2024 French legislative election
Based on Wikipedia: 2024 French legislative election
Emmanuel Macron gambled and lost. On the night of June 9, 2024, with European Parliament election results showing his coalition crushed by Marine Le Pen's National Rally, the French president did something that shocked even his closest allies: he dissolved the National Assembly and called snap elections. Within weeks, France would experience its highest voter turnout in nearly three decades, watch hundreds of candidates strategically withdraw from races, and end up with a hung parliament that nobody had predicted—least of all Macron himself.
The gamble was so reckless that international observers struggled to find words for it. Germany's Die Zeit declared that Macron had "lost his cool" to such an extent that he had "given the country to Marine Le Pen." The Belgian newspaper La Libre called him a "wounded political animal." Former President Nicolas Sarkozy, not known for holding back, condemned the decision as a "serious risk for the country."
But the story of France's 2024 legislative election isn't really about Macron's miscalculation. It's about what happens when a political system designed for two dominant forces suddenly has to accommodate three—and what citizens do when they decide that stopping an outcome matters more than supporting one.
The Breaking Point
To understand why Macron made such a dramatic move, you need to understand how fragile his position had become. After winning the presidency in 2017 and again in 2022, Macron's coalition—called Ensemble, which means "Together"—had lost its absolute majority in parliament following the 2022 legislative elections. This mattered enormously because of how French democracy works.
France operates under what's called a semi-presidential system. The president handles foreign policy and serves as head of state, but domestic legislation requires parliamentary support. Without a majority, Macron's prime minister Élisabeth Borne had been forced to repeatedly invoke Article 49.3 of the French constitution—a controversial provision that allows the government to pass laws without a vote, unless parliament immediately votes to bring down the entire government. She used this nuclear option twenty-three times by December 2023.
Each use was deeply unpopular. Each use eroded Macron's political capital. And each use reminded voters that the president they'd elected twice couldn't actually govern normally.
Then came the European Parliament elections of June 2024. These elections, which determine France's representatives to the European Union's legislature, served as a devastating referendum on Macron's presidency. The National Rally, led by Jordan Bardella, didn't just win—they crushed the competition. Macron's coalition finished a distant second, hemorrhaging support.
Bardella called it "day one of the post-Macron era."
The System Nobody Designed
France's legislative elections use a two-round system that's elegantly simple in theory and maddeningly complex in practice. Each of the 577 constituencies elects one deputy to the National Assembly. In the first round, any candidate who receives more than half the votes—and whose total represents more than 25 percent of registered voters—wins outright. This rarely happens.
When no one wins outright, a runoff occurs. But here's where it gets interesting: the runoff doesn't automatically feature just the top two candidates. Anyone who received votes from at least 12.5 percent of registered voters qualifies for the second round.
For decades, this 12.5 percent threshold was mostly theoretical. French turnout hovered around 50 percent, meaning a candidate would need roughly 25 percent of actual votes cast to qualify—effectively limiting most runoffs to two candidates. But in 2024, something changed.
Turnout surged to 66.71 percent, the highest since 1997. With more people voting, that 12.5 percent threshold became much easier to reach. Suddenly, three-way races weren't just possible—they were everywhere. A record 306 constituencies headed toward what the French call "triangulaires": three-way runoffs. Five constituencies even faced "quadrangulaires": four-way contests, something that hadn't happened in any French legislative election since 1973.
This was a potential disaster for everyone except the National Rally.
The Math of Fear
In a typical two-way race, the candidate with the most votes wins. Simple. But in a three-way race with a polarized electorate, something strange happens: a candidate with, say, 35 percent support can win easily if their opponents split the remaining 65 percent.
The first-round results made this nightmare scenario concrete. The National Rally and its allies—including Éric Ciotti of The Republicans, a conservative party whose leader had controversially broken from his own party to ally with Le Pen—led with 33.21 percent. The hastily assembled New Popular Front, a coalition of left-wing parties from democratic socialists to greens to the more radical France Unbowed, came second with 28.14 percent. Macron's Ensemble coalition limped in third with 21.28 percent.
The implications were stark. In hundreds of constituencies, both Ensemble and New Popular Front candidates had qualified for the second round. If they both stayed in the race, the National Rally candidate would likely win with a plurality. Marine Le Pen's party, which had never come close to governing France, suddenly seemed on the verge of winning an outright majority.
And then the withdrawals began.
