France has been ruled for the past seven years by President Emmanuel Macron and his centrist government. Sunday’s vote has turned into a race between the two main opponents of Macron’s Renaissance party: the far-right Rassemblement National, which has surged in popularity, and a newly formed coalition of the country’s left-wing parties.
Mr. Macron called early parliamentary elections last month after the National Rally defeated his party in the European Parliament elections. The surprise decision plunged the country into a three-week campaign before the first round of voting on Sunday. That vote decided only 76 of the 577 seats in the National Assembly. The rest will be decided in the second round on Sunday.
Below is an overview of the key players in the second round of the elections.
Renaissance
This is Mr. Macron’s party, which until the election had held the most seats in the National Assembly, along with his allies — though it has not had an outright majority in the past two years. The election campaign was led by Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, who has essentially run on the government’s record — cutting taxes and unemployment, tightening immigration rules and maintaining strong support for the European Union and Ukrainian defense. Renaissance and its allies finished a distant third in the first round and are expected to lose many seats in Sunday’s election.
The country’s far-right nationalist party has been led for the past two years by Jordan Bardella, 28. But its real leader is Marine Le Pen, the daughter of the party’s founder. The National Rally believes that many of the country’s problems, from overspending to crime, stem from immigration. If his party wins an outright majority, Mr Bardella has promised to cut immigration, give police more money and powers to fight crime and begin implementing his long-held ideology of “national preference” — reserving jobs, welfare, education and health care for French citizens, not immigrants. The party has also targeted voters’ thinning wallets, promising to cut taxes on all forms of energy.
Rassemblement National and its allies, a splinter group from the more mainstream conservative party, won about 33 percent of the vote in the first round of last week’s election, and polls suggest they are on track to win the most seats on Sunday, but perhaps not a majority.
New Popular Front
This coalition of four left-wing parties came together quickly after the election to present a united front. Members of the same parties were in a similar coalition formed in 2022 and disbanded last year: the Communists, Socialists and Greens, along with members of the far-left France Unbowed party. The group has no official leader and has ousted France Unbowed’s divisive founder, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who has been widely accused of anti-Semitism.
The coalition’s promises include raising the minimum wage, lowering the legal retirement age to 60, and making the asylum process more flexible and generous. The New Popular Front won 28 percent of the vote last week and has since focused on blocking the National Rally from being elected with a majority. To do so, it withdrew more than 130 candidates who were in a three-way re-election and instructed its supporters to vote for the remaining candidate who was not affiliated with the far-right.
