Le Pen’s far right is on the cusp of power in France – what happens next?

The anti-immigrant National Rally (RN) led a first round of voting on Sunday in exceptionally high-stakes elections that could put France’s government in the hands of a far-right party for the first time since World War II.

Le Pen has urged voters to push her party over the line and hand it a majority of seats in the National Assembly, an outcome that would force Macron to share power with RN’s new poster boy Jordan Bardella, Le Pen’s choice for PM.

Another outcome, which many pollsters say is the most likely, would be a hung parliament in which no coalition can muster a majority, bringing gridlock to the European Union’s second-largest economy and its leading military power.

One thing is certain: France’s constitution says there can be no new parliamentary election for another year, so an immediate repeat vote is not an option.

Can the far right win an absolute majority?

Le Pen’s party goes into the second round in a position of unprecedented strength, buoyed by its first-round success and its triumph in European elections earlier this month.

RN candidates and their allies topped the race in 296 out of France’s 577 constituencies on Sunday, winning 39 of them outright with over 50% of the vote – a feat no far-right candidate had managed before.

Those results put the far right on track to win anything between 240 and 300 seats in the 577-seat National Assembly, according to polling institutes, giving it by far the largest number of seats in the lower house of parliament and placing it within reach of an absolute majority.

French elections have always been a matter of dynamique (momentum), and the dynamique is clearly carrying the National Rally. Whether it can clear the last hurdle will hinge on its opponents’ ability to join forces in round two.

France’s two-round elections have traditionally barred the far right from power, with voters from left and right typically banding together in a “Republican Front” to defeat the Le Pen camp – a practice known as building a barrage (dam) against the far right.

But the dam has weakened over the years, even as the far-right wave has grown stronger at each new election, sweeping up former mainstream voters.

“There is now a sizeable share of the mainstream right that would consider voting for the National Rally – or at least no longer sees it as a threat,” said Stéphane Fournier, a researcher at polling institute Cluster 17. “That is especially the case when the other candidate is from the left, which many conservatives are more scared of.”

Céline Bracq, head of the polling agency Odoxa, said surveys found that conservative voters are “twice as likely to vote for RN as they are for a left-wing candidate”.

Getting very close to 289 seats may also be enough for the National Rally, who could win over a few more lawmakers with promises of government jobs. On Tuesday, Le Pen said she would reach out to independents and like-minded MPs if her party fell just short of a majority.

The idea of working with the party co-founded by Le Pen’s father Jean-Marie, a convicted racist and anti-Semite, used to be taboo. But the National Rally has already fractured the mainstream right, luring conservative leader Eric Ciotti, and others could yet follow.

What happens then?

Should the far right clinch a majority, Macron would be expected to name 28-year-old Bardella as prime minister – Le Pen having set her sights on the 2027 presidential election.

Such an arrangement would weaken the president both at home and abroad, forcing him into an awkward power-sharing system – known as “cohabitation” – with an extremist party that has historic ties with Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

While Macron would maintain overall control over French diplomacy, Bardella has said he would use the powers of prime minister to block the supply of long-range weapons to Ukraine.

With control over domestic policy, a far-right PM would be free to implement the party’s platform, which includes plans to slash immigration, boost police powers and curtail the rights of French citizens with dual nationality to work in some defense, security and nuclear-industry jobs.

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