France's populist, anti-immigration party appears to have been unable to repeat its success in the first round of the legislative election, with the first projections after polls closed Sunday showing left-wing and centrist parties blocking the National Rally from taking power. The final results of the runoff may vary, and could leave France in gridlock, with no party winning a majority, the Washington Post reports. Weeks of negotiations would be the next step. Just after the first projections were released, Jean-Luc Mélenchon of the far-left France Unbowed called for centrist President Emmanuel Macron to invite the bloc to form a government. Macron's office said those decisions will wait a bit.
Voters seem to have responded to calls to prevent France from having its first far-right government since World War II. That would mean Macron's gamble in calling the election paid off, though not enough to keep him in office. "As his minority government was set to lose political support while facing a rising far right, he [counterintuitively] decided to accelerate that process as the best antidote against its full realization," said Alberto Alemanno, a professor of European Union law in Paris. "Today's electoral results proved him right." A government statement Sunday said Macron "will ensure that the sovereign choice of the French people is respected," per CNN.
National Rally leader Jordan Bardella did not take the results well, saying that Macron and Prime Minister Gabriel Attal played "dangerous electoral games" with the far left by calling the election. That decision has led the country "into uncertainty and instability," he said. At a rally in Paris, Mélenchon credited "a magnificent surge of civic mobilization" and said voters "have clearly rejected the worst-case scenario." Attal gave a speech praising the decision to keep left- and right-wing extremes from power, per the New York Times. He conceded that, with the Paris Olympics weeks away, France "is experiencing an unprecedented political situation." Official results are being posted here. (More French elections stories.)
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