[Excerpt from an analysis by Robert Zaretsky, a professor of history at the University of Houston’s Honors College and the author of *Victories Never Last: Reading and Caregiving in a Time of Plague*]
“Two seismic events rocked France last Sunday. Politicians are only now pulling themselves from the rubble and scrambling to make sense of their upended world.
As the numbers rolled in, the shock deepened. The RN had already beaten majority parties in past European elections, but this time, the margin was nearly 17 percentage points. Moreover, the party carried every region, including republican ramparts such as Brittany and Île-de-France—though not the latter’s largest city, Paris—and made inroads with swaths of the population once beyond its reach, including voters over 65 as well as those with university and professional degrees.
Then came the aftershock. Less than an hour after the results were announced, President Emmanuel Macron declared the dissolution of the National Assembly and scheduling of new legislative elections. The announcement caught not only all his opponents on the back foot but also many of the leading figures of his own party.
‘Given the strength of the RN,’ one cabinet minister observed a few weeks earlier, ‘I honestly cannot foresee the president dissolving the assembly.’ Even Macron, it seems, could not foresee his decision, [insisting](https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/politique/100624/dissolution-un-coup-de-poker-au-peril-des-institutions) as late as last month that the EU election had political consequences only for Europe, not France.”
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[Excerpt from an analysis by Robert Zaretsky, a professor of history at the University of Houston’s Honors College and the author of *Victories Never Last: Reading and Caregiving in a Time of Plague*]
“Two seismic events rocked France last Sunday. Politicians are only now pulling themselves from the rubble and scrambling to make sense of their upended world.
The initial quake arrived shortly after the French polls closed for the European Parliament election. Almost immediately, Marine Le Pen’s electoral list for the far-right National Rally (RN) was projected as the winner. This was not a surprise, of course. For weeks, pollsters had reported that the RN list, led by Jordan Bardella, was hovering over 30 percent, more than doubling the government’s Renaissance list, led by Valérie Hayer.
As the numbers rolled in, the shock deepened. The RN had already beaten majority parties in past European elections, but this time, the margin was nearly 17 percentage points. Moreover, the party carried every region, including republican ramparts such as Brittany and Île-de-France—though not the latter’s largest city, Paris—and made inroads with swaths of the population once beyond its reach, including voters over 65 as well as those with university and professional degrees.
Then came the aftershock. Less than an hour after the results were announced, President Emmanuel Macron declared the dissolution of the National Assembly and scheduling of new legislative elections. The announcement caught not only all his opponents on the back foot but also many of the leading figures of his own party.
‘Given the strength of the RN,’ one cabinet minister observed a few weeks earlier, ‘I honestly cannot foresee the president dissolving the assembly.’ Even Macron, it seems, could not foresee his decision, [insisting](https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/politique/100624/dissolution-un-coup-de-poker-au-peril-des-institutions) as late as last month that the EU election had political consequences only for Europe, not France.”
[Keep reading the full analysis here](https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/06/12/france-elections-macron-le-pen-national-rally/).