Le Pen calls result ‘historic victory’ as Senate caucus forms for first time

France’s National Rally and its allies secured a record 14 seats in the country’s 348-seat Senate in elections announced Sunday, with presidential candidate Marine Le Pen calling the results an “historic victory” and the party clearing the 10-seat threshold needed to form a parliamentary caucus in the upper chamber for the first time. The result effectively quadruples the party’s presence in the Senate, months before a presidential election scheduled for April 2027 when centrist President Emmanuel Macron is set to step down.

Local elected officials vote for new senators for half the upper chamber every three years, each to serve a six-year term. According to an AFP tally of results, nine National Rally senators were elected Sunday on top of three who won seats in 2023, with a further two elected from National Rally ally Eric Ciotti’s Union of the Right for the Republic (UDR) party.

National Rally president Jordan Bardella said the party’s senators would form a group with UDR allies. Ciotti quit the right-wing Republicans party in 2024 after calling for an alliance with the National Rally.

“This is a historic victory, and a major milestone with the formation for the first time of a group in the Senate,” Le Pen said on X. She added that “the results have exceeded our expectations.”

The party first entered the Senate with two seats in 2014, when it was still known as the National Front. It won three seats in the 2023 round.

The Senate president of more than a decade, Gérard Larcher, 77, a member of the Republicans (LR) party, is expected to be re-elected next week. According to initial results, the right, center and left-wing Socialists looked set to remain the three major forces in the upper house. The France Unbowed party won a Senate seat for the first time.

The National Rally emerged as the single largest party in the lower-house National Assembly after Macron called snap legislative polls in 2024, although it fell well short of a majority. Le Pen is considering her best chance yet at power in next year’s presidential election, in which Macron is set to step down.

The Guardian’s reporting drew on an AFP tally of results and additional input from Reuters.