Following a resounding defeat at the hands of incumbent French president Emmanuel Macron, Marine Le Pen expects her National Rally party to have a strong performance in parliamentary elections set to take place on June 12 and June 19. This coalition of nationalist parties is running in multiple seats on a populist message that asserts that the system is working against them.
“We’ve been preparing for a very long time for these elections,” declared acting National Rally President Jordan Bardella. “It’s essential our ideas are defended in the assembly.” Bardella asserted that the party would take firm stances on immigration, public safety, and French identity issues in parliament.
Centrist technocratic candidate Emmanuel Macron defeated Le Pen by a vote of 58.5% to 41.5% in the elections that took place on April 24, 2022. Despite losing soundly to Macron, Le Pen was able to obtain over 13 million votes, a record for populist right-wing parties in France.
Le Pen plans on running again in parliamentary elections in June and will likely hold her National Assembly seats in the 11th constituency of Pas-de-Calais department in northern France.
Back in 2017, when Le Pen won over 10 million votes in the presidential contest against Macron. In the subsequent parliamentary elections, Le Pen’s National Rally party picked up 8 seats in the French Parliament, which is made up of 577.
National Rally leaders believe that the party could perform better owing to how Le Pen grew her support across a broader geographical area in the recent presidential election cycle. According to a report by The Guardian, Le Pen performed strongly in north, northeast, and southeast France.
In French politics, the parliamentary elections that follow the presidential election usually sees the party of the electoral victor also pick up a majority in the parliament.
According to a poll by Harris Interactive released on April 25, Macron is expected to attain a ruling majority. Macron, in total, is expected to obtain 326 to 366 seats out of 577 if he is able to cobble together a center-right governing coalition with smaller parties.
The populist Right in France could potentially make gains in these elections and other elections in the near future largely due to the current economic instability that’s sweeping across Europe and France’s long-standing problems in assimilating third world migrants.
France is a country known for its revolutions and its willingness to discard its republics and embrace new political orders. After all, France is in the Fifth Republic stage of its political history. All things considered, if the managerial class in France does not get its immigration and economic houses in order, not only could a right-wing populist insurgency be in the cards, but France could experience a veritable collapse of its Fifth Republic. What will come next is anyone’s guess.
