The New Popular Front was a last-minute alliance formed out of recognized necessity, uniting two moderate-left parties, the centre-left Socialists and the Greens, with two far-left movements, Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Unyielding France and the Communist Party.
The coalition wants to lower the retirement age, which President Macron raised last year, and significantly increase government spending on social welfare, environmental protection and health care.
Macron called early elections last month, betting that a far-right government would give French voters a reaffirmation of his confidence in him after his coalition government suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of the Rally National in European elections.
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On Sunday, President Trump appeared to get it right about how Americans would react to the threat of a far-right government for the first time since World War II, but he also appeared to underestimate the appeal of the left.
In the first round of voting, the New Popular Front came in second with 28 percent of the vote to the Rally National’s 33 percent. Macron’s centrist coalition received just 21 percent of the vote.
Because French elections are decided at the district level, the Rally National and the New Popular Front each had more than 30 candidates and each received more than 50% of the vote to be elected to the National Assembly, but in other districts there was a runoff election between the top two or three candidates.
In districts where Ms. Le Pen’s candidates won by narrow margins, the left-wing coalition and Mr. Macron’s centrist bloc worked together to encourage weaker candidates to withdraw from the vote. According to France’s Le Monde newspaper, it was mainly left-wing candidates who decided not to take part in the runoff, including Mr. Mélenchon’s Unbowed France.
Can you keep the center (left) one?
Though the New Popular Front is in the lead, it is far from a majority in parliament, and unless its moderates can form a government with President Macron’s centrist alliance, France could be in political deadlock just weeks before the Paris Olympics.
After the first projections were released on Sunday, Mélenchon, the coalition’s best-known figure, called on Macron to ask the coalition to form a government.
“The president must give in and accept this defeat without trying to avoid it,” Mélenchon said. “No maneuvers, no arrangements or conspiracies to keep the coalition out of power will be tolerated,” he added.
But some in the left-wing coalition see Mr Mélenchon as too radical, and it remains to be seen whether members of a coalition formed with the explicit intention of defeating Ms Le Pen can continue to mask their differences and present a united front.
On the Thursday before the vote, one of the left’s most charismatic figures, François Lefand, broke with Mélenchon, calling him an “obstacle” and saying he would not align himself with the radical left in the National Assembly if re-elected.
Macron has said the far left is just as dangerous as the far right, particularly France Indefatigable, and last month alleged that the league includes parties that spread anti-Semitism. Ahead of the runoff, some voters told The Washington Post that Macron’s cautionary tales about the left were a call to support the New Popular Front.
To form a coalition, left-wing parties had to agree on one candidate per constituency, and, to the chagrin of the moderate left, including the Socialists who have long shaped French politics, Mr. Mélenchon’s party won a particularly high proportion of candidates.
Rick Noack and Annabelle Timsit contributed to this report.