For the first round of snap parliamentary elections on Sunday, June 30, 7.4 million more French people turned out to vote than for the European elections. 32.9 million people cast their ballot on Sunday, compared with 25.5 million on June 9. And that's even 9.6 million more than at the 2022 parliamentary elections. "This is an unprecedented election, which has found its voters," said Frédéric Dabi, pollster IFOP's director. "Everyone understood what was at stake." Turnout was up everywhere. Between young and old, rural and urban, rich and poor, "the gaps have narrowed enormously," according to OpinionWay vice president Bruno Jeanbart. "The electorate is therefore more representative than in a low-turnout election."

In the first round of parliamentary elections, Macron's camp attracted 2.8 million more votes than in the European elections, the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) left-wing alliance 1.2 million (when adding up the June 9 scores of left-wing parties) and the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) 2.8 million. The RN, which came out on top on June 30, garnered 9.4 million votes in the first round, to which must be added the 1.2 million votes of its allies from the conservative Les Républicains (LR) party – those aligned with LR's disputed leader Eric Ciotti – making a total of 10.6 million. In the 2022 elections, the RN got 6.4 million less votes.

"Most of [RN leader] Jordan Bardella's voters on June 9 were easily turned into RN voters for the parliamentary elections," said Emmanuel Rivière, an opinion specialist and lecturer at Sciences Po. "In addition, a million votes probably came from [Eric Zemmour's far-right] Reconquête! party, which went from 1.3 million votes in the European elections to 240,000 in the parliamentary elections."

In an election, the citizen's state of mind plays a role. "Some voters were convinced that their side would win and that Jordan Bardella would be prime minister," said Rivière. "And that's one of the driving forces behind turnout." Among RN voters, many consider that "voting is pointless," but "something has changed," he continued. As dissatisfied as ever, this time they came out to express it.

The survey on "the sociology of electorates and the profile of abstentionists" carried out by the Ipsos-Talan institute for France Télévisions, Radio France and Public Sénat, released on June 30, shows that citizens who say they are "rather not" or "not at all" satisfied with their lives showed up to the polls. Between the European and parliamentary elections, they boosted the RN's scores by 6 and 8 points respectively. Blue-collar workers, who rarely vote except in presidential elections, turned out in force. Their participation rose from 38% in the 2022 parliamentary elections to 44% in the European elections, then to 54% on Sunday. This mobilization benefited the RN: 53% on June 9 and 57% on June 30.

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