Céline, a civil servant and executive in a number of European government ministers, used to keep silent about the fact that she voted for Marine Le Pen’s far-right, anti-immigration group. ” I could n’t talk about it at work, people would say: ‘ You’re a fascist.’ It was frowned upon – it was almost a sackable offence”, said the 68- yr- ancient, who retired three years ago.
But today, yet in her hometown of Boulogne- Billancourt, west of Paris, where the mainly nicely- off residents have been previously closed to the far appropriate, and voted 83 % for the centrist Emmanuel Macron in the 2022 national final round, Céline has noticed a shift in the public mood. Across France, Le Pen’s far- right National Rally ( Rassemblement National ( RN ) is polling at a historic high of about 33 % in Sunday’s European elections, more than double Macron’s grouping on about 16 %. National elections has grown more and more focused on the far-right’s chances of winning the next presidential election in 2027, and whether anyone will be able to stop it.
” Now, there’s more of a feeling of people getting ashore with Le Pen’s thoughts – it’s as if there has been a light time”, Céline, who did not want to give her title, said. ” You do n’t see immigrants here, but 10km away in the Paris banlieue you do. I live a comfortable life, but I have my eyes open, and it’s revolting out there for people who do n’t have much money. The problem is emigration, people feel invaded”.
Part of Boulogne- Billancourt, with its mainly nicely- educated, urban expert electorate, lies within the political constituency of the younger prime minister, Gabriel Attal, 35, who was appointed less than six months ago to invigorate Macron’s difficult second term. Attal’s main mission, as one Elysée official put it, was to “fight against populism” and counter Le Pen’s increasingly popular European election candidate, Jordan Bardella, 28.
But Attal addressed a rally in a local theater last week in Boulogne- Billancourt while there was a certain level of panic. Does France, a founding member of the EU, really want to be the nation that sends the largest battalion of far-right apparatchiks to the European parliament? Attal asked.
The National Rally’s success in European elections is not unusual. It has traditionally performed well in European votes since the mid-1980s, winning both of its previous two European elections, in 2014 and 2019, in France. The rise of other far-right parties in the EU has a significant impact this time, making it more influential than the French equivalent. Second, Bardella’s lead over Macron’s group is expected to be significant, possibly more than 10 %, compared to last time it was less than 1 %. This would demonstrate that Macron’s support has significantly decreased in addition to the far-right’s growth.
Hervé Marseille, a veteran of the local centre right, warned at the Boulogne- Billancourt rally that Le Pen’s far right was now certain to make it to the second round of the 2027 presidential election, raising the question of who could stop her. Macron, who promised at his election in 2017 there would be” no more reason to vote for extremes” but has seen Le Pen’s vote rise, cannot stand again for president, and has no obvious successor. The next three years, including municipal elections in 2026, will be dominated, therefore, by politicking over the place of the far right.
According to Luc Rouban of the Cevipof political research center at Sciences Po university,” Marine Le Pen has succeeded in her party’s goal of making this European election a referendum for or against Macron.”
The pro-European government claims that it has slowed the rate of unemployment and protected French citizens from the worst of the Covid crisis and Ukraine war. But Le Pen supporters are voting on Sunday largely out of concern for national issues: the daily challenge of making ends meet, immigration, access to public services, and the feeling of insecurity and crime.
With 88 MPs, the National Rally is already the largest opposition party in parliament. It no longer wants to leave the EU, which makes it harder to oppose. Even with Macron’s top European candidate, Valérie Hayer, referring to the Front National’s questionable roots and its co- founder Pierre Bousquet, who served in the Waffen SS, the National Rally, renamed in 2017, has seen its support grow.
” The double approach of fighting them by saying:’ Look how scary they are’ and ‘ Look how incompetent they are’, in my view wo n’t work any more”, said Édouard Philippe, a former prime minister to Macron, in a recent television interview.
In Boulogne- Billancourt, Céline is far from alone in voting RN. At his golf club, a former car company manager who refused to give his name at the time, first noticed what he called” the wind of change.” He said,” All of my golf club friends are discussing voting for the National Rally.”
He and his wife, a retired middle- school French teacher, lived in what he called a “nice new- build flat” and spend six months of the year in Spain. ” Emmanuel Macron turned me to the National Rally, because he’s done nothing about crime and insecurity, we’re invaded by immigrants”, he said.
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Clara, 72, retired from events management, is part of the 8 % to 10 % of former Macron voters who are expected to vote Bardella in the European elections, in what pollsters have called an increasingly porous French electorate. ” It’s the biggest anti- Macron message I can send”, she said, not wanting to give her real name. Her 40-year-old son had recently been fired from his TV job, which had worried her about the future.
Polling indicates that two voter groups that formerly avoided Le Pen’s party have started to gradually shift. Significantly, there is a slight increase in support for Bardella by more highly educated, higher- earning professionals, whereas Le Pen’s voter base used to be defined by people who spent a shorter time in education. People in the 60s and 70s are beginning to turn to Bardella after being turned off by the party’s founder, Jean- Marie Le Pen, who saw his movement as a threat to democracy that promoted racist, antisemitic, and anti-Muslim views, as well as being bad for the economy.
Leafleting in a suit and tie at a Boulogne- Billancourt market, Christophe Versini, a legal expert, parliamentary adviser and local delegate for the National Rally, said:” When you see that we’re progressing even in départements like the Hauts- de- Seine, which includes Boulogne- Billancourt, that means that no territory in France is beyond us”. Canvassing with him, in chinos and a polo shirt, was Florian, 23, a master’s student at a top engineering graduate school.
Reconquête, whose list is led by Le Pen’s niece Marion Maréchal, could have a combined vote of 40 %, making up all far-right parties in France that are participating in the European elections. Polls indicate that French teenagers between the ages of 18 and 29 are most likely to abstain from voting in the European elections, but their preference is primarily for Le Pen. ” We will clearly have to listen to what the French are saying and learn from it”, Macron’s parliament leader, Yaël Braun- Pivet, has said. Around 50 % of French people are expected to abstention.
Ordinary Voters, a thorough analysis of the causes of a rapidly normalizing far-right vote, was recently published by the sociologists Félicien Faury. ” There are always two main motivations”, he said. ” First is the question of the cost of living, and more broadly, economic security. Then there is the issue of immigration and a rejection of immigrants. And broader than that is a rejection of, and hostility towards, racial minorities”.
On the left, the commentator and MEP Raphaël Glucksmann, running on a combined ticket for his European group, Place Publique, and the Socialist party, is winning over centre- left former Macron voters and polling at about 14 %. He promised to demonstrate that the “democratic and pro-European left is not dead.” Sara, 39, who worked in digital communications in Boulogne- Billancourt, and canvassed for Glucksmann said:” It feels new to be putting social democracy back on the table”. But broadly, the French left remains divided, with Jean- Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise polling at about 8 %.
Alain, 35, a French- Congolese volunteer first aider, had been campaigning for Macron’s centrist grouping on low- income council estates outside Paris, in Evry and Grigny. If young people in the suburbs with ethnically diverse voters turned out to vote, he believed Le Pen’s party, “whose only arguments are hatred and division,” could easily be defeated in France.
But, at a campaign rally in Aubervilliers, another member of Macron’s party, a financial consultant who had moved from Mali to France for his postgraduate studies, was concerned. ” You can feel a shift. Far- right propaganda is gaining ground. One of my French friends, a manager, is starting to comment on comments he never would have made four years ago and is becoming more and more interested in Le Pen’s party. People are increasingly likely to believe that the immigrant next door is to blame for their issues.
