Stalemate? Instability? Without an absolute majority, the way forward for France is unclear

According to forecasts from French polls based on preliminary results, France could be heading for a prolonged political stalemate, as no party or alliance of parties appears to have won an absolute majority of seats in parliament.

Experts say it is unclear how to proceed in the short term, but the country could face months of political instability. President Emmanuel Macron faces a deeply divided parliament, with two blocs fiercely opposed to him.

“Without an absolute majority, the government will have to rely on opposition parties uniting” to topple it, said Dominique Rousseau, a professor emeritus of public law at the Panthéon-Sorbonne University in Paris.

The forecasts showed that the National Assembly, the lower house of the French parliament, will be roughly divided into three main blocs with conflicting agendas and in some cases deep hostility towards each other.

Pollster projections released Sunday night after polls closed in the final round of parliamentary elections indicated that a group of left-wing parties called the New Popular Front would win the most seats, followed by Mr. Macron’s centrist alliance and the nationalist, anti-immigration National Rally. It was not clear whether the centrists or the right-wing National Rally would be the next-largest bloc.

As it stands, none of the three major blocs seems capable of working with the others. Each bloc could try to form a working majority with the handful of smaller parties or independent legislators who will take up the rest of the seats in the lower house. But their ability to do so is uncertain.

“French political culture is not conducive to compromise,” said Samy Benzina, a professor of public law at the University of Poitiers, noting that French institutions are normally designed to produce “clear majorities that can govern independently.”

A scenario in which no party successfully wins an absolute majority — at least 289 of the lower house’s 577 seats — is not unprecedented in France. That is exactly what happened in the last parliamentary elections, in 2022. Mr. Macron still managed to form functioning governments that successfully passed bills over the past two years.

But that was only because Mr. Macron’s centrist coalition was large enough — about 250 seats — and the parties opposing him were too divided to pose a consistent threat. When that wasn’t the case, Mr. Macron’s government came perilously close to collapse.

This time, Macron’s options appear much more limited.

His centrist coalition cannot govern on its own. And few smaller parties — even those on the more moderate left or right — are eager to be associated with Mr. Macron, who is deeply unpopular and has three years left in his term.

The National Rally has already said it would govern only if it had an absolute majority, or if it fell just short of a majority and thought it could strike a deal with enough other lawmakers to close the gap. Marine Le Pen, the party’s longtime leader, told French radio last week that she would not agree “to just sit in a minister’s chair without being able to do anything,” which she said would be “the worst betrayal” of the party’s voters.

On Sunday, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a leader of one of the parties of the left-wing Popular Front, said he would not enter into negotiations with Macron’s coalition to form a government together.

Some analysts and politicians have raised the possibility of a broad, “rainbow” coalition of lawmakers, who would agree on a limited number of key issues and stretch from the Greens to more moderate conservatives. But several political leaders have already ruled that out.

Another possibility is an interim government of politically neutral experts to run the day-to-day business until a political breakthrough occurs. This too would be a departure from French tradition.

France has a robust civil service that could do without a government for a while. But the Summer Olympics are just weeks away, and parliament usually approves a budget in the fall. Some analysts think Macron’s position could become so untenable that he would have to resign, but he has said he won’t.