Politics in France has been the equivalent of a wild roller coaster ride this past month. A series of elections and results threw supporters of the political right and left for a loop and a half. It also led to political representation from parties and leaders who have never wielded so much power and influence before.

Let’s start from the beginning.

Our first destination is the June 6-9 European Parliament election. A total of 720 Members of the European Parliament were elected in the 27 member states of the European Union. These politicians and parties represent over 450 million people.

French voting for the European Parliament occurred on June 9. The result shocked many individuals and political observers.

The right-leaning National Rally and French Future, running under the party list name La France revient! (France comes back!), finished first with 7,765,936 votes or 31.5 percent. This gave them 30 out of 81 total seats, which was up seven seats from the 2019 European Parliament election.

Besoin d’Europe (Need for Europe), the party list for the Ensemble coalition of eight left-leaning French parties, finished in second place with 3,589,114 votes or 14.56 percent. They ended up with 13 seats, or a decrease of ten seats from the previous parliamentary session. In third place was Réveiller l’Europe (Wake Up Europe), the party list for the left-wing Socialist Party and Place Publique, which finished with 3,401,076 votes or 13.79 percent. They also earned 13 seats, or an increase of seven seats.

The result was a huge embarrassment for French President Emmanuel Macron. His party, Renaissance, is the largest political outfit in Besoin d’Europe. Their loss was his loss, and he knew it.

Macron dissolved the National Assembly and called a snap (or early) election. Two rounds of voting, a long-standing tradition, would determine who would sit in the lower house of Parliament and govern the nation.

Calling a snap election is always a gamble. We’ve seen examples of this in Canada, some resulting in success (BC NDP Premier John Horgan in 2020) and others ending in failure (Ontario Liberal Premier David Peterson in 1990). As then-UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and the Tories have also learned, a snap of the fingers can lead to a historic electoral defeat.

It certainly looked like France’s legislative election, our second destination, would result in something similar to what ultimately happened in the UK.

In the first round of voting on June 30, National Rally and its allies, described by the Ministry of the Interior as Union de l’extrême droite (Union of the Far-Right), won 10,647,914 votes (33.21 percent) and 38 seats. They were followed by the New Popular Front, a cobbling of parties from centre-left to far-left, which won 9,042,485 votes (28.21 percent) and 32 seats. Ensemble earned 6,820,446 votes (21.28 percent) to finish in third, but only received 2 seats.

The second round of voting on July 7 told a different story. The Union of the Far-Right won 10,109,044 votes (37.06 percent), but this only led to 104 additional seats for a total seat count of 142. New Popular Front went down in popular support to 7,039,429 votes (25.8 percent), but gained 148 additional seats for a total seat count of 180. As for Ensemble, they staged a remarkable recovery with 6,691,619 votes (24.53 percent) and 157 seats to surge to a total seat count of 159.

No party or alliance ended up with anything close to an absolute majority. Macron’s gamble didn’t pay off. Yet, a coalition of parties on the centre-left and far-left were now nominally in control of the lower house – and the French centre-right and far-right witnessed a different outcome from the first round of legislative voting and European Parliament election.

What happened? In a word, “fear.”

Some French voters either reconsidered their previous support for National Rally, or voted more strategically for left-wing parties and alliances. They were afraid of being associated with the far-right at home and abroad. This was in spite of the fact that Marine Le Pen, the parliamentary party leader, had cleaned up the ugly words, actions and ideas of her controversial father, Jean-Marie.

Le Pen previously conducted a “de-demonization” of the original party, the National Front. She suspended and expelled controversial members, including her father in 2015. She softened policies related to race, religion, marriage and globalization. She shifted the party’s focus on Islam to opposing Islamic terrorism. She improved relations with Jews and Israel, aided by her then-domestic partner Louis Aliot, who is of Algerian-Jewish descent. She established a moderate and inclusive image to attract non-traditional support.

Is National Rally perfect? No. It still attracts screwballs, and had to remove several candidates after allegations of racist and sexist views emerged. Le Pen has been critical of NATO and the U.S., and made supportive comments about Russian President Vladimir Putin. The party has similar policies to the old National Front on immigration, protectionism and nationalism.

To suggest that Marine Le Pen’s National Rally is a carbon copy of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s National Front would be a significant stretch, however. It’s not even close to being the same entity – and the daughter clearly isn’t the same as her father.

The electorate wasn’t willing to take the plunge. Instead, they chose the New Popular Front coalition which includes far-left politicians from the Socialist Party, Ecologists, French Communist Party, La France Insoumise, Génération.s and others. This means that the National Assembly will be in the hands of radical leftists who despise capitalism, free markets and private enterprise, as well as the cherished principles of liberty, democracy and freedom.

The NPF’s first order of business? They want to raise the minimum wage, establish price controls on gas, electricity and food – and initiate a 90 percent tax on all income above €400,000. Wait, what? That’s an insane economic policy that could easily wipe out the income of many French residents, and not just the wealthy. It could lead individuals and families to shift their earnings and savings to countries with lower tax rates – or, in other cases, frustrate them to the point of leaving the country altogether.

France’s fears of the far-right pushed voters into the waiting arms of the far-left. The country’s political and economic future looks extremely bleak. New tickets for that wild roller coaster ride are apparently being printed as we speak, too.

Michael Taube, a longtime newspaper columnist and political commentator, was a speechwriter for former Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper.