forecast that an absolute majority of 289 seats could be within the RN’s grasp, such predictions appear hazardous at best, for one simple reason.

Historically most second-round run-offs in French parliamentary elections are between two finalists, namely any candidate who gains more than 12.5 per cent of the registered vote.

But this time there will be a record number of “triangular” three-way run-offs in round two, at least 243 out of 577 constituencies.

Edouard Philippe, the leader of the Right-wing Horizons party - Castel Franck/Shutterstock

What will now follow is a complex game of horse-trading and tactical voting.

The situation is relatively simple for the RN, whose only allies are renegade members of the conservative Republicans party who broke ranks with most of the movement to forge an alliance with the Le Pen camp.

But when it comes to all the other parties, the question is, who is prepared to step down for who, and that remained deeply unclear on Sunday night.

Republicans unallied to Ms Le Pen gave no guidance.

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Jean-Luc Mélenchon, volcanic figurehead of the France Unbowed, LFI, part of the Left-wing alliance, announced that its candidates would systematically step down if in third place in round one and call for voters to back any candidate against RN.

His Socialist allies issued the same call, while the pro-Macron centre was more nuanced.

Edouard Philippe, a Right-wing former prime minister and part of Mr Macron’s Together alliance, refused to be categorical, calling on voters to block both RN and Mr Mélenchon’s LFI party.

In other words, he made a distinction between the Mélenchon “extremists” and the rest of the Left-wing alliance, which has divvied up constituencies across the country.

Jean-Luc Melenchon, the firebrand leader of the hard-Left LFI - Abdul Saboor/Reuters

For his part, Mr Macron was even hazier, saying he hoped to forge “a large, clearly democratic and republican rally for the second round”.

His prime minister Gabriel Attal later made it clear his party would desist if in third place in round two on a case-by-case basis.

He may be on the ropes, but Mr Macron clearly still hopes that the French will come to their senses and vote intelligently for centre-ground candidates whenever possible, raising the small but not impossible prospect of him forging a coalition within parliament to keep out both the National Rally and the hard-Left.

As France has found out to its dismay, the President is fond of gambling with the country’s future.

This latest bet may have the longest odds of all – and end in him being a lame duck for the next three years alongside the first hard-Right government since the Second World War.

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