Elections? Which Elections?

If the government again collapsed, Macron’s most likely maneuver would be to order the dissolution of the National Assembly, thus prompting an election, sixteen months after he last called a snap contest in June 2024. Behind the scenes, France’s political forces are already preparing campaign plans and candidate lists. This makes the doggedness of Macron’s camp in the ongoing budget talks even more beguiling. His supporters likely stand to suffer the most from a fresh election.

The president’s best hope is that holding another election might paper over his role in the current parliamentary logjam. “The June 2024 dissolution did not make sense to a lot of people,” says constitutional law scholar Dominique Rousseau. “Today, if there’s a dissolution, it would at least have some justification: it would be about the budget.”

But even in a new campaign focused on budgeting and austerity, there’s reason to doubt that a clear majority would emerge. The lower house could well remain mired in the three-way split baked in by last summer’s elections. A poll conducted following Bayrou’s ouster in early September suggested as much, pointing to the far right winning roughly a third of the electorate. They’re followed by various configurations of a rebooted left-wing alliance, with Macron’s camp and his right-wing Républicains allies trailing behind.

The all-too-possible scenario of inconclusive parliamentary elections has fed suggestions that the only way out of the impasse is for Macron to resign, accelerating presidential elections currently scheduled for 2027. Some polls suggest that half of the public wish that Macron would abandon the presidency, a fraction that rises to nearly two-thirds in some studies.

The left-wing party France Insoumise has been pushing the idea since last fall, when Macron refused to appoint a prime minister from the Left after the Nouveau Front Populaire alliance eked out a first-place finish in snap elections. “The choice that the French people need to make now is if they want to force Macron’s resignation,” France Insoumise MP Danièle Obono told Jacobin, as the party lends its support to ongoing anti-austerity protests.

France Insoumise’s counterparts in the Nouveau Front Populaire view this demand with suspicion, fearing that a presidential election, polarizing the political cycle around big-ticket personalities such as Jean-Luc Mélenchon or Marine Le Pen, is above all designed to restore France Insoumise’s hegemony over the Left. “I’m not sure that it’s the desirable solution that some make it out to be,” Socialist deputy Arthur Delaporte told Jacobin, pointing to the far right’s strong polling position.

Throw In the Towel?

It is almost inconceivable that Macron would heed those calls. Yet behind the demand that Macron abandon the presidency, there is more than just the arm wrestling on the French left.

One argument for a fresh presidential election is that it’s the only way to deliver the requisite jolt needed for a stable governing majority. The French Fifth Republic’s political system is ill designed to deal with the situation in which it now finds itself: with an ungovernable parliament, caught in a nearly even three-way split between far-right, centrist and left-wing blocs. With so little authority at the top, there’s not enough incentive for the parties down the pyramid of institutional power to work together.

That devastated political landscape may be the result of Macron’s governing strategy, but Rousseau is not convinced. “Nothing in the constitution obliges Macron to resign in light of his sinking approval ratings,” the Sorbonne professor told Jacobin. Past presidents from François Mitterrand to Jacques Chirac have been dealt major defeats or found themselves in the doldrums of unpopularity, only to cling to power.  In 1997, Chirac dissolved the National Assembly in the hope of winning a mandate for austerity cuts. Instead, the Left won a majority, forcing the president into a “cohabitation” with Socialist prime minister Lionel Jospin.

In any case, it is by now doubtful that a fresh presidential election is bound to yield the eventual winner a majority in parliament, too.

If the last twelve months are any indication, Macron is more than willing to accommodate himself with a hamstrung lower house, leaning on a domesticated minority coalition to hold off challenges to his policy record. This spring, the paralysis did not prevent agreement by large majorities of legislators, from far right to center left, for stringent tough-on-crime legislation. In a pinch, the president’s allies can barter away concessions to the far right on immigration.

There is also talk of institutional reform in the form of introducing proportional representation in the lower house — long a demand from Le Pen and her allies. Despised at home, Macron can try to find some solace in the limelight of international galas and diplomacy, leaving parliament to lumber from budget showdown to budget showdown.

But the days of all-conquering, triumphant Macronism are surely over. For the president, who poses as the “guardian” of institutional continuity, blocking any retreat on his agenda is reason enough to hold on to control. Last Friday, Lecornu seemed to acknowledge just that when he took a suspension of pension reform off the table in budget talks, saying it would “be a good subject for the presidential elections.” Whenever they come, at least the lines are drawn.