French president Emmanuel Macron’s centrist alliance is expected to keep its parliamentary majority after the first round of voting, according to projections on Sunday.
Projections based on partial election results showed that at the national level, Mr Macron’s party and its allies received about 25-26% of the vote.
This put them neck-and-neck with a new leftist coalition composed of hard-left, socialists and green party supporters.
Yet Mr Macron’s candidates are projected to win in a greater number of districts than their leftist rivals, giving the president a majority.
More than 6,000 candidates, ranging from 18 to 92, were running on Sunday for 577 seats in France’s National Assembly in the first round of the election.
The two-round voting system is complex and not proportionate to the nationwide support for a party. For French races that did not have a decisive winner on Sunday, up to four candidates who get at least 12.5% support will compete in a second round of voting on June 19.
Consumer concerns about rising inflation have dominated the campaign but still voter enthusiasm has been muted.
This was reflected in Sunday’s turnout, which showed that less than half of France’s 48.7 million voters had cast ballots.
Hard-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon, who had hoped the election would vault him into the prime minister’s post, was among only a trickle of voters as he cast his ballot in Marseille, a southern port city.
On France’s opposite coast, a small crowd gathered to watch Mr Macron as he arrived to vote in the English Channel resort town of Le Touquet.
Following Mr Macron’s re-election in May, his centrist coalition was seeking an absolute majority that would enable it to implement his campaign promises, which include tax cuts and raising France’s retirement age from 62 to 65.
But Sunday’s projection show Mr Macron’s party and allies could have trouble getting more than half the seats at the assembly this time around.
A government with a large but not absolute majority would still be able to rule, but would have to seek some support from opposition legislators.
Polling agencies estimated that Mr Macron’s centrists could win from 255 to over 300 seats, while Mr Melenchon’s leftist coalition could win more than 200 seats.
The National Assembly has final say over the senate when it comes to voting in laws.
Mr Melenchon’s platform includes a significant minimum wage increase, lowering the retirement age to 60 and locking in energy prices, which have been soaring due to the war in Ukraine. He is an anti-globalisation firebrand who has called for France to pull out of Nato and “disobey” EU rules.
Even though Mr Macron beat far-right rival Marine Le Pen in the presidential runoff, France’s parliamentary election is traditionally a difficult race for far-right candidates. Rivals from other parties tend to co-ordinate or step aside to boost chances of defeating far-right candidates in the second round of voting.
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