The Republican Front
The concept of a "republican front" in France dates back decades. The idea is simple: mainstream parties, whatever their differences, have a responsibility to prevent the far right from taking power. When a National Rally candidate advances to a runoff, candidates from other parties should withdraw to consolidate the anti-far-right vote behind whoever has the best chance of winning.
In previous elections, this had been somewhat ad hoc. In 2024, it became a coordinated strategy executed with remarkable discipline.
One hundred thirty-four candidates from the New Popular Front withdrew despite qualifying for the runoff. Eighty-two Ensemble candidates did the same. In constituency after constituency, candidates who had spent weeks campaigning, who had won enough votes to advance, who desperately wanted to serve in parliament, voluntarily ended their campaigns because they recognized that staying in the race would help elect someone they considered dangerous.
The withdrawals transformed the electoral map. Those 306 three-way runoffs dropped to 89. The five four-way races became just two.
It worked—sort of.
A Victory That Wasn't
When the second-round results came in on July 7, they defied everyone's predictions. The National Rally, which polls had suggested might win an outright majority, came in third place in terms of seats. The New Popular Front won the most seats—around 180, depending on how you classify certain candidates. Macron's Ensemble came second with approximately 160. The National Rally and allies secured roughly 140.
The voter turnout for the second round, 66.63 percent, matched the first round's historic highs. Millions of French citizens had shown up specifically to vote against the National Rally.
But nobody had won.
To govern France, a coalition needs 289 seats—an absolute majority of the 577-member National Assembly. No bloc came close. The left-wing coalition that topped the results was still 109 seats short. France had exchanged the threat of far-right government for the reality of no functioning government at all.
The Impossible Task
What followed the election was a masterclass in French political paralysis. Under the Fifth Republic's constitution, the president appoints the prime minister, but that prime minister must survive confidence votes in the National Assembly. Macron couldn't simply pick someone from his own party—they'd be voted down immediately. He couldn't appoint someone from the National Rally—the left and center would unite to reject them. And the left-wing coalition that had technically won the election?
They couldn't agree among themselves.
The New Popular Front was itself a coalition of four major parties with wildly different visions. The Socialists, heirs to the tradition of François Mitterrand, represented mainstream European social democracy. The Greens focused on climate and environmental policy. The Communists, though much diminished from their Cold War peak, still advocated state intervention in the economy. And then there was France Unbowed.
France Unbowed—La France Insoumise in French—was led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a 72-year-old firebrand who had come within striking distance of the presidency in 2022. Mélenchon's politics combined left-wing economic populism with confrontational rhetoric that made him toxic to moderates. Macron and his allies made clear that any government including France Unbowed ministers would face an immediate vote of no confidence.
It took the New Popular Front until July 23—more than two weeks after the election—just to agree on a candidate for prime minister. They chose Lucie Castets, a 37-year-old civil servant who served as director of finance and purchasing for the city of Paris. She was young, competent, largely unknown, and—crucially—not associated with France Unbowed.
None of it mattered. Macron refused to appoint her.
The Olympic Pause
Instead of resolving the crisis, Macron announced a political truce. The 2024 Summer Olympics were coming to Paris, and the president declared that from July 26 to August 11, no major political decisions would be made. France would focus on sports, not governance.
This infuriated the left, which had won the election and believed they deserved a chance to govern. It frustrated the business community, which wanted economic certainty. And it delighted no one, except perhaps the athletes.
When the Olympics ended, Macron summoned party leaders to the Élysée Palace on August 23. Four days later, he formally rejected Lucie Castets as prime minister. The New Popular Front announced they would refuse further negotiations with Macron unless he agreed to discuss "forming a government"—their government.
They were at an impasse.
The Surprise Choice
On September 5, Macron finally named a prime minister: Michel Barnier. The choice was astonishing not because Barnier was unknown—quite the opposite. The 73-year-old had served as France's foreign minister, as a European Commissioner for the internal market, and most recently as the European Union's chief Brexit negotiator. He was arguably the most experienced French politician available.
But Barnier was also a member of The Republicans—the conservative party that had won just 39 seats in the election. Macron was appointing a prime minister whose party came in fourth place, bypassing the coalition that had actually won.
The logic, such as it was, relied on parliamentary arithmetic. The Republicans wouldn't vote no confidence in one of their own. Macron's Ensemble wouldn't vote against someone the president had chosen. And the National Rally, surprisingly, indicated they wouldn't immediately bring down the government—they would wait and see.
This gave Barnier something no prime minister from the left could have: a plausible path to surviving confidence votes. Not because he had majority support, but because his opponents couldn't agree on replacing him.
