Over the weekend, France held snap parliamentary elections in response to his party being walloped by the National Rally party headed by Marine Le Pen in the European Union elections in early June. It was widely believed that Macron hoped that increased turnout and fear of the National Rally would compel French voters to back his centrist coalition. Instead, his party finished in third, behind the National Rally and a coalition of leftwing parties called the New Popular Front (Nouveau Front Populaire).
Macron was never that popular with the French people, getting elected with only 25% of the vote in the first round, but he failed to capitalize on the chances that French voters gave him, leading to his party’s downfall.
“[Macron] said it himself, he came out and said, ‘I know you didn’t vote for me, but because you didn’t want Le Pen - the far right - then you accepted me as your president for the next term - I heard you,’” recounted veteran journalist Elijah Magnier on Sputnik’s Fault Lines. “Well, actually, he didn’t hear anything.”
After the first round of voting, the National Rally walked away with 33% of the vote. The New Popular Front came in second with 28% and Macron’s centrist Ensemble alliance managed only 20%. Both the National Rally and the New Popular Front walked away with more than 50% of the vote in more than 30 districts each, making a second vote unnecessary in those areas.
Turnout was also the highest since 1997, indicating that French voters were motivated to vote against Macron’s party, much as they were motivated against Le Pen in 2022.
“In the last election [the French people decided] to vote for him because they didn’t want Le Pen. This time, people rushed out to vote against him and they had to choose between the far-right and the far-left,” explained Magnier, adding later that “Everything was inverted. So, in the presidential election, we had Macron, Le Pen and the leftists. Now, we have Le Pen, the leftists and then Macron.”
Macron frustrated voters with austerity measures and a damaged economy, problems compounded by the government’s focus on Ukraine and other failures overseas.
“If [the populist parties] are good or bad, they say we’ll give it a try [because] they’ve tried Macron twice… and they really don’t want him anymore. He failed in Africa. He failed in the Middle East. He failed in Europe. He dismantled the power of France. He failed domestically.”
Last year, France raised the retirement age from 62 to 64, causing mass protests. Early this year, farmers protested new regulations and the ending of fuel subsidies by blocking roads into Paris with tractors.
“These [establishment politicians in France] are born with a golden spoon in their mouth and they’re not in contact with what the people think. They have only their own projection of what the people want,” Magnier concluded.
The second round of elections will be held on July 7.