France's recent elections highlighted a deeply divided nation.

France's recent elections highlighted a deeply divided nation.

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In Sunday’s French parliamentary elections, voters delivered a significant shake-up to the political landscape, highlighting a shift from a strong center to a polarized environment dominated by extremes.

The election witnessed the highest turnout since 1981 and a clear rebuke to the far-right National Rally (RN), which had led in the first round and achieved a major victory in June's European Parliament elections. However, President Emmanuel Macron and his center-right Renaissance party aligned with the newly formed left-wing coalition, the New Popular Front (NFP), to prevent the RN from taking power.

This victory for the resurgent left reflects a highly polarized political reality in France.

Although Macron's centrists secured second place behind the NFP, they cannot form a government without appealing to the left, a challenging task as some NFP members have publicly refused to join a coalition with Macron’s party.

Macron dissolved France’s National Assembly last month after the RN trounced his party in the European Parliament elections. His technocratic, neoliberal policies have been deeply unpopular; Renaissance placed third behind the RN and a new left-wing coalition during the first round of elections on June 30.

While the coalition may keep the far right from real power, governing won't be easy. Just months ago, the Greens, Socialists, Communists, and France Unbowed, led by the fiery Jean-Luc Mélenchon, were deeply fragmented. But “historically, when there is a threat from the extreme right, the left always unifies,” Rémi Lefebvre, a political scientist at the University of Lille, told the New York Times.

Though the group has agreed on a platform, questions about leadership and the coalition's ability to govern beyond the immediate threat of the RN remain. Macron's promise not to step down means he will likely be in a cohabitation with the left-wing alliance.

The coming weeks will see France struggling to form a functioning government, but one thing is clear: the far right and the left wing, not Macron’s centrism, are dominating French politics.

As part of Renaissance’s electoral partnership with the New Popular Front, both parties pulled candidates from Sunday’s race, making it clear: It’s the RN versus everyone else.

This strategy reflected France’s decades-long social pact, the cordon sanitaire, which has historically prevented the far right from gaining power after the Vichy government during World War II. Sunday’s results showed this tactic was ultimately successful, but the necessity of such measures and Macron's reliance on the left wing to govern signal a significant shift in French politics.

“Macron succeeded in creating that centrist party,” Patrick Chamorel, senior resident scholar at the Stanford Center in Washington, told Vox. “But there is no alternative because all the alternatives were either far right or far left. He destroyed the moderate right and left. And now he is collapsing his own party. So there's nothing left except for the extremes.”

Although the RN has existed for decades, first as the National Front under Jean-Marie Le Pen, the party had never been more than marginal until 2012, when Marine Le Pen first ran for president. The RN gained legitimacy and popularity, with Marine Le Pen winning a greater share of the vote in the 2017 and 2022 presidential elections, which Macron won.

Le Pen has toned down the RN’s most noxious ideologies, particularly about migration and antisemitism, to make it more palatable. She expelled her father from the party in 2015 after he made comments downplaying the Holocaust and attempted to reframe his policy of reserving social services for French citizens. This has been reflected in public opinion, with support for the RN increasing in nearly all of France’s municipalities since 2017.

Still, the RN pushes a platform centered on restricting social services for non-citizens. “They want to deprive people who don't have French nationality or people who are illegal migrants, for example, of any health coverage,” Sandrine Kott, a professor of modern European history at the University of Geneva, told Vox. “It's very clear, it's not even hidden — it's very clear what they want. They want to exclude [migrant workers from] social apartments, social housing, and so on,” on the basis that they are taking social services away from people born in France.

France’s politics follow a general trend in Europe. The right has been building toward this moment over the past 15 years, with right-wing parties steadily gaining influence. The two right-wing blocs — the Identity and Democracy (ID) and the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) — now hold 131 of 720 seats in the European Parliament, an increase of 15 seats from the last election.

However, the threat of an RN government reignited the left. Mélenchon came in a close third behind Le Pen in the 2022 elections, and a 2022 coalition of the main left-wing parties provided a formidable counter to Macron in the National Assembly.

Now, the public has put the left wing in a position of power, but it doesn’t have a mandate — raising the question of whether any governing can happen with this upcoming National Assembly.

The left-wing coalition's platform includes lowering the retirement age to 60, raising the minimum wage, and freezing the prices of basic goods to combat a cost-of-living crisis. It also promises to make the asylum process easier, recognize a Palestinian state, and push for a ceasefire in Gaza.

Despite being the most powerful single bloc after Sunday’s vote, the New Popular Front won’t necessarily be able to push through its ambitious agenda for the next three years. Instead, there will likely be piecemeal reforms, with the coalition relying on alliances with other parties to pass legislation.

Macron’s term runs to 2027, and he insists he is not stepping down. His handpicked prime minister, Gabriel Attal, resigned Monday, as his party lacks a parliamentary majority. Macron has asked him to stay at his post to ensure stability.

Moving forward, Macron could have a prime minister from the left wing — a “cohabitation” in French political parlance. Who that prime minister would be is unclear, as the New Popular Front has no official leader. In the immediate term, forming a government will likely require an alliance between the New Popular Front and another faction, potentially Macron’s centrists. NFP politicians have said they will put forward a prime minister candidate within the week.

“We’re going to have a situation we’ve never known before, with the absence of a stable, coherent, homogeneous majority, very different from the three cohabitations that took place previously. And there is no natural choice for prime minister in these political circumstances,” Didier Maus, a constitutional law specialist, told AFP.

Macron’s center-right, neoliberal politics have never quite fit with French political tradition, as protests against raising the retirement age demonstrated. Many French people resented the notion that their right to stop working would be violated for the sake of productivity.

All of this puts France in an unusual position. Macron’s Renaissance party seems at a dead end, with no other viable centrist parties. The options are the RN or the left-wing coalition, which remains shaky despite its impressive mobilization.

This could spell more instability and raises the question of what happens in the next presidential election. There could be new, invigorated leadership from the left, or the coalition could fall apart. The future for centrists like Macron is unclear, and although the RN lost resoundingly this time, it’s not going anywhere.

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