Government by Tolerance
Barnier presented his government on September 19 and gave his first speech to the National Assembly on October 1. The cabinet leaned right, drawing ministers from The Republicans and Macron's coalition while excluding the left entirely. The New Popular Front was furious. They had won the election and been shut out of power.
On October 9, the inevitable happened: the New Popular Front moved a vote of no confidence. They were joined by a small centrist group called LIOT (Freedoms, Independents, Overseas, and Territories), bringing the total to 197 votes—well short of the 289 needed to bring down the government.
Barnier survived because the National Rally abstained. Marine Le Pen's party was playing a longer game. They would tolerate Barnier as long as he gave them policy concessions, while positioning themselves as responsible actors for the next presidential election in 2027.
This arrangement—government by tolerance rather than support—couldn't last forever.
The Fall
The end came on December 4, 2024. Michel Barnier had been prime minister for exactly three months.
The triggering issue was the budget. France faced a growing deficit, and Barnier proposed austerity measures to close the gap. This alienated the left, who opposed spending cuts on principle. It also alienated the National Rally, who had their own priorities and discovered that Barnier wasn't sufficiently accommodating.
When the vote came, something unprecedented happened: the far left and far right voted together. The New Popular Front and the National Rally, united in nothing except opposition to the government, combined their votes to reach 331—well above the 289 needed. Barnier became the shortest-serving prime minister in the history of the Fifth Republic.
The constitutional constraint that had seemed like a safeguard now looked like a trap. Macron couldn't call another snap election until at least June 2025—a full year after the previous one. He was stuck with a parliament that couldn't agree on anything except rejecting whatever government he proposed.
What the Voters Did
The 2024 French legislative election revealed something important about democratic behavior under stress. Nearly 67 percent of registered voters showed up—not because they were excited about any candidate, but because they were afraid of one outcome. The republican front strategy, which required candidates to sacrifice their own ambitions for the collective good, worked precisely because the threat felt real.
The election also demonstrated the limits of such emergency cooperation. The coalition that formed to stop the National Rally had no positive program. They agreed on what they opposed, not what they supported. Once the immediate danger passed—once Le Pen's party was denied its majority—the alliance fractured along its natural fault lines.
France ended 2024 in political limbo. They had held the most participatory election in a generation, produced a parliament that reflected the genuine diversity of French opinion, and created a government so fragile that it collapsed before Christmas. The system designed to prevent extremist takeover had succeeded at that narrow goal while failing at the broader task of enabling anyone to govern.
The Ripple Effects
The crisis didn't exist in isolation. Paris was preparing to host the Summer Olympics during the political uncertainty, leading Mayor Anne Hidalgo to warn that the election would "spoil the mood of the whole country" and risk street demonstrations during what should have been a celebration of sport. In the end, the Olympics proceeded without major incident—partly because Macron's declared truce paused the political combat.
The labor unions, traditionally cautious about electoral endorsements, threw their weight behind the New Popular Front. The CGT—France's General Confederation of Labour, one of the country's most powerful union federations—took the extraordinary step of specifically endorsing the left-wing alliance. It was the first time in the union's history that it had issued voting instructions for a specific party or coalition.
Meanwhile, the logistical challenges of organizing a snap election in just three weeks strained France's democratic infrastructure. Overseas territories, which vote earlier to account for time zones, struggled to recruit poll workers on such short notice. The Ministry for Foreign Affairs' online voting system crashed under unprecedented traffic, with 410,000 citizens eventually casting electronic ballots—a record that reflected both the surge of interest and the chaos of improvisation.
The Question That Remains
When Emmanuel Macron dissolved the National Assembly on the night of June 9, he claimed to be giving the French people a choice. What he actually gave them was a demonstration of their political system's contradictions.
France's institutions were designed in 1958 by Charles de Gaulle to prevent the instability of the previous republic, where governments rose and fell with dizzying frequency. The Fifth Republic concentrated power in the presidency and created electoral rules that encouraged two-bloc politics: left versus right, with clear governing majorities.
But by 2024, France had three major political forces of roughly equal strength: the traditional left, the technocratic center, and the nationalist right. The electoral system could not accommodate this reality. It could produce hung parliaments but not coalition governments. It could prevent the worst outcome but not enable good ones.
The French voted in record numbers. They made strategic choices about withdrawals and endorsements. They stopped the National Rally from taking power. And then they watched as their political leaders proved incapable of doing anything with the result they had created.
Perhaps that's the most French outcome of all: a revolution in miniature that changed everything and nothing, leaving the fundamental questions unresolved until the next crisis forces them open again.