As results poured in from the first round of France’s elections on June 30, veteran Gaullist politician Michel Barnier sounded the alarm. His Les Républicains seemed faced with a debacle, with under 7 percent of the vote. Ahead of the election, the party had suffered a damaging split, as a noisy minority made an alliance with Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN). Barnier opposed their position — but likewise warned against the left-wing danger to the Republic.

In the second round, he insisted, it was necessary “to build a barrage against both LFI [Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s left-wing France Insoumise] and the RN.” This contravened the established idea of a “republican front” uniting democrats against the far right. Yet in dozens of constituencies, the runoffs on July 7 offered a straight contest between France Insoumise and Le Pen’s RN. In those races, Les Républicains’ voters split in favor of the far-right option, by an estimated 38 to 26 percent. No longer considering it a pariah, they backed it even against the more center-left Greens and Socialists.

These Les Républicains voters were too few to give Le Pen a majority. Most left-wingers (and just over half of centrists) voted tactically to block her party, and surprised expectations that it was coasting toward power. Ultimately, the left-wing Nouveau Front Populaire scored 192 seats, Emmanuel Macron’s camp 166, and Le Pen’s allies only 142, in a deeply divided parliament. Yet the president soon gave the far right the initiative again — handing it a kingmaker role that culminated this Thursday in Barnier’s appointment as prime minister.