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France’s radical leftist party coalition has won a plurality of seats in the country’s parliament but no majority. Putting together a ruling coalition looks like it will be difficult given the breakdown of results. Stacy Meichtry and Noemie Bisserbe report in The Wall Street Journal:
PARIS—A coalition of leftist parties won the most seats in France’s parliamentary elections, a stunning come-from-behind victory fueled by a groundswell of opposition to Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigrant forces.
The New Popular Front, a coalition of parties that includes socialists, greens and far-left France Unbowed, garnered 182 seats in the 577-seat National Assembly, according to an analysis of the interior ministry’s final tally by polling firm Elabe. The party of President Emmanuel Macron and its allies won 163, Elabe said, while Le Pen’s National Rally and its allies scored 143 seats.
The outcome marks a reversal of fortune for Le Pen’s anti-immigrant party, which a week ago notched an unprecedented victory in the first round of voting. The election’s failure to produce an absolute majority, meanwhile, risks saddling France with a hung parliament at a time when Paris is under pressure to find tens of billions in budget savings.
The New Popular Front benefited from agreements the coalition cut with Macron’s ranks to pool their voters by withdrawing hundreds of third-place candidates in order to set up head-to-head matchups with Le Pen candidates for the final round. The strategy, known as the “republican front,” allowed voters to coalesce around a single National Rally opponent in each of those districts.
Macron, who has vowed to remain in office until his term ends in 2027, now faces the challenge of cobbling together a government from a disparate group of parties that have little in common besides their desire to keep the far-right out of power. That scramble will unfold with less than three weeks to go before Paris hosts the 2024 Summer Olympics.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the firebrand founder of France Unbowed, the biggest party in the New Popular Front, delivered a barnstorming speech after the results were in, demanding the resignation of Macron’s prime minister, Gabriel Attal. He also called on Macron to give the New Popular Front a mandate to form a government and implement its agenda with uncompromising adherence to its campaign promises.
“The president must bow down and admit this defeat without trying to circumvent it in any way,” Mélenchon said.
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