The Irish Times view on the French elections: a defining week lies ahead

Emmanuel Macron’s snap election gamble has proved, as expected, a gift to the far-right Rassemblement National (RN), which emerged at the head of the field in Sunday’s first round. It got 34 per cent of the vote, compared to the united left Nouveau Front Populaire’s (NFP) 28 per cent.

But the French parliamentary election, which also saw the rout of the president’s Ensemble alliance (20 per cent), is far from over, and RN’s path to power not assured.

Only 76 candidates – those with absolute majorities of eligible voters – have so far been directly elected to the 577-strong lower house, the National Assembly, leaving some 501 seats to be contested again in the second round next weekend. There will be many seats where the RN faces a potential majority against it, if rivals’ voters unite behind a single candidate.

Precedent suggests they will do so quite effectively, and both the main anti-RN groups on Sunday appealed to their voters to do so, planning to withdraw from races where a third candidate would split the anti-far-right vote. However, it remains to be seen how smoothly this strategy will be implemented.

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The French voting system provides that the top two first-round candidates can run again in the second round, while a third may also do so if they take more than 20 per cent of votes. Polling institutes predict that this will mean straight run-offs in fewer than 300 constituencies with the possibility of three-way races in up to 285. In the last parliamentary elections there were only eight second-round three-way races.

In the past many left-wing voters preferred to abstain rather than cast second-round tactical ballots against the old Front National. A similar phobia about the left was also manifest in the centre right. This time, however, the turnout, up 20 percentage points on the last parliamentary election in 2022, suggests a higher level of engagement. Perhaps there is a sharper fear among their opponents that the RN could actually make it. Next weekend will be the test.