PARIS — For most countries, staging a massive international sporting event like the upcoming Olympic Games would be more than enough to take on as a summer project.
But President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to hold snap parliamentary elections starting Sunday has some warning the country faces chaos and uncertainty in the halls of power and on the streets of its major cities just as the world gathers for the Olympics kickoff party July 24 in Paris.
And while there are some clear favorites for the gold medals in swimming, track and field and gymnastics, political handicappers say that no one is sure of the outcome just days before the vote, even as the far-right National Rally (NR) is leading the polls following its dominance of European elections earlier this month.
“June 30 could be the second wave of the tsunami,” National Rally party chief Marine Le Pen told French newspaper Le Monde in an interview recently. “The first wave is strong, the second will carry everything.”
Earlier this month, Mr. Macron shocked France and its European Union allies by calling snap elections to be held on June 30 and July 7, after the National Rally defeated his coalition of parties on June 9, winning 30 of France’s 81 seats in the EU’s Parliament, more than double that of Mr. Macron’s centrist grouping.
The audacious idea, clearly, was to rally centrist parties to unite to prevent a National Rally victory. The gambit, however, baffled the entire political establishment, left, right and center.
“Macron’s decision is mind-boggling — even some of his closest advisers and supporters have had a hard time explaining it,” said Karim Emile Bitar, a political analyst at the Institute of International and Strategic Relations in Paris, a French think tank.
But others say that Mr. Macron, fed up with the violent opposition to his policies such as pension reform over the past few years, essentially threw a tantrum. Now in his second term since becoming the youngest president in French history in 2017, the former investment banker has seen his early luster fade after seven years in power and his dreams of revamping the country’s sclerotic government and business sectors blocked at multiple turns.
The success of the country’s far-right, which rejects many of Mr. Macron’s signature policies to make France a leading player in the EU and on the global stage, rankles even more.
“Macron is someone who has rarely lost and is finding it difficult to acknowledge that there’s an overwhelming rejection of his policies,” Mr. Bitar added. “It’s a sort of narcissistic injury that he’s trying to heal.”
Ms. Le Pen, by contrast, is credited with cleansing her party of its most extremist elements — including her own father — and exploiting incumbent fatigue with Mr. Macron to make her party more acceptable to a growing slice of the French electorate.
“In three words, we are ready,” telegenic National Rally President Jordan Bardella told a press conference this week. “Seven long years of Macronism has weakened the country,” he said, pushing policies to revive the economy and reduce inflation, fight crime in the streets, tighten citizenship laws and cut “spending that favors immigration.”
Losing the left
But many French voters, fed up with the centrist policies of the past governments, are swinging to the extremes, analysts said. That might hurt Mr. Macron because the president was gambling on the disunity among the various parties representing leftist voters to save some of his party’s seats in the next Parliament, observers said.
But on June 14, in a surprise announcement, the four main left-wing parties — the populist La France Insoumise (LFI), the Socialist Party, the Greens, and the Communist Party — announced they had reached an agreement to run together. The alliance, dubbed the New Popular Front (NFP), echoes a left-wing coalition that won the 1936 general election.
Mr. Macron called the alliance “unnatural,” criticizing the moderate Socialists for teaming up with LFI which has been labeled “antisemitic” by opponents for its support of Palestinians and its accusations of genocide against Israel for its conduct in the war – a stance that, as in the U.S., has proven popular with many young French voters.
On the right, meanwhile, Ms. Le Pen and the National Rally are luring voters who in the past had voted for the center parties and those further on the fringe, with immigration and social values proving potent issues.
Alex, a 20-year-old who declined to give his last name and who studies engineering in central France, said he had previously supported the nationalist Reconquete party but changed his vote to the National Rally during the European elections to strengthen the far-right’s chances.
“Their ideas are less radical [than Reconquete]. …I voted strategically to give as many seats as possible to the far-right,” he said.
Besides, he added, he likes Mr. Bardella, who would be prime minister should his party gain a majority and who has shown an ability to connect with young voters.
But complicating that narrative is the fact that French conservatives have their own problems uniting, with some still worried that Ms. Le Pen’s party is too radical to trust with power in Paris.
Both Reconquete and the center-right Republicans, once a main establishment party that held power for decades, have been split over supporting the National Rally. “The left-wing alliance was made easily, meanwhile the right is a mess, and that scares me,” Alex said.
A bigger question, observers say, is whether the National Rally’s win during European elections was a protest vote or if it has developed deep-rooted support in the nation over the past decade. At least some observers believe it has, and that Mr. Macron’s gamble will blow up in his face in the coming two rounds of voting.
“Twenty years ago, far-right voters were clearly and purely expressing a protest vote,” Mr. Bitar said. “But now, there are voters who genuinely adhere to the National Rally’s core ideas: A rejection of immigration, a growing fear of Islam, and a feeling that globalization is weakening the European middle class.”
Fears of the right
Still, some analysts expect that voters such as 30-year Paris art gallery manager Henriette will in the end cast a vote against the right to keep them from power, as happened in prior elections including in 2022 when Mr. Macron defeated Ms. Le Pen in the second round.
Henriette said she did not vote in the EU elections but said she will vote for Mr. Macron’s party – Renaissance – on June 30 “to create a dam against the far-right,” because it’s unthinkable to her that the far-right should come to power in France.
Mr. Macron’s top allies have not been shy in fanning the flames of fear over what a National Rally victory would mean.
“I fear for order, for relations between citizens, for serenity, for civil peace,” Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire told the France Info radio network Monday. “I don’t see the [National Rally] as a factor of stability and peace. I see it as a factor of disorder and violence.”
Whichever party wins, relations with the United States and Europe, the handling of the war in Ukraine and other foreign policy matters won’t likely change in the short term, despite the National Rally’s strong relationship with Russia’s Vladimir Putin and its criticism of France’s support for Ukraine. That’s because Mr. Macron will remain president until his term ends in 2027 and foreign policy is the president’s responsibility.
At the same time, polls do not expect the National Rally to win an absolute majority. A June 20 poll of voters by Ifop-Fiducial for LCI, Le Figaro and Sud Radio showed that National Rally led with 34% of the vote, trailed by an alliance of left-wing parties with 29% and Mr. Macron’s coalition at just 22%.
If the vote remains a mystery even to the experts, what will happen after the votes are counted and coalition politicking being is even more unclear.
Mr. Bardella of the National Rally has already ruled out governing with coalition partners, reflecting some say fears among Ms. Le Pen’s supporters that the traditional opposition party could run into trouble if it actually was forced to govern.
“I won’t be an aide to the president,” Mr. Bardella told French newspaper Le Parisien recently. “To govern, I need an absolute majority.”
The EU elections, which saw far-right parties surge in a number of major EU powers such as France, Germany and Italy, is likely not a good barometer of how the upcoming French vote will go.
“You cannot use the European election results to predict the outcome of the general election,” said Pierre Manenti, an author, historian and former Macron administration official in the Interior Ministry. “However, it would take a fortune-teller to predict what the ruling coalition will look like, and what program it will govern with.”
However, in the absence of a workable majority, “France risks becoming ungovernable” for the final years of Mr. Macron’s term, Mr. Bitar added. “What’s also likely to happen is a third round [of elections] on the streets with massive demonstrations from both sides that could jeopardize the Olympics.”