In France, relief and elation at a ‘victory’ that might be Pyrrhic

Celebrations after the release of early results in the second round of France’s legislative election in Paris on Sunday. (Dimitar Dilkoff/Getty Images)

PARIS — Take a cool-eyed look at the relief and euphoria sweeping France after elections Sunday that blocked the far right from taking power. If any so-called victory ever looked Pyrrhic, this is the one.

For starters, the elation among center and left French voters arises mainly from pre-election polls that turned out to be massively wrong. Those polls formed expectations that the populist National Rally, with roots in a nationalist party established by Nazi collaborators and antisemites, would win a resounding victory.

But beating flawed polls isn’t the same as winning. On the numbers, National Rally, until recently seen as beyond the pale, remains on a meteoric trajectory. The party, which in 2017 won just eight seats in France’s 577-seat National Assembly, captured 89 two years ago, representing 15 percent of the chamber’s total seats. On Sunday, it won 143 seats, one-quarter of the total.

Granted, surveys predicted it would do even better, perhaps winning 200 or more seats and forcing President Emmanuel Macron to hand it the reins of a new government. And yes, National Rally finished third Sunday, behind a leftist coalition and, by a narrower margin, Macron’s own bloc.

But setting aside that shortfall vs. expectations, National Rally’s rise — a 60 percent increase in legislative seats in just two years — is staggering. Its momentum is clear.

Beyond the numbers, National Rally and its leader, Marine Le Pen, have three greater reasons for optimism. Call them the Meloni effect, the Bolloré effect and the Macron effect.

Meloni is Giorgia Meloni, the right-wing prime minister of Italy. Her Brothers of Italy party, like Le Pen’s National Rally, traces its roots to fascist sympathizers in World War II. Like National Rally, it was long regarded as an affront to Europe’s democratic values. But Meloni, a shrewd strategist, had one big advantage that positioned her for victory. Alone among significant parties ahead of Italy’s 2022 elections, her party had never joined a government coalition. That inoculated it from blame for the chronic economic malaise and disaffection associated with a string of governments from the left and right.

Now Le Pen occupies a similarly enviable position in France. Sunday’s election produced no outright legislative majority, meaning the country is poised for deadlock, political instability and, possibly, outright dysfunction for the remaining three years of Macron’s second and final term in office.

His centrist movement has little in common but mutual distrust and personal animosity with the hastily formed four-party leftist coalition that was instrumental in limiting National Rally’s gains. Le Pen, like Meloni before she took power, will be beyond that fray and discord. And frustrated French voters, having cycled in recent decades through governments of the right and left and Macron’s centrist alliance, might do what Italian voters did: Reward the only party untainted by rising prices and spotty public services.

Bolloré, the second of National Rally’s long-term strategic assets, is Vincent Bolloré, a billionaire corporate raider and one of Europe’s richest individuals. His family company owns a major chunk of French media and has put it in service not only to Le Pen’s party but also to the even more extremist right, as well as to pro-Russian figures.

Bolloré is often likened to Rupert Murdoch — no other mogul controls such a dominant share of major French TV and radio news channels, popular newspapers, storied magazines including Paris Match and France’s largest publishing house. And by promoting extremist voices, his outlets have given Le Pen cover on the far right, helping bolster her years-long effort to rebrand National Rally as a mainstream party.

Le Pen’s most useful asset might be Macron himself, whose bloc lost one-third of its legislative seats in Sunday’s election, a disastrous result even though it bested polling predictions. The president — highhanded, brimming with self-regard — is the object of every political faction’s disdain.

The largest opposition faction, the far left, finished first in Sunday’s vote, having coordinated with Macron’s allies to thwart National Rally’s candidates. Lacking the votes to form a government on its own, the left or some part of it might have no choice but to enter a coalition of convenience with Macron’s bloc if France is to avoid paralysis.

That looks unlikely for now, given their ideological differences. But if such an alliance can be forged — and there might be no other way to form a government — it would leave National Rally as the only major anti-Macron force, a sweet place to be in France these days.

Le Pen remains what she was before Sunday’s vote: a favorite in the 2027 presidential elections. Now, however, she’s in control of a bigger chunk of France’s Parliament. The elation of her opponents, who managed to limit her gains Sunday, is understandable. It also ignores the tectonic forces working in her favor across a country where discontent runs deep.