Results from first round of France's snap elections mapped out

Alison Hird

2 July 2024 at 1:35 am·2-min read

France's far-right National Rally made historic gains in the first round of snap elections on Sunday. But their progress is greater in small towns and rural areas than in big cities. RFI looks at how the map of France stands as the three leading parties prepare to battle it out in next Sunday's runoff.

The party of Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella topped the poll with 33.15 percent of the votes cast, ahead of the left-wing New Popular Front (NFP) alliance on 28.14 percent, and President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist Ensemble coalition on 20.76 percent.

RN and its allies obtained around 9.3 million votes – more than double that of the previous legislative elections in 2022.

It qualified for the second round in 455 of France’s 577 constituencies and came out on top in 297 of them.

Compared to 2022, the RN increased its share of the vote in all constituencies with the exception of the French Pacific territory of New Caledonia, where it won just 4.6 percent of the vote.

Campaigning on a promise to boost purchasing power by cutting VAT on fuel and some essential items, RN performed strongest in the northern Haut-de-France region – a depressed former industrial region that used to vote Communist or Socialist but has swung to the far right over the past decade.

Thirty-nine RN candidates won enough votes (more than 50 percent) in the first round to secure their seat directly, and 17 of those were in that northern rust belt.

They included Marine le Pen, re-elected with 58.04 percent in the northern town of Henin-Beaumont in a former coal-mining region, and RN vice-president Sebastien Chenu.

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