2024 French Legislative Elections - Who are the Major Players?
A potential disaster for the sitting president Emmanuel Macron and his Together group, the left wing and the far-right are both expected to make major gains while the last establishment party crumbles
Part of a series of articles on the French 2024 Legislative Elections. Part 1 and 3 also include an article on the first round of voting and the second round of voting.
The first round of two for the 2024 French Legislative elections saw a victorious day for both the far-right and the united left wing alliance, with the Together political grouping around Macron’s self-proclaimed moderate platform seeing the largest hit.
Four main groups are running in the elections which might see the most dysfunctional and challenging government for the Macron to work with.
National Rally
A far-right party founded by extremist Jean-Marie Le Pen and led by his daughter Marine Le Pen and party president Jordan Bardella, it’s an anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic and xenophobic party that appeals to those disatisfied with the establishment in French politics.
The party’s policies are also generally Islamophobic, and while there’s been an attempt at “cleaning up the party’s image” on behalf of Marine Le Pen, going so far as to kick out her father from the party due to his overt radicalism, which has seen some members of the public fall to the party’s rhetoric, its central policies haven’t changed too much.
The party has previously called for pulling out of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and developing closer ties to Russia, since moderating to a position of just opposing military aid to Ukraine, although it remains fairly eurosceptic.
The party had achieved a result just shy of 30% in the first round of voting and is likely to win over 200 seats.
Marine Le Pen remains to be the biggest figure in the party, her anti-multiculturalism and protectionist economic policy going counter to the mainstream parties, although the party’s president, Jordan Bardella, has seen an increase in his personal popularity.
Bardella is very involved with social media, using social media to never explicitly state but heavily imply some of his racist and xenophobic ideals. A character made to buy into the youth who are shifting further right, he represents the same dangerous ideals that the rest of the party does, simply disgusing it using rosy language.
New Popular Front
The New Popular Front is a coalition of dozens of left wing political parties in opposition to Emmanuel Macron and the far-right. There are four main groupings in the alliance, the left-populist France Unbowed, (led by Jean-Luc Melenchon), otherwise known as the LFI, the Ecologists (led by Marine Tondelier), the social democratic Socialist Party (led by Oliver Faure) and the French Communist Party (led by Fabien Roussel), other notable parties include Génération.s, Place Publique and the New Anticapitalist Party.
A successor to the former NUPES alliance made to participate in the 2022 legislative elections, the alliance has been mostly organised by Melenchon associate François Ruffin, with the idea to completely seperate itself from both Macron’s agenda and the far-right.
Most voters in the left support the NFP as the main opposition to the rising far-right threat, seeing that Macron’s concessions to the far-right have only resulted in their emboldening.
The NFP supports classical French left wing policies such as increased public spending, undoing Macron’s pensions reforms and turning the retirement age to 60, raising wages in the public sector and linking wages to inflation, increasing housing and youth benefits and raising the minimum wage. It also sees new policies such as a cap on the raising of prices on essential goods and a reformation of the EU’s agricultural policies.
Concessions have been made within the alliance, an example being that the LFI has conceded on its opposition to funding Ukraine.
Although the LFI has had the media inaccurately smear it as “far-left” due to a shift to the right in French politics and Macron’s rhetoric, it has remained the driving force in the French left wing alliance. However, whether Melenchon becomes the prime minster in the case of a left wing victory remains highly contencious even within party ranks.
Ensemble (Together)
Ensemble is a coalition of center to right-wing pro-Macron political parties, controlled mostly by Macron’s Renaissance movement.
While it has a varying number of members which encompass from moderate and social liberals to classical liberals and those with more right wing economic agendas, all parties in the alliance are mostly complicit with the president’s ruling, rarely deviating from the president’s decisions.
They have rallied around the president’s call for a “moderate” platform, stating that a civil war would break out were the far-right or the left to win. However, the president’s seen as increasingly toxic and a hinderance to the party’s chances of winning.
The alliance has moved from centrist to right wing on economic and political issues since its formation, with Macron undergoing major cuts to welfare during his time in president, supporting a reactionary immigration bill that was supported by Le Pen and has been seen as increasingly authoritiarian with his continued funding and usage of the police, especially against various protesters.
Ultimately, the alliance follows a president with dying support, and while some of its globalist, socially progressive and pro-Europeanist policies remain popular with a good chunk of the populace, more and more turn away from what’s seen as Macron’s toxic brand and failing party.
The Republicans/Branches
The Republicans are representing of the long standing conservative force in French politics representing the right gaullists, adopting a liberal-conservative and christian democratic ideology with a strong right wing economic policy.
Ever since the election of Macron, the party has been shifting right on social policies like on immigration and multiculturalism as well as on economics, but the election of Éric Ciotti as the leader of the party in 2022 saw the party’s flirts with the far-right increase even more.
Right before the election, Ciotti tried to form an alliance with the far-right, especially the National Rally, to form a greater right-wing populist alliance, which resulted in a crisis within the party. While not at all unexpected, Ciotti having expressed support for the supremacist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, advocating for a French Guantanomo bay and Patroit Act and siding with extreme right politician Éric Zemmour over sitting president Emmanuel Macron, it caused the party to try and kick him out of its leadership, only for him to be reinstated after the move was declared illegal by the Judiciary Tribunal of Paris.
This has caused a split in the formerly strong conservative movement, with Ciotti’s branch of the Republicans being labelled the “Union of the far-right” by the Ministry of the Interior and Overseas Territories and the senior leadership of the party (including most MPs and senators) keeping the Republicans name.
While it can be seen that the Union of the far-right is a faction of the Republicans party, it’s more accurate to call it a branch due to the fact that non LR members have been nominated by Ciotti as well.
How much change will round two of voting bring to French politics?
The second round of voting could see a few major changes to the parties and the main players from each party, France’s changing landscape representing the larger shift across European and Western politics.
The rise of the far-right could see the cordon sanitaire devolve and the traditional conservatives align themselves with this rising right wing force represented by the National Rally and the Union of the far-right.
France’s left, while unified now, could see itself fall apart once again just like with NUPES over the appointment of a prime minister or leader of the opposition, with the party leadership of the other parties in the coalition becoming increasingly hostile to de facto LFI leader Jean-Luc Melenchon, LFI and Picardie Debout member François Ruffin or the Socialist party’s Olivier Faure being most likely to pick up the mantle from Melenchon.
No matter the result, both the moderate Macronist forces and the traditional conservatives are going to see the greatest hit, and while neither grouping will disappear from French politics entirely, their roles will greatly diminish and influence reach near zero in the near future.