I still hold to my idea that non-voting population should still be represented in the government. I mean, it would probably have the unfortunate effect of every country turning into Belgium, but the people should not be denied, dammit!
Do you say that because we have mandatory voting? Because I've never seen our gridlock being blamed on mandatory voting, usually just on the mix of proportional seatings and two nations jammed into one country.
Also Re: Macron, it's to be noted that given France's two-round legislative system, there is much less tactical voting in the first round. LRM will have a far larger %age during the second round. So far, only 4 seats have been won (there is no run-off if a candidate score higher than 50%) of while LRM won two.
Still, there if you think that a strong opposition is a good thing, things are not looking good. This is compounded by an interesting argument I've heard*: about half of LRM's candidates are member of "civil society" (largely heads of small business, proffessionals and others
notables, rather than member of NGO or other non-party political groups). Those candidates with no political experience, no political career of their own to further and not party machinery to oppose Macron means he'll probably face way less opposition from his own MPs than is usual. Some are already talking of rubber-stamp parliament.
Also of note is that the FN only score 13% (Same %age as 2012, but given lower turnout that means 2.9 millions votes instead of 3.5). For the record that %age translated to 2 seats last time around. It seems that the mental image of the FN voters as highly motivated needs to be updated: as the party removed itself from the fringe, it also picked up a lot of apathetic voters it seems.
*Amusingly, those among my aquaintances making this arguments are usually the same ranting about getting all politicians out and getting rid of party politics. Well, how do you like post-party politics now uh! So yeah, this provide me with large amount of Schadenfreude.