French PM thinks opposing a far-right majority may be successful

As candidates withdraw to prevent dividing the vote, Gabriel Attal calls on the campaign to revert the National Rally's rise.

After more than 200 candidates withdrew from Sunday's legislative election runoff in order to avoid splitting the anti-far-right vote, France's prime minister stated that widespread efforts to stop Marine Le Pen's National Rally (RN) from gaining an absolute majority in parliament would be successful.

Gabriel Attal stated on Wednesday that "we can avoid an absolute majority for the far right." He also mentioned that 90% of candidates from the centrist party of President Emmanuel Macron withdrew from three-way elections if they were in third place and an RN candidate was ahead of them.

With 33% of the vote, RN and its prospective future prime minister, 28-year-old Jordan Bardella, easily won the first-round election last Sunday. The New Popular Front (NFP) alliance came in second with 28% of the vote, while the president's Together alliance received 20% of the vote.

The number of second-round elections with three candidates increased to over 300 due to historically high turnout, which improved the anti-immigrant party's chances of winning the 289 seats necessary for an absolute majority.

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While precise seat predictions are challenging to make before the specifics of each constituency race are known, early estimations from pollsters indicated RN would return up to 300 lawmakers.

That seems less likely given the large number of withdrawals from the runoff. According to a poll released on Wednesday, the RN would lose by between 190 and 220 seats on Sunday. The NPF was ranked second in the Harris Interactive poll, with 159-183, while Macron's centrist party came in third, with 110-136.

According to Attal, moderate contenders were justified in abstaining, even in favour of a competitor from the far left France Unbowed (LFI), a member of the NFP's leftwing coalition. He declared, "Neither the LFI nor the NFP can win an absolute majority." "RN is able to."

He added: “What’s at stake is to do everything so that the extreme right does not have an absolute majority. It is not nice for some French to have to block … by voting in a way they did not want to. I say it’s our responsibility to do this.”

According to Le Monde, 221 candidates, including 132 from NFP and 83 from Macron’s camp and its allies, had withdrawn from potential three-way runoffs by the Tuesday evening deadline, leaving 94 so-called “triangular” contests.

The “republican front”, aimed at shutting the far right out of power, has long been a feature of French politics but had shown signs of fraying in recent elections as voters tired of having to vote against candidates they disliked rather than for those they backed.

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Even while the parties have mainly embraced it, there is no assurance that this time around, centrist voters will be willing to support candidates from the far-left LFI or that left-wing supporters who are upset with Macron will be pleased to support candidates from his team.

When questioned about suggestions to form a temporary coalition administration in case of a hung parliament, Attal restated his suggestion that a number of mainstream parties work together on specific bills. "I want the Together camp to be as large as it can be. Following that, we'll work to win majorities for each project individually," he stated.

On Wednesday, former prime minister Édouard Philippe made the case for a more official, wide-ranging coalition. He stated that there could be "no discussion about a coalition with LFI" and that the alliance could span from "the conservative right to social democrats," but it would not include the far left. The radical-left party, which maintains that established parties are no longer beneficial to democracy, is said by many centrists to not share "republican values."

On Tuesday, Le Pen stated that should RN fail to secure an absolute majority, she might attempt to establish a right-wing coalition with members of other parties. Bardella had already declared that he would only form a cabinet if it had a strong enough mandate.

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She stated that in order to form a government, her party would need to secure the support of an additional 19 MPs, or "for example, 270 MPs." "Of course, we'll go and do what the voters elected us to do if we then have a majority," she remarked.

More than a few more dissident candidates from the divided center-right Les Républicains party have already received backing from RN, but most observers think the far-right party will struggle to get more than a handful of legislators.

Priscille Thevenot, the spokesman for the government, refuted Le Pen's accusations on Wednesday that Macron had carried out a "administrative coup d'état" following the president's recruitment of several high-ranking officials to the public sector in the interim between the two voting rounds.

“We knew that Marine Le Pen lies, now we know she also manipulates information,” Thevenot said after a cabinet meeting. She said a similar number of nominations were made every week and these had been “completely routine” and “nothing specific”.

The UN human rights chief on Wednesday warned of a hardening of rhetoric in recent months, including hate speech and dehumanising language against immigrants and other minorities, linked to elections in Europe and elsewhere.

“This is an alarm bell,” Volker Turk said. Turk refused to comment on specific elections but said: “Narratives that denigrate the other, that dehumanise, that make scapegoats of migrants or refugees or asylum seekers or minority groups” are on the rise.

Following the public disclosure of allegedly racist or discriminatory comments and social media posts, a number of RN candidates were deselected or are the subject of court investigations. On Wednesday, Bardella stated that while it "could happen," he was dealing sternly with any "black sheep" among the party's candidates.

The most likely result of the second round of voting, according to analysts, is a hung parliament, which would cause months of impasse in politics. Macron's credibility abroad could also be harmed by the disarray; he hasn't given a public speech since last week.