French Elections: An ugly campaign ends and France catches its breath before the elections

France’s rushed and sometimes violent election campaign is over, with strong calls from political leaders ahead of Sunday’s crucial vote.

Centrist Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said Friday evening that a far-right government would “unleash hatred and violence.”

But National Rally leader Jordan Bardella accused his rivals of immoral and undemocratic behaviour and urged voters to mobilise and give him an absolute majority.

One in three French voters supported the National Rally (RN) last Sunday, in the first round of the legislative elections.

A week later, the choice is between France’s first modern-day far-right government or political deadlock, and voters fear unrest no matter who wins.

The climate is so tense that 30,000 additional police officers are being deployed.

Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said that 51 candidates, or their deputies or party activists, had been physically attacked by people from various backgrounds, some of whom were “spontaneously angry.”

In one incident, an extremist network published a list of nearly 100 lawyers “to be eliminated” after they signed an open letter against the National Rally.

President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to call it less than a month ago came as a shock, but the consequences are unknown.

When voters talk about the election, the tension is often palpable.

With her hair covered, Kaltoun says that in her town on the border with Belgium, where the RN won the first round, she and her daughter feel increasingly uncomfortable. “It’s a remark or a look, with each election it’s worse.”

In Tourcoing, Gérald Darmanin is facing strong competition to keep his seat against the far-right candidate who was only 800 votes behind him last Sunday.

This is why the left-wing candidate Leslie Mortreux decided to withdraw from the second round to have a better chance of beating the RN.

Of the 500 seats that will be awarded in the second round, 217 candidates from the New Popular Front (NFP) and Macron Ensemble withdrew to prevent the RN from winning. While dozens of three-way ballots are still ongoing, 409 seats will now be awarded in a one-to-one vote.

After the first round, some polls gave the RN a chance of winning an absolute majority in the National Assembly.

The latest polls of the campaign suggest that this is no longer the case. Although RN leader Marine Le Pen believes that the party still has a “serious chance” of winning the 289 seats needed to control the Assembly, pollsters believe that the figure of 200 is more realistic.

A major poll released hours before the end of the campaign suggested that a series of clumsy withdrawals by third-placed left-wing and centrist candidates had succeeded in dashing the hopes of the protégé of National Rally leader Marine Le Pen of becoming prime minister at the age of 28.

“We are witnessing the birth of a single Mélenchon-Macron party,” deplores Jordan Bardella. “And this dishonorable alliance was formed with the sole aim of preventing us from winning.”

The Popular Front is made up of socialists, greens and communists, but its largest party is France Insoumise, led by the radical Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

He is widely condemned by his rivals as an extremist, and he is certainly no ally of President Emmanuel Macron.

Despite their agreement to keep the far right out, the two camps do not see eye to eye.

“You don’t beat the far right with the far left,” declared the Interior Minister, even though a candidate from La France Insoumise withdrew to help him win.

Macron’s centrists are third in the polls, far behind the Popular Front and the National Rally.

“In France, we are fed up with Macron, and I am rather in the center,” Marc said in Tourcoing. “The cost of living is high, the rich have become richer and the poor poorer.”

The National Rally has focused its campaign on media appearances by Mr Bardella and Marine Le Pen, and some have claimed that “ghost candidates” are barely running in some regions.

When a candidate from the city of Orléans, Élodie Babin, qualified for the second round without much campaign effort, she later insisted that she had been sick for 10 days.

The RN is particularly popular in rural areas.

In Mennecy, a small town in Essonne, Mathieu Hillaire held his last campaign meeting as a candidate for the Popular Front. He is in a duel with the RN candidate Nathalie Da Conceicao Carvalho, after the pro-Macron candidate withdrew to give her left-wing rival a better chance of blocking the far right.

Mr Hillaire said that while the climate was less tense locally than elsewhere, some people were still worried: “Many of the voters I’ve met are afraid of Jordan Bardella.”

Most of the RN’s policies aim to reduce the cost of living and restore public order, but their anti-immigration plans raise particular concerns.

The RN wants to give French citizens a “national preference” over immigrants for employment and housing, and wants to abolish the right to automatic French citizenship for children of foreign parents, if these children have spent five years in France between the ages of 11 and 18.

People with dual nationality would also be excluded from dozens of sensitive jobs.

Prime Minister Gabriel Attal spoke of “uncertainty and concern” among the French.

He said that his party had ruled out the risk of a majority for Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the first round. Now, the risk comes from a far right whose policy “would unleash hatred and violence with a plan to stigmatize some of our fellow citizens” and would be catastrophic for the French economy.

But what will happen on Sunday night if there is a deadlock and there is no clear path to forming a government?

The Olympics are only 20 days away and France may not have a government or prime minister when it hosts such a major global event.

Mr Attal, who had previously suggested his minority government could stay in place “as long as necessary”, was much vaguer on Friday evening.

“Next week, I don’t know what I’m going to do, or where I’m going to do it,” he said. “But I know who I’m doing it for: for the French people, that’s all that matters to me.”