Runners-up one week, front-runners the next. At the close of the second round of France's parliamentary elections on Sunday, July 7, the left, which came second in the total first-round vote share, has risen to first place, in a turnaround that its leaders had not dared to dream of. The Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) alliance of left-wing parties would, according to initial projections by Ipsos Talan for French broadcasters France Télévisions, Radio France, France 24/RFI and LCP-Assemblée Nationale, have between 171 and 187 MPs in the Assemblée Nationale. This represents at least 20 more than the 151 MPs elected in June 2022 as part of the previous left-wing alliance, the New Popular Ecological and Social Union (NUPES).

Although the left-wing alliance is in the lead – ahead of President Emmanuel Macron's coalition (projected to have secured between 152 and 163 seats), and the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party and its allies (between 134 and 152 seats) – its score is still far from an absolute majority, which would require 289 seats (out of 577).

Within the NFP, this second round of voting has also shaken up the balance between La France Insoumise (LFI, radical left) and the Parti Socialiste (PS, left). The Socialists are poised to double their number of MPs compared with 2022, with an estimate of between 60 and 64 seats (compared to 31 in June 2022), and thereby close in on the LFI group, which is projected to comprise between 73 and 80 MPs (compared with their previous count of 75 members). LFI should remain, by a small margin, the leading group on the left, but it would no longer be in a dominant position within the alliance.

The Greens, meanwhile, are on track to have between 33 and 36 MPs in the Assemblée (up from 23 in 2022), while the Communists are projected to have 11 or 12 elected members, close to the 11 that they elected two years ago.

The question now is whether the left-wing parties will be able to display the lasting unity they will need if they hope to govern. Together, they outnumber the presidential coalition, which has been projected at around 152 to 158 seats. On Sunday evening, LFI founder Jean-Luc Mélenchon hailed a "magnificent surge of civic mobilization," leading to a "result that was said to be impossible."

The LFI leader immediately urged Macron to call on the left-wing alliance to form a government. "No subterfuge, arrangement or combination would be acceptable," he warned. "The president has the power, has the duty to call on the Nouveau Front Populaire to govern, [and it] is ready to do so. The NFP will respect the mandate given to it by the votes, the word it has given will be kept, the NFP will apply its program, nothing but its program yet all of its program."

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