Emmanuel Macron may come under intense pressure to resign if his Renaissance party suffers a major setback and Marine Le Pen’s National Rally storms to victory in the National Assembly elections on June 30 and July 7.
According to a new poll by the CSA Institute for CNEWS, Europe 1 and JDD, released today, 57 percent of those surveyed would want Mr Macron to leave office if his party loses its presidential majority.
Before the president dissolved the National Assembly, Renaissance had 245 seats, with the Left-wing New Ecological and Social People’s Union (NUPES) led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon on 131 and Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) on 89.
However, with RN flying high after claiming 31.4 percent of the vote in the European Elections – more than double that of its nearest rival – and the party leading the domestic polls on 32 percent, Ms Le Pen and her allies will feel confident of becoming the largest player in the Assembly.
What’s more, fellow Right-wing parties in France appear to be queuing up to do a deal with RN, on the assumption that it will be the largest party.
Le Pen’s niece, Marion Maréchal, of the much smaller hard-Right party Reconquête! has called for Right-wing forces to work together to undermine Mr Macron.
Yesterday, upping the ante even further, president of France’s main centre-Right party, Eric Ciotti, said he too wants to work with Le Pen.
The Les Republicains leader told TF1 television: “We need to have an alliance (…) an alliance with the RN and its candidates.”
After Ciotti added that he wanted his “political family to move in this direction”, Le Pen heralded his intervention as “courageous”.
Despite the current polling suggesting that RN will be the largest party – although without enough seats to win a majority – Mr Macron said he wasn’t going anywhere “whatever the result”.
He told Le Figaro, prior to the news of the bombshell CSA Institute poll: “It’s not the National Rally that writes the Constitution nor the spirit of it. The institutions are clear, and so is the place of the president, whatever the result.”
Apparently keen to dispel the polls, which sees his party languishing behind RN, he added: “Politics is dynamic. I’ve never believed in polls.
“The decision I have taken opens a new era. A new campaign begins, and we should look at the scores for each constituency in the light of those for the European elections.”
