Far from the majority, even relative, which seemed to be promised to it, the National Rally, which came clearly ahead in the first round of the legislative elections, failed in the second round and ended up being outdistanced by the New Popular Front.
Combined with the joint breakthrough of the New Popular Front, the slap experienced by the National Rally on Sunday, July 7, 2024 during the second round of the legislative elections sounds like a cruel failure for Jordan Bardella and his troops. While he dreamed of an absolute majority, and the latest polls placed him at the top of voting intentions and in number of seats of deputies, the RN finished far behind in the official results published during the night by the Ministry of the Interior. If we add together the scores of the LR-RN candidates rallied to its cause, Marine Le Pen’s party finished with 143 seats of deputies.
This is much better than in 2022 (89 seats) but a clear distance from its opponents since Ensemble, the alliance founded around the Macronists, won 168 seats. The New Popular Front came in first with 182 seats. Clearly in the lead in the first round in terms of number of votes (29.25% of the votes according to the Ministry of the Interior, to which can be added the 3.90% obtained by the LR-RN candidates against whom the party had not placed any candidate), the RN cracked in the face of the Republican front.
In terms of the number of votes, the RN once again came out on top but lost key constituencies where it had reached the first round on June 30. A symbolic case par excellence, that of Marie-Caroline Le Pen in the 4th constituency of Sarthe is setting a precedent. Having come out on top with a 14% lead in the first round, the RN candidate was overtaken in the second round by Elise Leboucher of the New Popular Front who ultimately won, strengthened by the withdrawal of the Ensemble candidate Sylvie Casenave-Péré at the end of the first round. Marie-Caroline Le Pen ultimately lost by 0.46% or 225 votes out of 53,000 voters in the constituency.
The results of the 2nd round this Sunday evening will still allow the far-right party to certainly beat its record of deputies (89 obtained in 2022) in the National Assembly. The RN can also console itself with a few strongholds and strong holds. It thus wins deputies for the first time in departments as varied as Ardèche, Meurthe-et-Moselle, Nièvre, Val-d’Oise or Charente Maritime, failing however to establish itself in the West. Behind the disappointment, the RN wanted to look ahead, towards the presidential election of 2027 but also towards possible future legislative elections by counting on an institutional blockage born from the absence of a clear majority in the results of this election.