Here’s how the second round of France’s parliamentary election on July 7 will play out and what the possible scenarios are, as exit polls showed Marine Le Pen’s right-wing National Rally (RN) party won the first round on Sunday.
How does this work?
The election for the 577 seats in the French National Assembly is a two-stage process.
In constituencies where no candidate wins clearly in the first round, the top two candidates, and any candidate receiving more than 12.5% of the total votes registered in that constituency, move on to the second round.
Whoever gets the most votes in the second phase will win the seat.
Sunday’s heavy turnout means that nearly 300 constituencies will now face a potential three-cornered contest, which theoretically favours R.N.
To prevent these three-way recounts and block the RN, France’s center-right and center-left politicians have long practiced a “Republican Front,” under which the third-place candidate drops out of the race and urges voters to unite behind the second-place candidate.
All the candidates who reached the second phase have to decide by Tuesday evening whether they will withdraw from the election or participate in the second phase.
How is the situation this time?
Many political leaders offered guidance to candidates and voters on Sunday evening.
President Emmanuel Macron called for a broad rally behind “republican and democratic” candidates for the second round, effectively guiding them against the far-right Rallye Nationale and the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) party.
His former Prime Minister, Édouard Philippe, had explicitly told his party’s candidates to withdraw their nominations if they came third and to unite behind centre-left to centre-right candidates, excluding the RN and LFI.
On the left, Socialist and LFI leaders also called on their third-placed candidates to withdraw from the election to stop the RN.
The conservative Republican Party, which split before the vote and whose some lawmakers aligned themselves with the RN, offered no guidance.
What is to be done now?
The effectiveness of the “Republican Front” has weakened over the years, and many voters no longer pay heed to the advice of party leaders.
It is also possible that candidates may refuse to withdraw from the elections despite instructions from the political headquarters in Paris.
But the negotiations over the next 48 hours will be crucial and could significantly alter the outcome, and possibly even decide whether RN manages to secure an absolute majority in parliament.
This makes predicting the results of the second phase exceptionally difficult. Even election experts have urged caution in their seat projections.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)