Great News Regarding the French Elections!

The leftist alliance, Nouveau Front Populaire (New Popular Front, NFP) has become the second strongest force in all of France, putting Macron's Ensemble alliance in third place. Split and divided, the parties in the NFP would've rarely been anywhere near the third place in most circonscriptions (voting districts), now sometimes they have more votes than all other parties combined!

While Le Pen's fascist party Rassemblement National (National Rally, RN) is the highest ranking party, the upcoming run-off elections will ensure they won't win many seats in the run-off elections, due to a newly formed front with even moderate parties.

But first, the preliminary election results:

• 34,0% Rassemblement National (RN, Le Pen)
• 28,5% @nouveaufrontpopulaire (NFP, Mélenchon)
• 20,5% Ensemble (EN, Macron)
• 10,2% Les Républicains (LR, Ciotti)
• 09,8% Other

(± 4%)

[Source: Fr | Le Monde]

Candidates already elected in the first round:

• 39 Rassemblement National (dont LR-RN)
• 31 Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP)
• 02 Ensemble (EN)
• 01 Les Républicains (LR)
• 03 Others

[Source: Le Monde]

501 seats have not been decided yet, with a functioning front none of these seats will go to RN.

Note: When a candidate in a district has over 50%, then no run-off election is needed.

The New Popular Front has pledged to pull out any third place candidate from the second round of elections / run-off elections, in order to not split the votes. In that situation, they are essentially gifting Macron's party that seat simply to prevent the fascists from getting one.

Note: Usually a run-off election is only done between two parties, unless a third party has more than 12.5% of the votes of a department.

This is, more or less, not surprising. The NFP formed itself under immense pressure to prevent the fascist RN from coming into power by any means necessary! They are currently simply sticking to their own plan.

What is incredibly surprising, and a reason to prematurely celebrate, is the fact that Macron and his party completely changed course and decided to do the same! Macron's Renaissance party will pull out over 60 candidates from this election in order to prevent vote-splitting. They will stand united with the Nouveau Front Populaire against fascism, forming a Nouveau Front Republicain (New Front for the Republic).

“The NFP will not have an absolute majority. (…) The challenge of this second round is to deprive the far right of an absolute majority to build majorities of projects between democratic forces”

— Gabriel Attal, Acting Prime Minister of France announced in the last few hours

This is unprecedented, and a few hours ago, statements like these were unimaginable! As recently as today Macron still warned against the danger of the left whilst downplaying the danger of the fascist National Rally. Now even conservative, libertarian, and center-right parties stand united against fascism and will prevent the RN from winning even a singular seat in parliament.

A united front such as this, an alliance to save democracy and human rights beyond party lines, is exactly what we need more of in Europe!

Update: Macron has changed course again. While the NFP was clear and direct in their statement to pull out any candidate in third place, Macron's, Attal's, and Ensemble's original statement was very flimsy and used old “both extremes are bad” tropes.

It has become clear that they will not pull out from third place if the alternative NFP candidate is a La France Insoumise (LFI) member. With this strategy, Macron prefers giving a seat to fascists than to democratic socialists.