France's far-right National Regroupment (RN) party has 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 Marine Le Pen's RN would win around 34 percent of the vote, while the left-wing New Popular Front (NFP) coalition came in second with around 29 percent, ahead of 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 the RN and its allies could win between 260 and 310 seats in Parliament in the second round of voting on July 7, while Ipsos projected a range of 230 to 280 seats for RN. and his allies in a survey for France 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 celebrate the results
Le Pen welcomed the results, telling a cheering crowd that the French people had put the RN ahead and virtually eliminated the Macron camp.
RN President Jordan Bardella said that the second round next Sunday will be “the most important in the history of the French Fifth Republic.”
He also reiterated that Macron's party has been annihilated and accused the far left of creating an “existential crisis” that represents “a real danger for France and all the French people.”
Reporting from Bardella's campaign headquarters in France, Al Jazeera's Bernard Smith said the results were significant for the far-right RN party, but did not give them the overall majority they had hoped for.
“There is still a long way to go between now and then. There will be a lot of political jockeying for positions, and other parties will try to eliminate candidates from some constituencies to prevent the National Rally from moving forward,” Smith said.
Macron calls for a “broad democratic alliance”
President Macron has called for a “broad” democratic alliance against the extreme right following the projections of the polls at the end of the polls for the second round.
“In the National Assembly, 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 turnout in the first round spoke 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 afternoon's exit polls is that the far right is at the “gates of power”, adding that “no vote should go to the National Rally.” .
After the screenings, Jean-Luc Melenchon, leader of the leftist New Popular Front, said that he will withdraw the candidates who came third in the first round of the parliamentary elections, to defeat the greatest number of far-right RNs. candidates in the second round.
“Faithful to our principles and our positions in all previous elections, we will never allow the National Rally to achieve victory,” said Melenchon.
Laurent Berger, former secretary general of the French Democratic Confederation of Labor and current president of the European Trade Union Confederation, called for a “blockade” in a post on X.
“Tonight, our democracy and our Republican values are at stake as we gather nationally at the threshold of power,” Berger said.
“In the face of danger… it is imperative to block the extreme right.”
High participation
On Sunday, Ipsos estimated that the participation rate at 8:00 p.m. (6:00 p.m. GMT), when the polls closed, was 65.5 percent, 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 eurosceptic, anti-immigrant 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] “He has done plastic surgery on his party.”
“But is it 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.
He said the results of this vote were also a rejection of Macron's policies.
“I personally know of cases of people who voted for the far right because of the policies adopted by Macron, especially on an economic level,” Alouane said.
We now face a week of political negotiations before the second round of voting on July 7.
The final result will depend on how the parties decide to join forces in each of France's 577 electoral districts for the second round.
In the past, France’s centre-right and centre-left parties have banded together to prevent the RN from taking power, but that dynamic, called the “republican front” in France, is now less certain than ever.
