The French election results took everyone by surprise. Fresh from winning first place in the European Parliament elections, the momentum was with the far-right Rassemblement National from the outset. Polls and the first round of voting only seemed to confirm their lead.
Certainly pollsters dialled back their predictions prior to yesterday’s vote but still none of them were predicting anything other than the far-right taking first place.
So it was with resounding cheers from some and stunned silence from others that the first projections of the final election result were delivered last night. Far from coming first, the far-right had in fact come third, behind both the left-wing alliance, the Nouveau Front Populaire and Macron’s camp, Ensemble.
There are many implications from the French election result, including questions over the future of Macron’s domestic agenda, the empowerment of the French Parliament, a potential transition to a new political culture and the risk of constitutional crisis or paralysis.
These will all play out over the coming weeks and months, but there is another question with longer-term implications. Does this mark the return of the French left?
The left in France has been in a bad way for many years now. The presidency of François Hollande was particularly unpopular and the arrival of Macron on the main political stage in 2017 drew in lots of disaffected centre-left voters who bought into Macron’s vision of fighting back directly against the anti-European populists.
At the same time, the populist left under Jean-Luc Mélenchon gained steady momentum and by 2022 was the main political force on the French left, dominating the alliance that left-wing parties formed for those elections and only narrowly missing out on qualifying for the second round of the presidential election.
The overall effect of these trends was to leave the left weakened and internally divided. Much as the collective left regained some ground between 2017 and 2022, the burdensome presence of the far-left limited the potential for any wider appeal. After the initial recovery, the left stagnated.
It would have been easy to conclude at that point that the left was doomed, caught in a trap of being too populist to grow and too weak to break back into the main political contest and draw in centre-left voters.
Yet elections this year have provided an unexpected escape route. First, the European Parliament elections led to a reordering of the balance of power between the different parties on the left. With the 2022 alliance left behind following a bout of acrimony and infighting, the main left-wing parties in France (the Parti Socialiste, La France Insoumise, the Greens and the Communists) ran separate campaigns. Under the leadership of Raphaël Glucksmann, this led to the centre-left Socialists coming out on top, with about 14% of the vote, compared to around 10% for La France Insoumise.
Already before the final results came through it was obvious this would have implications for any future alliance between the left-wing parties. The political landscape had evidently shifted since 2022 and the centre-left could now claim a stronger voice in any future left-wing alliance.
What was not so obvious was just how rapidly those implications would be given practical relevance.
Macron’s decision to call snap legislative elections provided the second piece of the puzzle for the realignment and potential revival of the French left. With the European Parliament results to back them up, the Socialists successfully argued that they needed to be given a greater share of the candidacies for the left-wing alliance in this election. This they duly received, representing the joint left in 175 constituencies, up from 71 in 2022.
Even at this point, these efforts may have been for naught if the left couldn’t actually win seats. Yet a combination of an unpopular centrist camp and fear of the rise of the far-right led to massive wave of tactical voting on Sunday night that helped propel the Nouveau Front Populaire into first place. That increase in seats didn’t just make the left overall stronger, it also likely made the Socialists in particular stronger. Why? Because La France Insoumise had been clever in securing the safest seats for themselves. The unintended consequence of this was that as the left won more seats, they went to the Socialists more than to the far-left.
In the end, La France Insoumise won 74 seats, compared to 59 for the Parti Socialiste. This is already a significant shift in favour of the centre-left and the dynamic may progress further. In the next couple weeks political groups will be formed in the newly elected Assemblée Nationale and the Socialists will be working to draw in unaffiliated MPs and those from small parties into their group. At the end, the centre-left and the far-left will likely be on a fairly equal footing.
Thus, through a series of events and decisions that France’s left-wing leaders only partially controlled, we have moved from a left that is too populist and too weak to one that is notably stronger and more moderate. The trap that looked set to doom the French left was undone by addressing both elements more or less simultaneously.
Will this be enough? Everyone knows that these elections are more of an interim than a new order. The real prize remains the presidential election in 2027 (after which a new President will certainly call fresh legislative elections in order to give themselves a majority to govern). It’s an open question whether the left will be in a position to get a credible candidate in place, with wide enough appeal for both the populist and moderate factions and able to present a serious challenge to the centrist/far-right duopoly that has dominated since 2017. What is clear, however, is that a scenario that would have been fanciful previously is now very much on the table.
For the French left, there’s everything still to play for.