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Marine Le Pen’s far-right party has battered President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist alliance in the first round of snap French parliamentary elections, moving the country closer to a potential nationalist government that would jolt the European project.

After unusually high turnout, the Rassemblement National (RN) party and its allies won 33.2 per cent of the vote, while the leftwing Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) alliance came second with 28 per cent, according to provisional results published by the interior ministry. Macron’s Ensemble alliance and allies secured 22.4 per cent of the vote.

The first-round results suggest the RN and its allies are on track to win the most seats in the National Assembly and potentially even an outright majority in the final round of voting on July 7.

If the RN secures 289 seats in the 577-strong lower house, it will force Macron into an uncomfortable power-sharing arrangement known as a “cohabitation” in which two opposing parties must govern together.

However, the vote has led to an unprecedented number of three-way run-offs, which make seat projections difficult. Ipsos estimated there would be 285 to 315 potential three-way contests in the second round, assuming that no candidates withdraw.

An intense period of bargaining will now begin between leftwing and centrist parties over whether to drop out in some seats in an attempt to block the RN from winning. Parties must finalise their candidate lists in 48 hours.

Speaking from Hénin-Beaumont, her constituency in northern France where she easily won re-election, Le Pen hailed poll results that “practically erased” Macron’s centrist bloc.

“The French have expressed their desire to turn the page on seven years of a government that treated them with disdain,” she said before cheering supporters waving French flags.

Macron said: “Faced with the Rassemblement National, the time has come for a large, clear alliance between democratic and republican forces for the second round.”

Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, appointed by Macron, said his campaign’s priority was to “stop the RN from having an absolute majority in the second round and governing the country with its disastrous project”.

Ensemble said its candidates would drop out in areas where they had come in third place in favour of contenders “in a position to beat the RN and with whom we share the essential: the values of the republic”.

The Conservative Les Républicains party (LR) refused to advise voters to reject the far-right in the second round.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the far-left La France Insoumise (LFI) that is part of the NFP, called for the withdrawal of all leftwing candidates where they are in third place in order to beat the RN.

The euro rose 0.2 per cent against the US dollar in early Asian trading. At $1.0744, it was the euro’s highest level against the dollar since last Tuesday. 

The snap French vote has badly backfired for Macron, who called it last month after his centrist alliance lost to the RN in European parliamentary elections — in a move that stunned the public and angered many in his own camp.

His alliance could end up losing more than half of its roughly 250 seats in the lower house, as it is squeezed between an ascendant far right and a newly united left.

By contrast, the far right, which has not been in power since the Vichy regime collaborated with Nazi Germany, could move from the fringes of politics to the heart of government.

It would be the culmination of Le Pen’s decade-long efforts to “detoxify” the party, including by ousting her father, who founded it with a former soldier from the French unit of the Nazi’s Waffen-SS.

Many French voters have come to reject Macron, who they see as elitist and out of touch, and prefer RN for its emphasis on cost of living issues and wages, on top of its traditional anti-immigration stance.

There have been three cohabitations in France’s postwar history, but none involving parties with such diametrically opposite views.  

If the RN wins an outright majority and forms a government, Le Pen has already said her 28-year-old protégé Jordan Bardella would serve as prime minister.

They would run domestic affairs and set the budget, while Macron would remain chief of the armed forces and set foreign policy.

Le Pen and Bardella have both signalled in recent days that they would challenge Macron’s authority including on defence and foreign policy — a prospect that is likely to alarm allies and markets alike.

The NFP also performed strongly in the first round as voters backed its heavy tax-and-spend economic agenda that also focuses on social justice and investing more to improve public services.

The NFP’s dominant party is the LFI. It also includes the centre-left Socialists, the Greens and the Communists, who have major policy differences with LFI and have so far rejected Mélenchon as their candidate for prime minister.

Bruno Cautrès, political scientist at Sciences Po university in Paris, said it was too early to make accurate seat projections.

“There are two unknowns for the second round — how many candidates will drop out and how leftwing and centrist voters will behave if they know that the RN is on the verge of power,” he said.

The best-case scenario for Macron at this point would be a hung parliament with none of the three blocs able to claim a majority.

Gridlock would ensue, but he could make a last-ditch effort to form a technocratic government. Macron cannot dissolve parliament again until a year from now.

Joe Biden’s family have urged him stay in the race after a disastrous debate performance last week, according to reports in the US media, as senior democrats and donors have expressed exasperation at how his staff prepared him for the event.

The president gathered with his family at Camp David on Sunday, where discussions were reported to include questions over his political future. It came after days of mounting pressure on Biden, after a debate in which his halting performance highlighted his vulnerabilities and invited calls from pundits, media and voters for him to step aside.

During the meeting at Camp David – which included the president’s wife, children and grandchildren – Biden’s family told him he could still show Americans that he is capable of serving another four years, according to the New York Times.

While his family was reportedly aware of how poorly he performed, they also continue to think he’s the best person to beat Donald Trump.

