More than 200 candidates from Emmanuel Macron’s centrist bloc and the left have withdrawn from the second round of France’s parliamentary elections to try to prevent the far right from gaining an absolute majority in parliament.
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Politico and AFP report that at least 214 candidates who made it to the second round of France’s snap parliamentary elections withdrew their candidacies by the evening of Tuesday, July 2. This was the case for candidates from the centrist bloc Together for the Republic of the incumbent President Emmanuel Macron and the left-wing coalition New Popular Front.
The aim of the centre and left is not to take away each other’s votes in the second round, in order to try to prevent the far-right National Rally (RN) of Marine Le Pen from gaining an absolute majority in the country’s new parliament. An absolute majority would be at least 289 of the 577 seats. The second round of elections is scheduled for July 7.
In the first round, which took place on June 30 amid a high turnout, the National Rally and its allies won 33.15% of the votes, the Left 28%, and Macron’s bloc 20%. At the same time, only 76 seats were won by those who won more than 50% of the votes in their constituencies (39 of them were RN representatives). This means that the second round will be held in 501 constituencies, and in 306 of them, three candidates have entered the round at once – almost always representatives of the three main electoral blocs mentioned above.
That’s why both Macron and the leaders of the left have called on their comrades who came in third in these constituencies to withdraw, so that the more popular rivals of the National Rally candidates have a better chance of defeating them.
In the end, the French will decide based on their conscience, not on recommendations. However, purely mathematically, the risk of the RN getting an absolute majority is decreasing, said one of the French president’s advisers.
When Macron announced early parliamentary elections, he hoped that his political force would be the main sparring partner of the far right. But everything immediately went against the French president’s script. Instead of a contest between the right and the liberal-centrists, the French got a tough confrontation between the right and the left. The political summer in France promises to be hot.
The first round of elections in France was won by the right and the left.
Source: Racurs
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