The far-right French party National Rally (RN) maintains a clear lead in the first round of the country’s early parliamentary elections, according to exit polls.
Pollsters IFOP, Ipsos, OpinionWay and Elabe projected that Marine Le Pen’s RN would win around 34 percent of the vote, while the left-wing coalition New Popular Front (NFP) came in second with around 29 percent, ahead from President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist Ensemble Alliance. in third place with around 20.3 percent.
Pollster Elabe said in an estimate for BFM TV that RN and its allies could win 260-310 seats in parliament in the second round of voting on July 7, while Ipsos projected a range of 230-280 seats for RN and his allies in a survey for French Television.
A total of 289 seats are needed to obtain an absolute majority in the National Assembly, the lower house of the French parliament.
Le Pen and Bardella welcome results
Le Pen welcomed the results and told a celebratory crowd that the French people put the RN ahead and that they practically annihilated Macron’s camp.
The president of RN, Jordan Bardella, highlighted that next Sunday’s second round will be “the most important in the history of the French Fifth Republic”.
He also reiterated that Macron’s party was annihilated and accused the far left of creating an “existential crisis” that represents “a real danger for France and for all the French people”.
Reporting from Bardella’s campaign headquarters in France, Al Jazeera’s Bernard Smith said the results are significant for the far-right RN party, but it does not give them the overall majority they were hoping for.
“There is a long way to go between now and then. There will be a lot of political jockeying for position, with other parties trying and removing candidates from some constituencies to prevent the approval of the National Rally,” said Smith.
Macron calls for a “broad democratic alliance”
President Macron called for a “broad” democratic alliance against the far right following exit poll projections for the second round.
“In light of the National Rally, the time has come for a broad, clearly democratic and republican alliance for the second round,” he said in a statement.
He also said that the high participation in the first round speaks of “the importance of this vote for all our compatriots and the desire to clarify the political situation”.
Current Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said the lesson learned from the evening’s exit polls is that the far right is “on the doorstep of power” and added that “no vote should go to the National Rally”.
After the projections, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who leads the left-wing New Popular Front, said he will withdraw the candidates who came in third place in the first round of the parliamentary elections, in order to defeat the largest number of far-right candidates in RN. . candidates in the second round.
“In accordance with our principles and our positions in all previous elections, we will never allow the National Rally to achieve victory,” said Mélenchon.
Laurent Berger, former general secretary of the French Democratic Confederation of Labor and current president of the European Trade Union Confederation, called for a “blockade” in a publication on X.
“Tonight, our democracy and our republican values are at stake as we face the National Rally on the threshold of power,” said Berger.
“In the face of danger… It is imperative to block the extreme right.”
High participation
On Sunday, Ipsos estimated that the turnout rate at 8pm (6pm GMT), when polls closed, was 65.5%, which would be the highest since 1997.
But the projected results, which were in line with polls before the election, provide little clarity on whether the anti-immigrant and eurosceptic RN will be able to form a government alongside the pro-European Union Macron.
According to Rim-Sarah Alouane, an academic at Toulouse-Capitole University, “she [Le Pen] had plastic surgery at her party.”
“But it’s still the same rotten, xenophobic, anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim and anti-minority party… we know what the far right stands for,” Alouane told Al Jazeera.
She said the results of this vote were also a rejection of Macron’s policies.
“I personally know cases of people who voted for the extreme right because of the policies made by Macron, especially at an economic level,” said Alouane.
There is now a week of political negotiations left before the July 7 second round.
The final result will depend on how the parties decide to join forces in each of France’s 577 constituencies for the second round.
In the past, France’s center-right and center-left parties have united to prevent the RN from taking power, but this dynamic, called the “republican front” in France, is now less certain than ever.
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