The Associated Press reported that the strongest voices imploring Biden to resist pressure to drop out were his wife, Jill, and his son Hunter, who last month became the first child of a sitting president to be convicted of a felony after a jury found him guilty of lying about illegal drug use when he bought a handgun in 2018.

The Camp David trip had been previously scheduled, in order to accommodate a photoshoot with Annie Leibovitz for the upcoming Democratic National Convention.

The president’s relatives were also said to be critical of the way his closest advisers had prepared him for the debate.

During the debate, a hoarse-sounding Biden delivered a shaky, halting performance in which he stumbled over his words on several occasions and at times was unable to finish sentences. His opponent, Donald Trump, made a series of falsehoods, including claims that he actually won the 2020 election, which Biden failed to refute.

On Sunday, a narrative blaming the rigorous debate prep calendar which saw Biden sequestered at Camp David for six days, began to build.

“It is my belief that he was over-coached, over-practiced,” said John Morgan, a Florida-based attorney and major Biden fundraiser.

Critics of Biden’s performance also said that the preparation should have focused on the bigger vision he needs to sell to the country.

“My only request was make sure he’s rested before the debate, but he was exhausted. He was unwell,” one person who said they appealed to Biden’s top aides in the days before, told the Reuters news agency. “What a bad decision to send him out looking sick and exhausted.”

The drumbeat of calls for Biden to step have grown louder since a post-debate CBS poll showed a 10-point jump in the number of Democrats who believe Biden should not be running for president, to 46% from 36% in February.

Biden’s approval rating has been weakening since he took office and concerns about his age and handling of crises both at home and abroad after Thursday are under more scrutiny than ever.

On Sunday, prominent Democrats blanketed the talkshows, conceding that the president’s performance had been subpar, but continued to throw their support behind him.

House of Representatives Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries, acknowledged that Biden had suffered a setback, but said this was “nothing more than a setup for a comeback.”

Senator Raphael Warnock, a Georgia democrat and Baptist minister, said there had been “more than a few Sundays when I wish I had preached a better sermon,” relating the experience to Biden’s debate performance.

“But after the sermon was over it was my job to embody the message, to show up for the people that I serve. And that’s what Joe Biden has been doing his entire life,” Warnock said.

Not all Democrats appeared to be in agreement however. Asked on Sunday whether the party was discussing a new 2024 candidate, Maryland congressman Jamie Raskin told MSNBC: “There are very honest and serious and rigorous conversations taking place at every level of our party, because it is a political party and we have differences in point of view.”

“Whether he’s the candidate or someone else is the candidate, he’s going to be the keynote speaker at our convention. He will be the figure that we rally around to move forward,” Raskin said.

Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to this report

The French far-right leader Marine Le Pen and party chief Jordan Bardella wore broad smiles as they pitched their “ticket” to voters with a view to taking power in 2027 — with her as president and him as prime minister. 

Using the original English word, the official unveiling of their duo in January was a new move in the context of French politics, where the president is elected directly and the post holds powerful institutional functions. Prime ministers are named afterwards to run the government and often sacrificed when presidents need to reboot in a crisis.

The announcement in a joint interview underlined how Le Pen had anointed the 28-year-old Bardella as the face of the new, professionalised Rassemblement National (RN) that she had spent more than a decade building. She was betting that her chances of succeeding her longtime rival, the centrist President Emmanuel Macron, were stronger with Bardella at her side. 

Le Pen last week told the Financial Times that she came up with the “ticket” as part of a strategy to prepare the French public to choose the RN. “The more people know us and the more they know precisely what we will do, the more they will be able to turn their backs on the caricatures and fears about us that are stirred up by our adversaries,” she said. 

But now the strength of the bond between Le Pen, aged 55, and her much younger lieutenant could be tested in the political turmoil touched off by Macron’s decision to call snap elections for the National Assembly. The president made the shock move after his centrist alliance was trounced in this month’s European elections where the RN list led by Bardella won 31 per cent of the vote to his 15 per cent. 

In the first leg of the two-round legislative election on Sunday, the anti-immigration, populist RN appeared ascendant once again, setting up the possibility that Bardella could be propelled to the premiership in a matter of weeks. Projections from the pollster Ipsos placed the RN on 34 per cent, putting it on track to win the most seats in parliament and potentially even an outright majority in the final round of voting on July 7.  

The RN has proved adept at appealing to people worried about the cost of living amid inflation, and has tapped into discontent about declining public services while exploiting anger at a lofty president Macron.

Despite the duo’s polished sales pitch, Le Pen and Bardella still have a radical agenda that would roil French society. It includes policies such as slashing immigration, ending birthright citizenship and creating a “national preference” for French citizens on social housing and welfare programmes.

In the Elysée palace, officials have long suggested in private that the pair will turn on each other in a quest for power. They seized on recent polling showing the protégé Bardella had eclipsed the mentor Le Pen in popularity and that more people would greet his accession to the presidency favourably than hers. 

