French President Emmanuel Macron’s party lost its parliamentary majority Sunday, as factions to his left and right both made significant gains.
France held the second round of voting for its legislative elections Sunday, nearly two months after voters reelected Macron in April.
Macron, who defeated National Rally candidate Marine Le Pen in a rematch of the 2017 election, won a comfortable 17-point victory – but fell short of the 32-point landslide he enjoyed five years earlier.
In her concession speech, Le Pen claimed that her improved showing in the 2022 election marked a victory for the French nationalist movement, and predicted gains in the June parliamentary election.
The centrist Ensemble list, which includes Macron’s La République En Marche! (LREM) party, remains the largest in the 577-member National Assembly, but lost over 100 seats Sunday, plummeting from 347 seats in 2017 to 245.
While the Ensemble list received nearly half (49.1%) of the second-round vote five years ago, just 38.6% of voters backed the list on Sunday.
The NUPES left-wing alliance of socialists and Greens, led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, won 131 seats Sunday, making it the largest opposition bloc.
Le Pen’s nationalist National Rally party, which came in sixth in 2017 with 8.8% of the second-round vote and just eight seats, soared to 89 seats Sunday, taking in 17.3% of the second-round vote.
Along with the centrist Ensemble list, the Union of the Right and Centre (UDC), a center-right alliance, fell sharply in the election, dropped from 136 seats in the 2017 election to just 64 seats on Sunday.