France 1951 legislative election

Final results from ParlGov, read 5 October 2026: Gaullist Party won 107 of 544 seats with 21.8% of the vote; 80.2% of registered voters cast a ballot, up 2.1 points on 1946.

France
Held Sunday 17 June 1951

Result

273 for a majority

Seats and votes by party

Party	Seats	± seats	%	± points	Votes
French Communist Party	97	−69	26.7	−1.9	5,056,605
Gaullist Party	107	+102	21.8	+20.2	4,125,492
Socialist Party	94	+4	14.5	−3.4	2,744,842
National Centre of Independents and Peasants	87		14.0		2,656,995
Popular Republican Movement	82	−76	12.5	−13.8	2,369,778
Rally of Republican Lefts	77	+22	10.0	−2.4	1,887,583

± is the change against the France November 1946 legislative election, party by party.

Votes by party

French Communist Party 5,056,605
Gaullist Party 4,125,492
Socialist Party 2,744,842
National Centre of Independents and Peasants 2,656,995
Popular Republican Movement 2,369,778
Rally of Republican Lefts 1,887,583

ParlGov lists parties with at least 1 percent of the vote or 2 seats, so the rows do not add up to the valid votes. How we read it.

For France ParlGov gives the first round's votes and the seats after the second round.

Share of the vote

French Communist Party26.7%
Gaullist Party21.8%
Socialist Party14.5%
National Centre of Independents and Peasants14.0%
Popular Republican Movement12.5%
Rally of Republican Lefts10.0%

Turnout

80.2% of the 24,530,523 registered voters cast a ballot (19,670,655 ballots), up 2.1 points on 1946. 19,129,004 of them were valid votes. How turnout is counted.

Votes and seats

Gaullist Party21.8% of votes19.7% of seats
French Communist Party26.7% of votes17.8% of seats
Socialist Party14.5% of votes17.3% of seats
National Centre of Independents and Peasants14.0% of votes16.0% of seats
Popular Republican Movement12.5% of votes15.1% of seats
Rally of Republican Lefts10.0% of votes14.2% of seats

Each party's share of the vote (outlined) and of the seats (filled)

The Gallagher index of disproportionality is 7.7 (0 when seats follow votes exactly); the effective number of parties is 5.4 by votes and 5.9 by seats; French Communist Party led Gaullist Party by 4.9 points of the vote. How these are computed.

Sources and licence

ParlGov 2024 Release (Döring and Manow), Harvard Dataverse (source). Licence: CC0 1.0 Universal
Wikidata, party colours (P465) (source). Licence: CC0 1.0 Universal

Our text and compilation: CC BY 4.0. How to reuse and cite this page.