It is 8pm on Sunday 7 July. Polling stations have just closed after the second round of snap French parliamentary elections - the country's most momentous ballot in living memory and the first estimations flash up on the nation's TV screens.
President Emmanuel Macron has lost his gamble. The National Rally (RN) of Marine Le Pen has more than trebled its tally of deputies in the assemblée nationale to just over 290: an absolute majority. France's next government will be far right.
According to current polling, this may not by a whisker - be the most likely outcome of the vote taking place less than three weeks before the start of the Paris Olympics. But it certainly could be. RN has the momentum, and Macron is on the ropes. After scoring a record 31%, more than double the president's list, in EU elections, early polls suggest the party could win up to 265 seats. It would not need much at all to push it over the line.
"Across huge swathes of France, especially outside big cities, in almost every segment of the population-sex, age group, profession - RN is now booking record high scores," said Jérôme Fourquet of pollsters IFOP. "For a great many voters, it's just a party like any other."
Rym Momtaz, Paris-based Europe expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, noted that the far-right party's performance had improved in every election since 2017, and broken records in the most recent two: "This could end up really ugly."
Even a near majority would give RN considerably more influence, forcing the president to seek almost impossible alliances, in a far more hostile and fractured parliament.
Le Pen and Jordan Bardella, the party's telegenic, TikTok-friendly 28-year-old president, have not yet published a manifesto, hoping to hold the door open for as long as possible for potential rightwing electoral alliances in the run-up to the vote.
Denne historien er fra June 21, 2024-utgaven av The Guardian Weekly.
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