It was a crushing blow for the far right: the Rassemblement National (RN) and its allies, who thought they could achieve an absolute majority in the Assemblée Nationale, will be a long, long way off from their goal at the end of these snap elections. The far right was projected to win between 138 and 145 seats, according to initial estimates by Ipsos Talan for broadcasters France Télévisions, Radio France, France 24/RFI and LCP-Assemblée Nationale. The RN's group itself was projected to win between 120 and 136 seats, while the disputed leader of Les Républicains, Eric Ciotti, and his RN-allied followers were projected to win 12 to 16 seats. They are not guaranteed to be able to form a group in the Assemblée – that requires 15 members.

Over the last days of the campaign, RN leaders Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella had asked voters to give them an absolute majority, and claimed they would be in a position to find new allies to form a government starting at around 270 MPs (289 are needed for an outright majority). The new legislature outlined by the first estimates has yielded no clear majority for any bloc, and least of all the RN.

The far right was overtaken by the Nouveau Front Populaire, which the Ipsos Talan institute estimated to have won 172 to 192 seats. The RN could nevertheless represent the largest group in the Assemblée Nationale, given that the left-wing parties and President Emmanuel Macron's coalition will each be fragmented into several groups. Even so, it is a major breakthrough for a group that had 88 seats in the previous legislature. But for the RN, it is nonetheless a disappointment, considering the momentum that carried Bardella and his party in the wake of the European elections, when it won with 31.4% of the vote.

The smaller-than-expected breakthrough can be explained by the tactical withdrawals between the two rounds, with candidates of all stripes dropping out to favor the best-placed candidate to beat the far right in most districts.

Meanwhile, the RN's campaign was weighed down by controversy. Before the first round of voting, a proposal to ban binationals from certain public jobs – which had been included in Le Pen's policy platform and in a bill introduced in the last legislature – polluted the final days of the RN's campaign. Prior to this, the party had begun to backtrack on some of its most costly proposals, such as its pension reform, or more symbolic ones, such as the ban on the wearing Muslim headscarves in public spaces. The far right's score in the first round of legislative elections (33.35%), despite the collapse of Eric Zemmour's Reconquête! party and the rallying of Ciotti, indicated a stagnation compared with the European elections.

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