French And U.K. Election Results

French Lower House Of Parliament Elections

The French lower house, called the National Assembly, has 577 seats, with a 289 seat majority. Its second round elections were completed yesterday. France also has an upper house and a popularly elected President with real power in its national government, in addition to relatively weak elected regional governments (which were historically governed by nationally appointed prefects). As Wikipedia explains:

The French Senate is made up of 348 senators (sénateurs and sénatrices) elected by part of the country's local councillors (in indirect elections), as well as by representatives of French citizens living abroad. Senators have six-year terms, with half of the seats up for election every three years.

The Senate enjoys less prominence than the first, or lower house, the National Assembly, which is elected on direct universal ballot and upon the majority of which the Government has to rely: in case of disagreement, the Assembly can in many cases have the last word, although the Senate keeps a role in some key procedures, such as constitutional amendments and most importantly legislation about itself.

A surge in electoral support didn't win it the majority it had hoped for, which no one party or electoral coalition won. Macron's coalition and the French Republican party which are centrist parties, lost ground in equal proportions, more or less, to the further left and the further right, although there was a slight overall shift to the right.

A center left NFP and Macron coalition looks like the most likely eventual outcome. National Rally can't secure a majority without either NFP, its arch enemy invented to thwart it, or Macron's party, which is a center-left party that is much closer to the NFP than it is to National Rally.

National Rally underperformed its vote share in the second round because non-National Rally voters tended to support whomever wasn't a National Rally candidate in second round voting, because the non-National Rally parties are all within the center to left of the political spectrum (left-right political terminology originates in the France by the way), while National Rally is a far right party.

 

The New Popular Front (French: Nouveau Front populaire [nuvo fʁɔ̃ pɔpylɛːʁ], NFP) is a broad left-wing electoral alliance in France launched on 10 June 2024 to contest the 2024 legislative election. The Front brings together La France Insoumise, the Socialist Party, the Ecologists, the French Communist Party, Génération.s, Place Publique, and other centre-left and left-wing political parties, while pushing for a mobilisation of associations, organised labour, and civil society. With the unifying motive of defeating the far-right National Rally, its name echoes the interwar anti-fascist alliance the Popular Front.

From Wikipedia.

Renaissance (RE) is a liberal and centrist political party in France. The party was originally known as En Marche ! and later La République En Marche ! (transl. The Republic on the Move or transl. Republic Forward), before adopting its current name in September 2022. RE is the leading force of the centrist Together coalition, coalesced around Emmanuel Macron's original presidential majority.

The party was established on 6 April 2016 by Macron, a former Minister of the Economy, Industry and Digital Affairs, who was later elected president in the 2017 presidential election with 66.1% of the second-round vote. Subsequently, the party ran candidates in the 2017 legislative election, including dissidents from the Socialist Party (PS) and the Republicans (LR), as well as minor parties, winning an absolute majority in the National Assembly. Macron was re-elected in the 2022 presidential election, but the party lost its absolute majority in the 2022 legislative election.

Macron conceived RE as a progressive movement, uniting both left and right. RE supports pro-Europeanism, accepts globalization and wants to "modernise and moralise" French politics. The party has accepted members from other political parties at a higher rate than other parties in France, and does not impose any fees on members who want to join. The party has been a founding member of Renew Europe, the political group of the European Parliament representing liberals and centrists, since June 2019.

From Wikipedia. 

The Republicans (French: Les Républicains [le ʁepyblikɛ̃]; LR) is a liberal conservative political party in France, largely inspired by the tradition of Gaullism. The party was formed on 30 May 2015 as the re-incorporation of the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), which had been established in 2002 under the leadership of then-President of France, Jacques Chirac.

The UMP used to be one of the two major political parties in the French Fifth Republic, along with the centre-left Socialist Party, before being eclipsed by the National Rally and Renaissance. LR's candidate in the 2017 presidential election, former Prime Minister François Fillon, placed third in the first round, with 20.0% of the vote. Following the 2017 legislative election, LR became the second-largest party in the National Assembly, behind President Emmanuel Macron's La République En Marche! party.

After a disappointing result in the 2019 European Parliament election, party leader Laurent Wauquiez resigned. He was replaced by Christian Jacob, who remained in office until after the 2022 legislative election, which saw LR lose half of its seats, although it became the kingmaker in a hung parliament. One month before, in the 2022 presidential election, LR nominee Valérie Pécresse placed fifth with 4.7% of the vote. Despite those setbacks, LR was still the largest party in the Senate and headed a plurality of regions of France.

LR is a member of the Centrist Democrat International and the European People's Party, and sits in the European People's Party Group in the European Parliament. Éric Ciotti became president of LR after the 2022 leadership election. During an 11 June interview, Ciotti spoke in favor of an electoral alliance with National Rally to contest the upcoming 2024 French legislative election. That would have reversed the historic cordon sanitaire that the party had regarding the group. Ciotti was expelled from his leadership position the following day and from the party on 14 June, though both decisions were reversed by a Paris court on the same day.

From Wikipedia.

U.K. House of Commons Elections

The elections for the House of Commons in the U.K. were held on July 4, 2024 in a single round, single member plurality system with nominations for each party made internally. 

The U.K. also has a House of Lords elected by hereditary aristocrats with limited powers (mostly to delay legislation passed by the House of Commons, but not to veto it), and a hereditary monarch, King Charles III, who has almost purely symbolic power. Almost all political power in the U.K. is vested in the prime minister who is elected by a majority of the House of Commons, and the Prime Minister's cabinet. The U.K. has regional governments in a federal arrangement in Northern Ireland, in Scotland, and with lesser powers, in Wales (which shares a civil and criminal legal system with England and most private laws of general applicability), but England has no separate regional government of it own.

The results were as follows:

Labour has won the UK general election in a landslide. The new Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, pledged to steer the country towards “calmer waters” in his first address to the nation. 

The Conservative Party lost more than 250 seats, its worst-ever defeat, and now faces life in opposition. The outgoing PM, Rishi Sunak, pledged to resign as party leader. Several cabinet ministers lost their seats, as did former PM Liz Truss. 

Nigel Farage’s populist Reform UK party won its first seats and came second in many more, splitting the right-wing vote and contributing to the Conservatives’ losses. 

The Liberal Democrats will be the third biggest party in parliament after its best result in years. The Greens made gains while the Scottish National Party suffered a collapse, losing nearly 40 seats, most of them to Labour.

The DUP, Plaid Cymru, and Sinn Fein are Northern Irish political parties whose members are rarely included in a governing coalition in the U.K. parliament, making them effectively irrelevant politically at the U.K. level.