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00:00Joining me now is our French politics editor, Marc Perelman, who's clearly in the middle
00:04of a very busy period. Marc, the polls are saying the far right is currently the clear
00:10favourite, still riding on the success of the European elections.
00:14Yes, absolutely. The polls, we have really to take them with a grain of salt because
00:19obviously this is uncharted territory. We don't know if the results from the European
00:25elections will really translate into strong showing for the national rally or at least
00:31an absolute majority, which is their target. But clearly they will have a sizeable representation
00:37in the National Assembly. There's no doubt, first of all, because those are 577 constituencies,
00:44577 races, but the national rally has really improved quite a lot its local anchorage.
00:53In the European elections, it arrived first in over 90% of towns and villages in France.
01:00And you don't do this if you don't have a strong local anchorage. So they're really,
01:04really in a very, very good position. However, does this mean they will be able to reach
01:11289, which is the magic number, the number of seats you need to have an absolute majority?
01:18That's a tall order, first of all, because there could be more turnout, especially from
01:23voters who don't want the national rally to reach power through a prime minister. And
01:31there could be also what we're seeing on the left, which wasn't there during the
01:37European election, meaning a new coalition. After the shock of the election and the shock
01:43of President Macron calling for a snap election, the left very quickly united. The four parties
01:49were able to unite, agreeing on the outlines of a program, despite bitter divisions during
01:55the campaign, and also agreeing on a key principle for a two-round majority vote election system
02:02like we will have for those elections, meaning fielding only one candidate in each constituency.
02:09So you could end up having in each constituency a national rally candidate facing off against
02:15a leftist candidate, which obviously calls into question what happens with Emmanuel Macron's
02:21majority. Exactly. And that's what I want to ask you, because if anyone's looking like a loser
02:26at this point, it certainly does appear to be Emmanuel Macron's camp, doesn't it? Well, clearly,
02:30he took a major gamble when he decided, without being obliged to, I mean, we have to stress
02:36that there was no obligation for him to do what he did, dissolving the National Assembly. It's only
02:41the sixth time under the Fifth Republic, and in none of the other cases did we have such a
02:47situation where the president could have said, well, I'm continuing. He decided to roll the
02:52dice. His idea was, okay, I'm going to create a centrist bloc. Essentially, this is how he got
02:58elected, but by enlarging it to moderate leftist politicians, moderate conservative politicians.
03:06However, if there could be some moderates from the right that could agree with Emmanuel Macron,
03:14this is not happening on the left precisely because of this coalition that we just
03:18talked about. So now the projections are that not only would Emmanuel Macron lose the relative
03:25majority he currently has in parliament, but his majority could really shrink and become
03:32a tiny minority in parliament, which would be an absolute disaster for Emmanuel Macron.
03:38His best hope might be a hung parliament, meaning that the national rally would arrive first,
03:44but with no majority, that the left would not have a majority, and that there would have to
03:49be some kind of German-style coalition in parliament where he as president could still
03:55have a say, but that's very, very complicated in any case. And so clearly the odds are not
04:02looking good for the president with only a few days to go before round one on June the 30th.
04:08Bob Herrmann, thank you so much for that analysis.