Asked if he could push aside Le Pen to run himself in 2027, Bardella told the FT: “No, no, no. I do not have that ambition.” He has a large portrait of himself and Le Pen hanging in his office and still uses the formal vous to address her, although she has told him he does not have to.

Le Pen added: “The idea that I would be upset that he is more popular in polls than me, on the contrary, I’m delighted . . . I will need a popular prime minister to govern France.” 

In 2011, Le Pen officially took over the movement her father Jean-Marie helped create almost 40 years earlier. But before that, she had come to believe that the party needed to distance itself from the baggage of its founders, including her father and the journalist Pierre Bousquet, who was in the French division of the Waffen-SS during the second world war. 

With historical roots in fascism, the Front National (FN), as the party was originally called, remained on the fringes of French politics because of Jean-Marie. He was convicted in 1990 of hate speech for once likening the Nazi gas chambers to a “detail of history”.

France at the time was still reckoning with the historical legacy of Vichy collaboration with Nazi Germany, making the FN radioactive for most voters. At the age of eight, when Le Pen was growing up as the youngest of three daughters in Paris, a large bomb targeting her father destroyed the family home. No one was hurt, and the crime never solved.

After training as a lawyer, Le Pen practised for around six years before entering the family business: politics. In 2002, Jean-Marie surprisingly made the presidential run off, setting off mass anti-FN protests which led in turn to a crushing victory for the incumbent, Jacques Chirac.

It was then that the daughter set out to change things, according to Louis Aliot, the mayor of Perpignan, who broke with Jean-Marie to side with his daughter, with whom he was formerly in a relationship. “We were both from a younger generation, so we’re not obsessed with the past,” he said. “After the protests against us, we decided that we had to change the FN from the inside.” 

The project to “detoxify” the party became Le Pen’s mission. She changed its name in 2018, a classic marketing strategy to make voters forget the past. She had already ousted her father from the party in 2015, and expunged other radical elements, although critics say traces of its antisemitic, racist past remain. Gradually she shifted the RN’s platform to emphasise cost of living issues and play off the supposed contempt that Parisian elites have for rural areas. 

In Macron, Le Pen had her perfect opponent — a former banker, a product of top French educational institutions and a technocrat who wanted to liberalise the economy and boost the EU.

But in the 2017 presidential election, she lost to him by a wide margin, wounded by a weak debate performance. That defeat propelled her and the RN leadership into a bout of soul-searching. She and her closest cadres sought to rebuild both by boosting her policy expertise on issues from defence to the economy, and training up a new crop of politicians formed at the local level. They came to be known as “generation Marine”. 

Among them was Bardella, who says he first saw Le Pen on stage at a rally when he was 16 years old. She so impressed him that he joined her party the next day, going on to promote it in his hometown of Saint-Denis, a working-class and immigrant area north of Paris where he lived with his mother.

In 2015, he created a group in Saint-Denis called “Banlieues Patriotes” that sought to woo residents of the diverse and disaffected neighbourhoods on the Paris periphery. According to French media, he once handed out flyers that said “Muslims, maybe, but French first”.

His activities put him on Le Pen’s radar. They met at a gathering of young RN activists convened by the party leader at a pizzeria in Nanterre after a local election. She sat next to him and by the end of lunch had asked him to work on her 2017 campaign. “I was a bit intimidated by her given my young age,” he said, but agreed to the job. 

“He seemed a disciplined and articulate young man, who I found very French, with the way he dressed and an elegance,” Le Pen said.  

Le Pen and her team helped craft a narrative around Bardella, emphasising his childhood in social housing with a divorced mother who struggled to make ends meet. He has said his views were shaped by seeing the ravages of drug dealing and crime in his local area and riots that erupted in 2005 after two adolescents died during a police chase.

The actual story was slightly different. Bardella’s father was a small-business owner who sent him to private Catholic schools and gave him a more bourgeois upbringing, according to a biography by Pierre-Stéphane Fort. He did not complete his studies in geography at university and has not held a private-sector job.

Pascal Humeau, a media trainer who worked with Bardella for four years, said the politician was a “pure product of marketing” who followed Le Pen’s line. Humeau helped him adopt a more confident speaking style and start every media appearance with direct eye contact and a strong bonjour. “Who is Jordan Bardella really? We don’t know,” he said.

When Le Pen passed over more senior cadres to put the then 23-year-old at the top of the RN list for European elections in 2019, some warned her it was too risky. He came in first, one point ahead of Macron’s list. 

With Bardella, the RN has won parts of the electorate previously wary of Le Pen, including women, white-collar workers with diplomas and the business community. The biggest influencer in French politics, he has a large TikTok following that has helped attract young voters. He has also focused more on identity politics than Le Pen, declaring recently that there was a “cultural battle” to be fought against Islamism in France.

Will the “ticket” prevail or will it unravel as opponents predict?

“The ticket is very solid,” Bardella told the FT wryly. “It is printed on thick paper that will not tear.” 

leila.abboud@ft.com

Additional reporting by Adrienne Klasa