What the Mood Is Like in France After Surprise Election Results

“And now, what do we do?” blared the front page headline of Le Parisien, a daily newspaper, as the shock of Sunday’s election results began to sink in.

The day after a historic election, France awoke to final results that none of the polls had predicted. The left-wing coalition’s New Popular Front took the most seats in the National Assembly, but nowhere near enough to form a government, followed by President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist coalition, which lost scores of seats. Finally, in third place, was the party that pollsters and pundits alike had expected to lead — the far-right National Rally.

Now the question gripping the country was who would govern France, and how.

In a country with little taste for political compromise and collaboration, it is unclear how a government can be formed and take on the important work of passing the country’s budget and enacting new laws.

The president called the snap election a month ago, after the Euroskeptic far right walloped his pro-European party in the elections for the European Parliament. The domestic vote, Mr. Macron had explained, would offer a “clarification” for the country. Put simply, he was asking his fellow countrymen if they could really allow the far right into power when so many consider its views a danger to society.

In the end, the answer seemed to be that many could not envision that scenario. That included the left-wing parties and some of Mr. Macron’s centrists, who came together to form a so-called dam against the National Rally by withdrawing scores of candidates in three-way races.