President Emmanuel Macron threw French politics into disarray this month when he unexpectedly called for snap elections.
The surprise move came after his party was battered by the far right in European Parliament elections. Mr. Macron dissolved the lower house of France’s Parliament and said the first round of legislative elections would be held on June 30. Mr. Macron is the first president to do so since 1997.
France now finds itself in unpredictable territory, with the future of Mr. Macron’s second term potentially at stake after one of the shortest election campaigns in modern French history.
Here is what you need to know about the snap election.
Why did Macron call for snap elections?
When Mr. Macron was elected to a second term in 2022, his party failed to win an outright majority. The centrist coalition he formed has since governed with a slim majority — but struggled to pass certain bills.
Then, earlier this month, France’s far-right, anti-immigrant National Rally party surged to first place in elections for the European Parliament, while the centrist coalition led by Mr. Macron’s Renaissance party came in a distant second.
Mr. Macron was under no obligation to dissolve Parliament, even if the European vote left him a reduced figure with three years remaining in his presidential term. But he believed that a dissolution had become inevitable — opposition lawmakers were threatening to topple his government in the fall — and that a snap election was the only way to respect the will of the people. The sudden election also presents voters with what he says is a stark choice between him or the political extremes.
“This dissolution was the only possible choice,” Mr. Macron wrote in a letter to French voters on Sunday.
The move is seen as risky: If the National Rally gets a majority, Mr. Macron will confront a Parliament hostile to everything he believes in. After a yearslong effort to rebrand, the nationalist far right has never been closer to governing France.
“We are ready,” Jordan Bardella, the National Rally president, said this week.
What’s at stake?
The presidency is France’s most powerful political office, with broad abilities to govern by decree. But the approval of Parliament, and especially the 577-seat National Assembly, is required on most big domestic policy changes and key pieces of legislation, like spending bills or amendments to the Constitution.
Unlike with the Senate, France’s other house of Parliament, National Assembly members are elected directly by the people and can topple a French cabinet with a no-confidence vote. It also has more leeway to legislate and typically gets the final word if the two houses disagree on a bill. The composition of the National Assembly determines how France is governed.
If Mr. Macron is unable to muster a strong parliamentary majority, he could find himself in a scenario where he and the National Assembly are on opposing political sides.
Mr. Macron would be compelled to choose a prime minister from that opposing side, and that person would in turn be able to form a cabinet. Taken together, an opposition prime minister and cabinet could block much of Mr. Macron’s domestic agenda. .
Mr. Macron’s party and its centrist allies currently hold 250 seats in the National Assembly. The National Rally party holds 88 seats, while the mainstream conservative Republicans have 61. A tenuous alliance of far-left, Socialist and Green lawmakers holds 149 seats. The remainder are held by smaller groups or lawmakers not affiliated with any party.
When is the vote?
The elections will be held in two rounds — the first on June 30 and the second on July 7.
How will the vote work?
France’s 577 electoral districts — one for each seat — cover the mainland, overseas departments and territories, as well as French citizens living abroad. France awards seats to candidates who get the most ballots in each district.
That means there will be 577 separate races, each with local dynamics and quirks.
Any number of candidates can compete in the first round in each district, but there are specific thresholds to reach the second round.
While in most cases the runoff will feature the top two vote-getters, it might feature three or even four candidates if they are able to get a number of votes equal to at least 12.5 percent of registered voters in their districts.
Whoever wins the most votes in the runoff wins the race. (Under some conditions, a candidate who gets more than 50 percent of the vote in the first round wins outright.)
What is the National Rally and Who Are Its Leaders?
The National Rally is France’s most prominent nationalist, anti-immigrant far-right party. It has won local elections, and it sent nearly 90 lawmakers to the lower house in 2022, but it has never governed the country.
Originally called the National Front, it was founded in 1972 and included former collaborators with the Nazi regime during World War II. The party’s founding president, Jean-Marie Le Pen, was openly racist and publicly diminished the Holocaust.
Marine Le Pen, Mr. Le Pen’s daughter, took over in 2011 and strove to “undemonize” the party. She distanced herself from her father’s antisemitic statements and even ousted him in 2015. She also broadened the party’s platform to include pocketbook issues.
But some members continue to come under fire for racist, antisemitic or homophobic comments. The party wants to drastically reduce immigration, make it harder for foreigners to become French, and give French citizens priority over non-French residents in areas like social benefits.
Ms. Le Pen ran for the French presidency in 2012, 2017 and 2022, but lost all three times, twice against Mr. Macron. She was a European Parliament lawmaker, then a lawmaker in the National Assembly. She is running for re-election in northern France.
Mr. Bardella, Ms. Le Pen’s 28-year-old protégé, officially took over as the party’s president in 2022. The son of Italian immigrants, Mr. Bardella grew up in the Parisian suburbs and was recently re-elected as a member of the European Parliament. Mild-mannered and impeccably dressed, he embodies the National Rally’s efforts to remake its image, and it is all but certain that he would be prime minister if the party won an absolute majority in the elections.
What has happened so far?
The elections have already profoundly rocked French politics, fostering rare unity on the left, creating chaos on the mainstream right and fraying Mr. Macron’s centrist alliance.
Antisemitism has been a major theme, as have concerns over the parties’ economic plans. The race has focused attention on France’s fragile finances and the prospect of legislative gridlock that could undermine attempts to address it.
The National Rally has a comfortable lead in the latest polls with roughly 36 percent support, and it has already secured some allies after the leader of the conservative Republican party broke a longstanding taboo and announced an alliance.
With little time to campaign, parties on the left scrambled to unite as they did in 2022. France Unbowed, a hard-left party, joined with the Socialists, Greens and Communists to create an electoral alliance called the New Popular Front. The parties have avoided competing candidacies in each district and have vowed to govern together if they are able to form a majority. The alliance is polling in second place so far.
Mr. Macron’s party and its centrist allies are in a distant third place, and they are widely expected to lose many of their seats.
