After the shock of French President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to call snap elections last month, another surprise came for French voters as polls closed Sunday evening: the farright National Party (RN) did not receive the majority of the parliamentary seats pollsters had predicted. It didn’t even come close.

With voter turnout at its highest rate in more than 40 years, initial estimates suggested the majority of seats would go to the New Popular Front (NFP), a leftwing coalition which quickly banded together just days after Macron announced that legislative elections would take place.

"The will of the people must be strictly respected," JeanLuc Mélenchon, the leftwing leader, told a crowd of hundreds of supporters in northern Paris Sunday evening, declaring the results as a victory for the newly formed alliance, adding the results were evidence of the country’s outright refusal of a farright government. “Our people have clearly rejected the worst case scenario,” he said. “Tonight, the National Rally is far from having an absolute majority.”

Sameer AlDoumy/AFP via Getty Images
Early results put the leftwing NFP with the most seats, but short of an absolute majority needed to govern; Macron’s centrist Ensemble coalition in second; and the farright RN in third. Final results aren’t expected until early Monday morning, but with no party reaching an absolute majority, the country’s future remains uncertain.

Supporters of French farright leader Marine Le Pen react after vote projections in select constituencies, Sunday, in HeninBeaumont, northern France. French voters propelled the farright National Rally to a strong lead in firstround legislative elections Sunday and plunged the country into political uncertainty.
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Prime Minister Gabriel Attal announced his resignation about an hour after the results came in Sunday evening, and Macron will be under pressure to appoint someone from the NFP coalition.

The elections, which saw a 67.1% turnout, the highest in over 40 years, point to an outright rejection of a farright government. Even if the RN did make its most significant gains in the party’s history, its campaign has been tainted by accusations of racism and antisemitism.

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