The champagne was ice cold at the headquarters of the right-wing National Rally (RN), but celebrations turned to disbelief as the first projected results of Sunday’s parliamentary election appeared on TV screens.
For days, Marine Le Pen had confidently predicted that her party would win an absolute majority and that her protégé Jordan Bardella would become prime minister. Instead, the National Rally was poised to come in third behind a left-wing coalition and President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist bloc.
This scenario failed to materialize, largely due to strategic bargaining among centrist and left-wing opponents, who dropped more than 200 candidates from a three-way contest to avoid splitting the anti-RN vote.
The projected result puts an end to the surge of the far right in France, carefully engineered by Le Pen, who has sought to clean up her party’s image and capitalise on complaints from voters angry over rising living costs, strained public services and immigration.
Of course, Le Pen and her party have faced disappointments before, most recently their loss to Macron in the 2022 presidential election, and they have managed to bounce back stronger than before.
But at the moment, the outcome is a bitter pill that’s hard to swallow.
“The results are disappointing and they do not reflect what the French people want,” said Jocelyne Cousin, 18, who came to party headquarters hoping for a victory.
After defeating the centrists in European elections in early June and overtaking the hastily formed leftist New Popular Front in the first round of parliamentary voting on June 30, the RN’s momentum seemed unstoppable.
Le Pen and Bardella blamed their party’s defeat on Sunday on what Bardella called a “shameful coalition” of anti-RN forces who mocked the party and disrespected its voters.
But Ipsos pollster Brice Teinturier pointed to the RN’s own shortcomings, including the revelation before the second round of voting that several of its candidates had expressed anti-foreigner views, raising questions about whether the party had truly shed its toxic past.
“What happened was that the RN candidates themselves showed in this campaign that either they were not prepared for this or that there were candidates among them who were anti-Semitic, xenophobic or homophobic,” Teinturier told France 2 television.
‘The tide is rising’
Florent de Kersauson, the RN candidate in Brittany in western France, acknowledged the result was damaging. But he also said voters may have felt the party was arrogant in predicting an absolute majority.
“I thought what he said was strange. It seemed like it was something that was very difficult to achieve,” said Kersauson, who lost the election to a pro-Macron candidate.
Bardella and Le Pen bravely addressed the results, saying the party had increased its share of seats in the National Assembly to a record high, and vowed to keep fighting until they regained power.
“The tide is rising, but it’s not as high this time. Our victory has simply been delayed,” said Le Pen, who will likely launch her fourth presidential campaign in 2027.
Many supporters gathered at the party headquarters in Paris shared a similar sentiment.
“I can see our victory coming. People will understand that the National Rally is not so terrible. I believe it will happen in 2027. I have a lot of hope and I will continue fighting,” said Elia da Cunha, 17.
Frederic-Pierre Vos, a close ally of Le Pen and a former RN party lawyer elected from a constituency north of Paris, said a hung parliament resulting from the election would mean an ungovernable France, offering new opportunities for the RN in 2027.
Still, despite the party’s strong talk, Sunday’s result was a clear blow.
Business newspaper Les Echos ran a photograph of a grim-faced Bardella on its front page with the headline “La clec”, or “the slap”.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
